Gwendoline Allison
Gwendoline Allison was called to the bar in 1995 and is the owner of Foy Allison Law in West Vancouver, B.C. She has worked with clients in employment and labour law, human rights, constitutional law and general litigation. She is a frequent speaker and writer on a variety of legal issues, and coauthored a textbook on employment standards law.
Bio last updated April 30th, 2018.
Articles by Gwendoline Allison
Healing the Wound
By Gwendoline Allison
October 1, 2015
Human trafficking is inseparable from its wounded sibling, prostitution: The demand for prostitution relies upon human trafficking. In turn, prostitution is the purpose for which much human trafficking exists.
The Supreme Court of Canada, in the Bedford case, struck down three laws relating to prostitution but suspended the effect for one year to permit Parliament to bring in new laws I started monitoring the Bedford case in 2010 and became involved in the case in October 2012, acting as co-counsel for the Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution One of the challenges we had was that among the 25,000 pages of evidence contained in 88 volumes, there was only one line regarding Asian women in prostitution One of his girls’ first nights in prostitution was a bachelor party at a hotel in Coal Harbour, in Vancouver, where she was hired for the father of the bride; her companion was hired for the groom The Court stated first that the case was not about whether prostitution should be legal; nor did the case address equality issues, either based on sex or race The Court stated that these women could not be said to be exercising a free choice since many have no meaningful choice but to engage in prostitution