Linda Nguyen, Postmedia News · Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010
TORONTO— The Ontario government made it clear Thursday it will not implement proposed instructions from the federal government to add job postings for strippers, escorts and chatline agents to its provincial job-bank website.
“I do not believe provincial government employees should counsel clients to train for a job as an escort or table dancer, nor do Isee it as the government’s role to assist in recruiting staff for strip clubs and escort services,” wrote John Milloy, Ontario’s minister of training colleges and universities, in a strongly worded letter to federal Human Resources Minister Diane Finley.
“Please accept this as official notification that Ontario will not comply with any directive of this nature.”
Mr. Milloy only became aware of the “draft note” this week and said he was not only “surprised, but deeply concerned.”
The document was sent to all provincial governments on Oct. 1 as part of a policy review on job-bank websites by Human Resources and Skills Development in Ottawa. The job-bank website is a federal initiative that works in partnership with the provinces. Each province is responsible for job postings in its region.
In the bulletin, the federal department says that all job postings must “continue to reflect the social values and ethical practices shared by the Federal Government, its provincial and territorial partners, as well as Canadian society as a whole.”
As a result, according to the bulletin, the job-bank website should now include listings for nine new occupations, including exotic dancers, erotic dancers, nude dancers, escorts and chatline agents.
These positions have been prohibited from the provincial website since 2003 because they were “sexually offensive,” according to that bulletin.
“I’ll be very frank here, if a directive of this nature is here, we will not be posting jobs for strippers and escorts. We don’t feel it’s an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money,”said Mr. Milloy. “The federal government has the final say, but if they don’t like it, they can sue me.”
The minister said he has yet to receive an official response from the federal government.
Meanwhile, Ms. Finley's spokesman Ryan Sparrow denied the instructions came from her office.
“(The draft note) has not been seen by the minister’s office, nor would it ever have been a policy under consideration by our government,” he wrote in an email.
Mr. Sparrow acknowledged the draft memo exists.
But he insisted it was something prepared by low-level bureaucrats, never got near the director general of the department, let alone the minister, and was never considered as government policy.
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He said officials are looking into how the memo got into the public domain, but declined to address the question of whether the timing of the leak was related to the recent court ruling decriminalizing aspects of prostitution and the government’s quick decision to appeal.
“It has never reached the minister’s office, nor has it reached any levels of upper management in the department whatsoever. Had it reached those levels it would have been shut down. It was merely at discussion levels. It was very junior,” he said.
“Obviously, we disagree with the memo. It has no legitimacy whatsoever.”