Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look back at the week's news and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week's list ...
The City of Regina wants the public to weigh in on happy endings; it’s organizing feedback sessions on the city’s many body rub massage parlours.
The sessions are part of its process to decide whether it’ll licence and regulate the non-therapeutic facilities, or rule that they need to follow current zoning bylaws.
In an emailed news release, the City says it wants to “minimize neighbourhood impact while addressing concerns around safety for workers.”
“We have public complaints about these parlours that are in different areas of the city, in residential areas. And there’s some concern about that,” Mayor Michael Fougere said while speaking on the 980 CJME Greg Morgan Morning Show in early December 2018.
Residents and massage parlour workers are encouraged to give feedback; they can register for a session at the City of Regina’s website on or before March 8.
There are several possible outcomes from the feedback sessions, the mayor said.
“We just simply enforce the current zoning bylaw. The other one is we begin to licence them, and look at the character of the neighborhood and look at vulnerable (parlour) workers to protect them as well.”
A third option is blending those two, where it’s a combination of the zoning bylaw and licensing the parlours.
He added that protecting massage parlour workers means ensuring they’re all at least 18 years old and that they’re choosing on their own to be working there.
“We’re going to talk to the public and those within the industry as well, we want their opinion about how they feel about this as well. We want to make sure we get it right,” Fougere said.
The City’s news release said the possible options “were developed in consultation with Regina Police Service and through lessons learned from other Canadian cities.”
