They Can Take Their Charter of Rights and Shove It: Uncovering the Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution Act’s Conditions of Possibility by Rebecca Taylor A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Sociology University of Alberta © Rebecca Taylor, 2016 Abstract In 1990s Alberta, two discourses about young people pervaded Legislative debates: discourse promoting tougher responses to young offenders, and a rallying cry to protect sexually exploited youth. Both discourses were promoted not only by the same political party (the Progressive Conservative Party), but also by the same politician, Legislative Member Heather Forsyth. This thesis is a social history, tracing the emergence of the Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution Act (PChIP, 1999). To this end, this thesis questions: Why did the Alberta government create specific legislation to deal with sexually exploited young people in 1999?; and How, with protective legislation firmly in place, and growing public and political discourse condemning youth in Alberta, did PChIP gain traction in the Legislature? In this thesis, I argue that, like the white slavery panic in early Canada, the specific actors calling to protect young women in 1990s Alberta drew upon racialized, gendered, and class-based rhetoric. This discourse fuelled the creation of legislation protecting a particular subset of young women: middle-upper class, Caucasian girls from “normal, average, every day families” (Children Involved in Prostitution Report 1997, 7). At the same time discourses advocating for both the protection, and punishment of young people were circulating in the media and Legislature, Alberta was also resisting the growing consciousness of children having inalienable rights. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), the Young Offenders Act (1984), and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) all marked a shift in the way children were understood in Canada. Alberta’s denial of children’s rights emerged in two ways through this research: first, in 1990s Alberta, Progressive Conservative politicians believed that children had too many rights; and second, politicians were willing to violate children’s rights to both protect society from young offenders, and save sexually exploited children. This transgression of children’s rights brings me to the final question this thesis ii attempts to answer: To what extent can law be employed to ameliorate the social conditions which give rise to such legislation? After more than a decade of investigating the sexual exploitation of children, committees in 1996 were tackling the same social conditions of marginalized women and children, and recommending that the same social supports be strengthened. I follow Carol Smart’s scholarship, which suggests that, rather than ameliorating the patriarchal relations which make legislation such as PChIP necessary, the law reproduces these relations, thus transforming narratives of social change into discourses of legal reform. iii Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the incredible support I have received throughout my graduate program. I would first like to acknowledge the City of Edmonton, Government of Alberta, Alberta Human Rights Commission, and the University of Alberta for their generous financial support. I am grateful to my committee members Judy Garber and Herb Northcott. Herb, you impacted my graduate experience in more ways than you know. It has been a true pleasure to get to know you. Thank you for the always-fascinating conversations, and for your ongoing support. Thank you, Joanne Minaker, for inspiring me to think critically about young people and providing me with my first research assistantship nine years ago. When you pulled me out of that final Youth, Crime, & Society exam, you changed my life. Bryan Hogeveen. Without you pushing, pulling, and dragging me into and through these past few years, I would not have made it. Thank you for encouraging me to look past my fears and imagine what I could be capable of. Your coaching and support has been invaluable. You have been both an amazing and intuitive supervisor, and friend. My parents are unequivocally right when they say I am lucky to have worked with you. Mom and Dad, you both instilled a forceful determination in Janene and I that has carried us through the best, and worst, of times. You taught us how to be strong, capable women, for which I am so grateful. I cannot tell you how much I love you. Daena Crosby. Friend, without your unceasing support and ability to laugh at the utter ridiculousness we have experienced these past five years, I would have never finished. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for sharing this journey with me, and all of the tears and joys that came with it. If anyone can join the worlds of young people and academia, it is you. Both are incredibly lucky to have you. So am I. iv Finally, to my partner and best friend, Mark. You are, simply, the most solid person I have ever met. Your faith in me, and that you would one day be able to eat at our kitchen table, never wavered. Your openness to the unknown, unconditional support, and eternal optimism has shaped my life in ways I would not have been able to dream about three years ago. Thank you for accepting all of me. I love you. v Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements.............................................................................................................................iv List of Acronyms .............................................................................................................................. vii Introduction..........................................................................................................................................1 Methodology........................................................................................................................................9 Chapter One: Regulating Youth and the Sexual Regulation of Female Bodies (Those Persons of Tender Years).....................................................................................................................................16 Save the Child, Condemn the Immigrant...................................................................................21 Social Purity: A Moral and Legal Campaign.............................................................................26 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................28 Chapter Two: The Beginnings of a Modern Day Panic.....................................................................31 The Badgley Committee ............................................................................................................33 The Fraser Committee ...............................................................................................................40 Municipal and Citizen’s Task Forces: Edmonton and Calgary Address Prostitution ...................47 Calgary: The Mayor’s Task Force on Community and Family Violence (CFV 1990).............47 Edmonton Mayor’s Task Force on Safer Cities (SC 1992): Toward a Safer Edmonton for All ...................................................................................................................................................51 Edmonton’s Action Group on Prostitution (AGP 1992) ...........................................................53 The Prostitution Policy, Service and Research Committee for Calgary (PPSRC 1994) ...........56 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................61 Chapter Three: The Children Have Too Many Rights......................................................................63 Creating the YOAPR ....................................................................................................................64 The Flip Side of Child Hating.......................................................................................................72 The Frustration: Another Meeting, Another Study........................................................................73 Forsyth and the CIP Task Force.....................................................................................................80 The Task Force on Juvenile Prostitution .......................................................................................84 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................90 Chapter Four: Alberta’s Twenty-First Century Moral Panic.............................................................92 Producing Hysteria.........................................................................................................................92 Chapter Five: “They Can Take Their Charter of Rights and Shove It”...........................................103 The Charter Challenge .................................................................................................................103 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................109 Appendix..........................................................................................................................................117