Dominatrix expelled from Senate hearing after mentioning ‘proof on politicians’

Terri-Jean Bedford, the dominatrix who won a Supreme Court battle to overturn Canada’s prostitution laws, was kicked out of a Senate committee Tuesday after she railed against the new anti-prostitution bill C36, and threatened to reveal the names of politicians who are clients of prostitutes.
Bedford was expelled by the Conservative chair of the committee, Sen. Bob Runciman, after she argued and interrupted another senator, a Liberal, who was asking her questions. She’d been warned by Runciman to respect the rules.

A few minutes earlier, Bedford had grown increasingly combative and had warned senators to heed critics like her.

Cracking a riding crop, the leather-clad Bedford had explained there were many “levels of choice” — due to poverty and financial need — that drove people enter the sex trade. Then Bedford had this warning:

“I’d also like to say if this law passes, I’m going to make you guys forget about Mike Duffy, because I’ve got more information and more proof on politicians in this country than you can shake a stick at. I promise.”

At that she stopped.

Conservative senators questioned another witness, but a few minutes later when another Liberal senator, Serge Joyal, tried to ask Bedford about the impact of the bill’s ban on third-parties gaining a material benefit from prostitution — whether through advertising or the provision of other services, Bedford grew testy.

She dismissed the bill’s criminalization of the buyer, but not the seller, of sex.

“It’ll make Canada the laughing stock of the world . . . Why don’t we do that with booze?” she asked. “What does that mean? We can do it through the back door just as long as you don’t know about it? Ask me something important.”

Joyal pointed out the questions were important if the law could deprive her of her ability to make a living, and Bedford snapped:

“I’m gonna do it anyway regardless of what you say or not. If I decide to go back into business I’m gonna do it anyway, I’m going to wind up back here 10 years later. Would you like to know what it costs to get here? You’re going to make me go through this all over again.”