CLC Blog

Last week, Calgary City Council announced plans to impose new anti-free speech bubble zones in numerous locations across the city, restricting the rights and freedoms of its 1.3 million citizens. Large, city block-sized “buffer zones” will be established around every single school in Calgary. This comes after a group of peaceful pro-life activists stood outside a Calgary high school last year in order to raise awareness of the atrocity of abortion. It seems that woke councillors will tolerate none of that and have decided to bring “cancel culture” to their city.

The proposed censorship bylaw will engulf all public sidewalks, roads, and parks within 150 metres of the grounds of every school. Inside these enormous speech-limited areas, pro-life signs will be banned if larger than 3.5 by 5 inches (i.e. the size of a postcard). If you dare to display anything larger, you will face a $1,000 fine.

It is worthy of note that, under the Alberta Education Act, which this bylaw references, the term “school” includes public schools, private schools, religious schools, and home schools (Education Act, section 1(1)(x)). This would place a significant portion of the entire city within a bubble zone!

This draconian proposal from overbearing Calgary councillors not only bans pro-life messaging, but all “advocacy messaging” of any type – any written or graphic communication that “publicly expresses an opinion on an issue or cause.” That is an unbelievably far-reaching, totalitarian diktat! This will impact every citizen’s ability to share his or her opinion on any issue using any type of normal-sized literature. It is the mass silencing of the citizenry by bureaucrats who believe they possess unfettered authority.

We saw how Calgary City Council exercised that presumed authority earlier this year when they passed an unjustified ban on counselling that helps homosexuals and transgenders embrace God’s design for their sexuality and physiology.

Under the new “bubble zone” bylaw, while pro-life messages are banned, commercial advertising will be permitted. This means that pot shops, beer and liquor brands, and sex-toy stores can continue to promote their wares around schools unimpeded. The bylaw also does not apply to any biased government messaging from the municipality, province, or federal government. What this means, at the end of the day, is that some people have more freedom of speech than others.

Just two years ago, the former NDP provincial government of Rachel Notley imposed an Alberta-wide bubble zone law (Bill 9) that also targeted pro-lifers. Under that ban (which UCP Premier Jason Kenney has yet to repeal) all pro-life speech, advocacy, and even counselling is strictly verboten in the public spaces around Alberta’s various abortion killing centres. Apparently, that tyrannical and unconstitutional law was just the beginning for pro-abort politicians. The City of Calgary has now taken the logical next step forward.

This draconian bylaw must be stopped! As pro-lifers get forced out of more and more places in the public square, not only are we losing our rights, but the unborn are being put at even greater risk. As the voice of the voiceless is further silenced, any hope for the unborn is further diminished.

We can't let that happen in Calgary!

At a time when many violent and destructive protest groups are given a pass – groups like Antifa and various anti-oil activists, it is perplexing that peaceful pro-life protesters should be centred out for punishment. Why is arson, destruction of property, and criminal behaviour OK if it is perpetrated by certain leftist thugs, but it is not OK for peaceful pro-lifers to simply show the truth of “legal abortion” in Canada? It’s a double standard that has no place in a law-abiding, democratic society!

According to our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, “Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: ... freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression ... freedom of peaceful assembly... ”

According to a recent United Nations press release, the UN Human Rights Committee declares that it is a “‘fundamental human right’ for people to gather to celebrate or to air grievances, ‘in public and in private spaces, outdoors, indoors and online.’ ... Governments could not prohibit protests by making ‘generalised references to public order or public safety, or an unspecified risk of potential violence.’”

If you are a resident of Calgary, please take a moment to send an Action Alert Email to your local City councillor to speak out against this new totalitarian “bubble zone” bylaw. Council needs to know that they are overstepping their authority – that they have no right to silence Calgarians!

It will only take a minute of your time. Simply go to our Action Alert Email page, fill out your name and address, and send one of our pre-scripted messages. Or you can choose to write your own message to tell your city councillor that his or her job is on the line if this bylaw gets passed!

Thank you for being a voice with us for the voiceless! We must not allow our politicians to try to cover up or conceal the abortion holocaust that is taking place under their watch.

God Bless.

Yours for Life,

David Cooke
National Campaigns Manager
Campaign Life Coalition

P.S. Calgary residents can send an Action Alert Email here: https://www.votervoice.net/CALIFE/campaigns/77233/respond