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Take the survey!

shadowcat

Atlanta suburb

TORONTO - The city wants your thoughts on Hogtown's strip clubs.

As part of a review of strip club regulations, bureaucrats posted a survey on the city's website this week asking members of the public to bare their thoughts on Toronto's no-touch rules.

The sexy survey (as sexy as municipal bureaucracy gets) will be online until July 2 as part of a review ordered by the licensing and standards committee earlier this year.

City officials are asking the public about 10 questions around the current adult entertainment parlour regulations.

After asking whether or not you attend strip clubs, the survey goes on to ask if you're aware of the city bylaw that prevents physical contact between “burlesque entertainers” — the city doesn't use the word stripper in the survey — and patrons during performances. The survey goes on to ask if the member of the public thinks the “no-touch provisions” are a “good set of rules.”

The survey also asks for thoughts on the bylaw that prohibits strippers from providing services in club areas not in view of the main stage.

“Are you in support of lap dancing/close contact between a burlesque entertainer and a customer?” is the one of the last questions in the survey.

The survey also asks if it is a good idea to have a registration system maintained by the clubs, eliminating the requirement dancers be licensed by the city.

The questionnaire wraps up by asking what measures the city could take to improve working conditions for “burlesque entertainers.”

Councillors on the licensing and standards committee ordered the review at a March meeting — the same meeting where a dancer provided councillors with a pole dancing demonstration. The review is due back in October.

Councillor Cesar Palacio, the chairman of the licensing committee, said he hopes “some of the wrongs” with the current rules will be corrected through the review.

“There is a lot of discomfort out there and that is the purpose of having this review,” Palacio said Wednesday.

While he said he hadn't seen the survey posted on the city's website, Palacio said he would “absolutely not” want to see the city's “no-touch provisions” stripped away.

“That's not the place for that,” he said.