Editing Lap dance (section)

===Canada===
In 1973, an upmarket [[Vancouver]] bar called "Gary Taylor's Show Lounge" employed [[showgirl]]s and strippers as [[waitress]]es who gave a free dance with every drink. The club was raided by the police under the guise of obscenity legislation, but, in 1974, Judge Jack McGivern ruled that dancer nudity was not [[obscene]], which started a trend of nude dancing in bars. No contact between dancers and patrons was allowed at the club, but Gary Taylor's had a [[boxing ring]] where the girls performed revealing [[acrobatics]] after stripping off and then earned tips. Americans from [[Washington (state)|Washington state]] made the trip to the club from the United States, which at the time had stricter laws.<ref name="Lifestyles: Canada’s Multi-Million Dollar Addiction To Lap-Dancing">{{cite web|url=http://www.pittmeadowstoday.ca/lifestyles-canadas-multi-million-dollar-addiction-to-lap-dancing |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130410032410/http://www.pittmeadowstoday.ca/lifestyles-canadas-multi-million-dollar-addiction-to-lap-dancing |url-status=dead |archive-date=10 April 2013 |title=Lifestyles: Canada's Multi-Million Dollar Addiction To Lap-Dancing|date=21 September 2012|access-date=5 March 2013}}</ref>

In a landmark ruling regarding the 1994 case of Pat Mara and Allan East (the owner and manager of Cheaters Tavern), Judge E. Gordon Hachborn legally defined lap dancing and ruled that it did not contravene Canadian [[Indecent exposure|public decency]] statutes. A number of conflicting judgements were issued in the years that followed, including decisions to close certain bars in which sex acts took place on the floor of the club and other rulings in which patrons were allowed to touch the dancers, as long as an actual sex act did not take place.<ref name="Lifestyles: Canada’s Multi-Million Dollar Addiction To Lap-Dancing" />

In 1999, the [[Supreme Court of Canada]] ruled that a typical lap dance did not constitute an "obscene" act within the meaning of the [[Criminal Code (Canada)|Criminal Code]]. [[The Crown]] did not argue that lap dances constituted "prostitution", and therefore the court did not address the possible issue that the typical lap dance may contravene one or more anti-prostitution laws.<ref>{{citation |url=http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/1999/1999rcs3-863/1999rcs3-863.html |title=Judgement of the Supreme Court of Canada – Decisions – R. v. Pelletier |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070325070325/http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/1999/1999rcs3-863/1999rcs3-863.html |date=13 December 1999 |archive-date=25 March 2007 |access-date=20 November 2016 }}</ref> This led to the displacement of strip clubs and [[Table dance|table dancing]] clubs in Canada by lap dancing clubs.

In 2005, two Supreme Court of Canada rulings ([[R. v. Labaye]] and [[R. v. Kouri]]) decriminalized private sex clubs in Canada.

On 20 December 2013, (in [[Bedford v. Canada]]) the Supreme Court of Canada found the laws prohibiting [[brothels]], public communication for the purpose of prostitution, and living on the profits of prostitution to be unconstitutional. The ruling gave the [[Parliament of Canada|Canadian parliament]] twelve months to rewrite Canada's prostitution laws; in the meantime, existing anti-prostitution laws continued to be enforced.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25468587 |title=Canada Supreme Court strikes down prostitution laws|publisher=BBC|date=20 December 2013|access-date=8 January 2014}}</ref> Current laws on [[prostitution in Canada]], introduced in 2014, make it illegal to purchase sexual services (including lap dancing) but legal to sell them.<ref name=GCDJ>{{cite web|url=http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/protect/p1.html |title=Technical Paper: Bill C-36, Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act|author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->|date= December 2014|website=justice.gc.ca|publisher=Government of Canada: Department of Justice|access-date=13 September 2015|quote=Bill C-36 criminalizes, for the first time in Canadian criminal law, the purchase of sexual services… The following activities have been found to constitute a sexual service or an act of prostitution, if provided in return for some form of consideration: lap-dancing, which involves sitting in the client’s lap and simulating sexual intercourse… Bill C-36 does not prevent those who sell their own sexual services from entering into legitimate family and business relationships…}}</ref>