Exclusive in Ottawa, Canada

Criminal law is federal, so one regime applies across Canada. After the Supreme Court struck down the bawdy-house, living-on-the-avails and public-communication offences in Bedford (2013), Parliament enacted PCEPA in 2014. It criminalises obtaining sexual services for consideration, receiving a material benefit from someone else's sexual services, procuring, and knowingly advertising an offer of sexual services, but gives sellers immunity for their own services and their own advertising. The courts have upheld every challenged provision so far: R. v. N.S. (Ontario Court of Appeal, 2022), Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform v. AG (Ontario Superior Court, 2023) and R. v. Kloubakov (Supreme Court of Canada, 2025). The Alliance's appeal, which also challenges the purchase and advertising offences, is still pending before the Court of Appeal for Ontario. Source: Prostitution Laws (prostitutionlaws.org), https://prostitutionlaws.org/countries/canada/, reviewed 2026-11-03, CC BY 4.0.