CALGARY, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) — Canada’s top pro-life group has warned that free speech is under “attack” after the city of Calgary announced Tuesday that anyone who distributes pro-life flyers to people’s homes not concealed in an envelope with a “warning” label on the front could be fined thousands of dollars.
In a press release Tuesday, Calgary officials announced that the city approved an “amendment to the Calgary Community Standards Bylaw” which it claims will “help protect people from viewing graphic images of fetuses when delivered to their homes.”
The new rule is effective “immediately” and states that flyers that have graphic images of aborted babies, or “fetuses” as it says, “must be concealed in an opaque envelope, with a graphic content warning, and include the name and address of the sender, when delivered to homes.”
Calgary bylaw 22M2023 was rushed through its first to third readings and then passed all on the same day, but the bylaw has been in the works for some time.
Calgary city council last November approved a motion brought forth by Calgary’s Ward 2 Councilor Jennifer Wyness directing its managers to draft a bylaw that would severely limit the distribution of pro-life flyers to people’s homes. This motion was unanimously passed with the full support of the city’s left-leaning mayor, Jyoti Gondek.
Wyness said, as noted in the press release, that the city wanted to “uphold the freedom of advocacy groups to express their opinions” but also wanted to “balance our responsibility to protect communities.”
“As a society, we accept that not all content is appropriate for everyone, which is why we have R-ratings for disturbing or mature films, for example. These pamphlets fall under that same category and it’s reasonable to ask that they come with a content warning,” she said.
Those found to violate the new rule can face fines of up to $1,000 per violation, and the city has promised to “investigate” and enforce the bylaw.
Said the city, if “Calgarians receive a flyer with a graphic image of a fetus that is not enclosed in an envelope, with both a warning label and sender’s address, they may call 311 to report it.”
The son of pastor Artur Pawlowski could be facing massive fines and jail time after he preached Bible verses outside a drag queen story time held at a public library over the weekend.
Nathaniel Pawlowski was detained and ticketed on Saturday by Calgary Police Service (CPS) because he was preaching too “close” to the drag event, in an apparent violation of a new and oppressive bylaw.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Pawlowski said that he was outside the event to “preach, read the Bible and just speak.”
Video of the incident shows Pawlowski along with his friend Deklan Friesen speaking to a crowd outside the library.
Calgary City Council last month passed a new “Safe and Inclusive Access Bylaw” that disallows “specified protests” both inside and outside all city-owned and affiliated public buildings. Mayor Jyoti Gondek put her full support behind the buffer zone bylaw.
Please tell Mayor Gondek that the bylaw violating Charter freedoms is both unjust and absurd
The bylaw means pastors or concerned parents protesting pro-LGBT events at public buildings are barred from getting within 100 meters of any such location.
Top constitutional lawyer John Carpay recently blasted Calgary City Council for going to “war” against Canadians’ freedoms by using bylaws to target people’s ability to protest events at public facilities, including drag queen performance directed at children.
In an opinion piece published on March 17 in the Western Standard, Carpay said “freedom of expression is meaningless if citizens are only allowed to say what’s approved by the government, or if expression is banished from public spaces.”
Pawlowski noted that his ticket has no penalty listed yet, as police must “review the evidence on me and that they will be stopping by my home to issue charges.”
His ticket does have a mandatory court appearance date. Each charge under Calgary’s bylaw carries a maximum fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Pawlowski had asked the police officers if they would also be enforcing “the same law on to the other side with the Antifa protesters”, but nobody was served a ticket except for he and Friesen.
In June 2022, Calgary City Council, under its left-leaning Mayor Jyoti Gondek, amended the city’s bylaws to “specifically prohibit insulting or demeaning behavior, including unwanted sexual advances, or harassing anyone on the basis of age, race, sexual orientation, disability, gender, gender identity or gender expression, among others.”
In February, Gondek vowed to use the bylaw to go after drag queen story hour protesters after some of the events were postponed by pro-family objectors.
In early March, fulfilling her promise, Calgary City Council then passed the bylaw that banned protesting against drag queen story hours or any other “LGBTQ” events held at public facilities.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Carpay noted that while there are limits to free speech, “Canadians have every right to express their views in public places, regardless of the content of the expression.”
He also wrote how a 1992 Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Zundel “explained all communications which convey or attempt to convey meaning are protected by the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms], unless the physical form by which the communication is made (for example, a violent act) excludes protection.”
“The purpose of the Charter’s free expression guarantee is to promote truth, self-fulfillment, and political and social participation. That purpose extends to the protection of minority beliefs which the majority regards as wrong or false,” wrote Carpay.
According to Carpay, Gondek seems to “believe it is wrong or false to oppose drag queen story readings in public libraries.”
“She is entitled to express her views, but not to impose her views on others by effectively banning peaceful public protests through a so-called ‘Safe and Inclusive Access’ bylaw,” noted Carpay.
There exists a “freedom of expression” which includes the “right” to choose “high-visibility locations to hold up signs or banners, sing or chant, hand out literature, gather signatures on a petition, and have a speaker get up on her soapbox,” continued the lawyer.
“Protests are often held at the locations where injustices (or perceived injustices) are actually occurring,” he added.
Christian pastor Derek Reimer was jailed and charged in early March for protesting a children’s drag queen story hour at a public library in Calgary.
Carpay wrote that the city council’s use of “coercive power to relegate peaceful protesters to obscure locations where they cannot be seen or heard,” amounts to “crushing a fundamental Charter freedom on which our democracy depends.”
“The point of protests is to be seen and heard,” wrote Carpay.
Carpay noted that being forced to stand 100 meters away from high-visibility and high-traffic areas “reduces freedom of expression to near irrelevance.”
“Protecting entrances from obstruction is already taken care of by the Criminal Code, and does not require a bylaw that imposes up to $10,000 in fines and up to a year in jail for peacefully protesting less than the length of four swimming pools away from an entrance,” charged Carpay.
According to Carpay, the Charter’s protection for free speech applies to those at the receiving end of a person speaking out.
“Potential listeners who have the right to hear diverse points of view, and to decide for themselves what is true and false rather than having Mayor Gondek decide on their behalf,” said Carpay.
“Calgary’s ‘Safe and Inclusive Access’ bylaw violates the rights of all Calgarians, speakers and listeners, and attacks diversity of thought and belief.”
Carpay noted that “repressive regimes always take great pains to ensure their subjects are kept ‘safe’ from ideas which the regime believes to be wrong or false.”
“In the past – and still today – those living in communist North Korea, national socialist Germany, theocratic Iran, Putin’s Russia, communist China and many other places have been kept very safe from ideas that the regime dislikes,” wrote Carpay.
Carpay noted that in a “free society,” there is no way everyone can be “safe” from hearing one’s opposing views.
“The ‘safety’ which woke activists on Calgary City Council are promising is attractive to those who support children being exposed to drag queens at public libraries,” wrote Carpay.
“But beware of the erosion of freedom, because the demons of censorship cannot be controlled after their release.”
In addition to Carpay, the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) has also objected to the new bylaw, and has vowed to commence a legal challenge against the “unconstitutional” policy.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
MORE INFORMATION:
Pastor Artur Pawlowski’s son detained in Calgary for preaching against drag show – LifeSiteNews
Canadian constitutional lawyer rips Calgary law banning drag queen story hour protests – LifeSiteNews
Free speech under ‘attack’ says Canada’s top pro-life group
Canada’s top pro-life group, Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), warned that Calgary’s new rule restricting the distribution of pro-life flyers is a direct attack on Canadians’ “free speech.”
“Shame on Calgary City Council for wanting to, what it calls, ‘protect people’ from viewing abortion victim images while ignoring the real issue at hand, namely that preborn babies are the ones who need to be protected from abortion,” CLC’s Director of Communications Pete Baklinski told LifeSiteNews.
“Pro-life free speech is under attack like never before. Every Canadian, including pro-life Canadians, have the right to freedom of speech as guaranteed by the Charter. No city council can take that right away.”
Baklinski told LifeSiteNews that the Calgary bylaw in effect has “illegally” outlawed “the right of pro-lifers to express their beliefs,” and it must be “legally challenged and overturned.”
He added that the city of Calgary is at least correct in pointing out that “these graphic images are ‘disturbing and painful,’ but this is simply because abortion is a horrifyingly disturbing procedure,” which he noted targets and “brutally” destroys the youngest members of the human family.
Last year, lawyer Marty Moore with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) told LifeSiteNews that, from a constitutional perspective, “there are serious concerns with Calgary City Council’s move to place restrictions on pro-life mailbox flyers.”
Moore told LifeSiteNews that as a preliminary constitutional issue, Calgary “does not have jurisdiction to enact restrictions for the purpose of expressing moral condemnation on certain kinds of expression.”
‘Abortion victim photography’ works ‘extremely well in waking people up’ to horrors of abortion
In speaking with LifeSiteNews, Baklinski defended the use of “abortion victim photography,” which he noted “works extremely well in waking people up to the gruesome reality that abortion kills children.”
“The images show the face of ‘choice.’ Seeing what abortion actually looks like stirs the conscience, moving the viewer to recognize the humanity of these tiny persons and to be appalled at the injustice that they suffer,” said Baklinski.
“So many people, when they see what abortion really looks like, suddenly don’t support abortion anymore. And that’s why abortion activists despise these images. They want to do everything in their power to get rid of them, cover them up, and hide them. They don’t want the public to see the reality of abortion and turn against it.”
Baklinski said Calgary city officials should instead be standing up for the “true victims,” who are “the preborn children targeted for extermination.”
“Calgary City Council is standing with abortion activists in covering up and hiding this greatest crime against humanity which is abortion. Calgary City Council is guilty of covering up the abortion holocaust,” he observed.
The timing of Calgary passing its ban on pro-life flyers comes at the same time thousands of Canadians take to the streets today in Ottawa for the March for Life, to show their support for the unborn.
CLC has an online tool to contact one’s city councilor.