Current laws passed by the Parliament of Canada in make it illegal to purchase or advertise sexual services and illegal to live on the material benefits from sex work. The law officially enacted criminal penalties for "Purchasing sexual services and communicating in any place for that purpose. This marks the first time in Canadian history that the exchange of sexual services for money has been made illegal. The Canadian Department of Justice claims that the new legal framework "reflects a significant paradigm shift away from the treatment of prostitution as 'nuisance', as found by the Supreme Court of Canada in Bedford , toward treatment of prostitution as a form of sexual exploitation".
The new laws came in response to the Canada AG v Bedford ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada , which found to be unconstitutional the laws prohibiting brothels , public communication for the purpose of prostitution and living on the profits of prostitution.
The ruling gave Parliament of Canada 12 months to rewrite the prostitution laws with a stay of effect so that the current laws remain in force. There has long been a general agreement that the status quo of prostitution in Canada was problematic, but there has been little consensus on what should be done. Advocates of decriminalization believe that prohibition encourages the exploitation of sex workers by denying them legal and regulatory protections. The Conservative government that Canada's current prostitution law was committed to a prohibitionist position.
While the act of exchanging sex for money has been legal for most of Canada's history, the prohibition of the activities surrounding the sex trade has made it difficult to practise prostitution without breaking any law.
Canada inherited laws from the United Kingdom. The first recorded laws dealing with prostitution were in Nova Scotia in Following Canadian Confederation in , the laws were consolidated in the Criminal Code in These dealt principally with pimping, procuring, operating brothels and soliciting.
