Q: A friend and I were having a debate about prostitution. He argues that it is legal in Canada. Is this true?
A:Prostitution itself is not illegal and as far as I can determine never has been. Our Canadian Criminal Code dates from the late 1800s. However, while prostitution is not illegal in itself, there are a number of prostitution-related offences. Those include communicating in a public place for the purposes of prostitution, living off the avails of prostitution and keeping a common bawdy house.
Thus if A and B meet in A’s place of residence, and B agrees to provide sex for money, no offence occurs. However, if they discuss their arrangement on the street an offence occurs – communicating in a public place for the purpose of prostitution. Similarly, even if all the activity takes place in A’s residence but B pays some of the money to C, an offence occurs. In this case, this may amount to the offence of living off the avails of prostitution. Finally, if C has a place where prostitution occurs then C may be committing the offence of keeping a common bawdy house. An interesting scenario is being played out in Montreal. A man was charged for operating a swingers club where people went to engage in sexual activities with each others’ spouses. He argued that he simply provided a location where people could swap spouses. The matter is still before the courts.
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Why is prostitution treated differently from prostitution-related activities? I don’t know. It would make a great research subject for a graduate student in law or history.
Q: I was recently looking at a contract and it said “signed sealed.” Is it necessary for a contract to be sealed to be valid?
A: A contract does not have to be sealed in order to be valid. In fact, a valid contract can be entered into without a signature. For example, when you order fuel from your bulk dealer, you are in fact entering into a contract. Sealing a contract or other legal documents dates back to the days when a lot of people couldn’t write and sign their names. Instead of signing they used a seal. When one looks at historical documents (the kind found in museums) one finds many documents with very elaborate seals stamped in wax. English nobility prided themselves on the detail of their seals.
Today, on those occasions when we seal documents, the seal might be nothing more than an impression made with a rubber stamp (with ink from an ink pad) or a seal from a box of seals you buy at a local stationery store. However, like many things in law, traditions do not die easily and so we still talk about sealing documents and find seals on some of them.
