In May 2023, a prolife group wanted to display images of aborted fetuses on signs during their press conference at the National March for Life on Parliament Hill. Before the press conference, a member of the Provincial Police Service (PPS) asked to review the signs. He prevented the group from showing the signs on Parliament Hill because he considered them too graphic.
This decision was later reaffirmed to the prolife group in an email referring to the “General Rules on the Use of Parliament Hill.” At the time, the policy prohibited signs “that are obscene, offensive, or that promote hatred,” but the policy was later expanded to prohibit any “signs or banners that display explicit graphic violence or blood.”
On June 30, 2023, the Justice Centre helped the prolife group filed a Notice of Application in the Federal Court, challenging the violation of their freedom of expression in the nation’s capital. The Notice of Application challenges both versions of the “General Rules for the Use of Parliament Hill” and the censorship of the PPS officer. The applicants are asking the Federal Court to declare that the policies and actions of the PPS have violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“There is a certain irony to the fact that our government is currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars, domestically and abroad, promoting and facilitating a procedure it feels must be censored from the public eye,” says Josie Luetke, a spokesperson with the prolife group. “We don’t like seeing images of abortion either, and we hope Canadians do a lot of soul-searching as to why presenting its victims brings them such discomfort.”
Hatim Kheir, counsel to the applicants, stated, “Parliament Hill is historically a public square where people of various viewpoints come to convey a message to the government and other Canadians. Subjecting political expression on Parliament Hill to literal police censorship based on subjective criteria strikes at the core of Canadians’ democratic right to freedom of expression.”
We are awaiting a decision from the Federal Court.