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Right to poster upheld
Year Published: 1990Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX3920 Abstract: Anti-free trade activists who were charged with putting up posters under Toronto's anti-poster bylaw won a victory in court in April. Two members of Citizens Concerned About Free Trade (CCAFT) were acquitted by a Toronto judge who accepted the defense's arguments that postering is an essential form of free speech. The defence argued that postering was one of the few forms of public expression open to poor people and small organizations who could not afford to buy space or time in the expensive commercial media. Although the city defended its bylaw on the grounds that postering contributes to visual clutter, the bylaw was originally put on the books in 1930 to hamper organizing of the unemployed by the Communist Party and other radicals. CCAFT said that the group was trying to counteract a stated government policy to try to keep the public from becoming informed on the free trade issue. CCAFT organizer Marjaleena Repo quoted a leaked report from Prime Minister Mulroney's office which detailed the government strategy on free trade: "It is likely that the higher the profile the issue attains, the lower the degree of public approval will be. The strategy should rely less on educating the general public than on getting across the message that the trade initiative is a good idea. In other words, a selling job." Countering the city argument that postering is ugly, defense lawyer Robert Kellermann said that "it wouldn't look so ugly if they weren't scraping them off every day. Also, if postering was allowed, people would do it more carefully." |