OTTAWA (CP) - It may not rank with two-tier health care as an election issue, but Canada's two-tier sex trade poses an even greater affront to Canadian values, critics say.

The law turns a blind eye to prostitution in upscale massage parlours and escort services but deprives street hookers of the most basic protection, say researchers with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

"The available evidence indicates that an inordinate proportion of police and court resources directed at combating prostitution is targeted at street-based prostitution," says a report released by the group Tuesday.

Yet street prostitution accounts for only about 20 per cent of the sex trade, says the study. Prostitution is not illegal in Canada, but soliciting clients is.

Police tend to enforce the solicitation law against street prostitutes but not against escort services that advertise their services in newspapers and telephone books, critics say.

"The criminal law is driven by complaints for the most part. If sex workers are on the street they get hassled, they get attention from neighbours and attention from police. But things like body rub parlours and escort services, because they're happening behind closed doors, don't draw police attention."

The effect of such "selective" enforcement policies is to drive street prostitutes into more dangerous areas where they are vulnerable to predators, says the study.

According to recent figures, 69 female sex workers are missing or dead in the Vancouver area, and 84 in Edmonton. A disproportionate number are aboriginal.

"We have had this incredibly hypocritical attitude," said New Democrat Libby Davies, who served on a Commons committee that was examining the solicitation law before the government fell.

"Ninety per cent of enforcement is on street-level prostitution, what I would call the survival sex trade. Those women are there because of poverty, addiction, exploitation."

"The status quo isn't working because too many women have died, too many have been dying. The problem we found is that many women who were on the street were at greater risk.

"Every time they were picked up for soliciting they would go into a darker and darker place . . . so they became victims of people who preyed on women."

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