Canadians Say No to Topless
TORONTO — A majority of Canadians are cool to the idea of women baring their breasts in public during the few months of warm summer weather, a nationwide poll released Friday shows.
One of the country’s biggest pollsters, the Angus Reid group, said 55% of the 1,500 Canadians it surveyed opposed allowing women to expose their breasts, while 41% supported the idea.
A national debate about whether women should be allowed to go topless was fueled after a 20-year-old Ontario university student, Gwen Jacob, was fined for indecent exposure on a hot summer day last July. It is a criminal offense in most of Canada for women to bare their breasts.
Two-thirds of women opposed changing the law, but half the men said they supported topless rights.
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