June 20, 2005 | Sex & Society

Gay strippers banned from Canada

Toronto Pride will be minus 6 strippers who had been booked to perform at Remington's, due to a government moratorium on temporary work permits for foreign exotic dancers.

The ban is not aimed at gay strippers in particular, but is the unfortunate result of a  Canadian scandal that took place late last year. For some time the Immigration Department had offered blanket approval to strippers coming to Canada because of a "labour-market shortage" (ie not enough Canadians were willing to take off their clothes for money.) 

However the policy came under scrutiny in November when Canada's Human Resources Minister, Judy Sgro,  granted a temporary worker permit to a stripper from Romania, who it turns out had volunteered on Ms. Sgro's 2004 re-election campaign.

Concerns were raised about a conflict of interest and other abuses of the program; in December the blanket waiver for exotic dancers was cancelled and instead applications were to be considered on a case-by-case basis.  But now the program has been placed "under review" and no new applications are being  processed for any types of exotic dancers until the government comes up with a new policy.

The dancers and Remingtons filed an application in Federal Court on Friday, seeking to compel the government to process the dancers' applications and grant them work visas.

• Barred from performing at Pride Week [The Globe and Mail]