Calgary's city council voted to ban conservative political advertising around schools
Calgary’s city council voted overwhelmingly to ban advertising around schools — but only conservative political advertising.
Look at this story: Calgary council votes to restrict advocacy signage near schools.
This isn’t regulating what’s on the schools or in the schools. It regulates what messages you’re allowed to say near the schools. Obviously it’s illegal, unconstitutional. Obviously Calgary’s left-wing mayor, Naheed Nenshi, and all but three city councillors voted for it.
Sorry, you can’t ban people with signs. I know you really want to. But you can’t.
Here, let me read some more:
“In the bylaw amendment, advocacy messaging is defined as messaging that publicly expresses an opinion on an issue or cause,” officials said in a release.
So this is specifically banning political opinions.
It doesn’t actually ban, say, ads for cannabis, or ads for condoms or ads for R-rated movies or whatever. Those aren’t banned. But political opinions are.
Thousand dollar fines, too:
Penalties include a $1,000 fine “for any person found to be displaying or carrying a sign with advocacy messaging, within 150 meters of a boundary of school grounds.”
This was passed after precisely four minutes of debate in the City Council.
I know, because I watched.
I was ready to hunker down and watch a back-and-forth for an hour. I mean, it’s censorship, it’s weird, it’s specifically telling people they can’t express views on public property — again, this doesn’t apply to schools. Just to the 500 feet around them.
Apparently there’s one guy in Calgary who goes around with his pro-life sign. And he was mentioned in the debate.
You know, it’s a Friday afternoon before a long weekend as I record this. But I’m pretty sure you know what I’m going to do about this.
I’m going to break the law. We’re going to go and break the law all around Calgary.
And even though Calgary’s city council thought our centuries-old right to express our opinions was worth only five minutes of city council time before throwing out, I disagree.
I’ll wait till I tell you the details of our campaign.
GUEST: Keean Bexte.
FINALLY: Your messages to me!
2024 Student Journalism Conference
Applications are now open for The Democracy Fund's third annual Student Journalism Conference. This is a one-of-a-kind, all-expenses-paid opportunity for young aspiring journalists in Canada!
TDF Student Journalism Conference 2024Don't Get Censored
Big Tech is censoring us. Sign up so we can always stay in touch.
Don't Get Censored
Big Tech is censoring us. Sign up so we can always stay in touch.