Paul Tuns:
On March 5, the Ontario Superior Court heard arguments in the case of Campaign Life Coalition and Maeve Roche v. Parliamentary Protective Services (PPS) over the latter’s 2023 prohibition against CLC using signs with abortion victim photography during a press conference on Parliament Hill.
In May 2023, CLC had a scheduled press conference the day prior to the National March for Life when a PPS officer barred the organization from using signs that included images of aborted babies, deeming the pictures too graphic. The PPS claimed that signage that depicts “obscene messages or messages that promote hatred” and “signs or banners that display explicit graphic violence or blood” are banned from Parliament Hill protests.
In the PPS factum, the Service suggested “the applicants’ misleading and discriminatory speech cannot be protected in the same way as speech that furthers the goals of (section 2b of the Charter),” and “the rules place a justified limit on this type of speech to ensure that Parliament Hill remains a welcoming place that all can safely gather.”
CLC’s legal representative, Hatim Kheir of Charter Advocates Canada, argued against the PPS’s claim that the signs violated obscenity or hate crime laws. “The Supreme Court gave very narrow definitions for what hatred means and the promotion of hatred — it is a high bar” as “the most extreme form of emotions that leads to the vilification of a group of people.” He said the rationale provided the PPS fails to recognize the Court’s “important limits” on obscenity and hate crime law.
In their factum for CLC, Kheir and Christopher Fleury, said CLC and its employee, Roche, “take no issue with the prohibition of signs that are obscene or promote hatred, so long as ‘obscenity’ and ‘promotion of hated’ are understood to have the same definition as the criminal offences of the same name.” Kheir and Fleury argue that, “abortion photography would not be captured by either definition” and thus banning CLC’s use of such images “unjustifiably infringed their right to freedom of expression.”
Furthermore, Kheir said, “Our argument is that this prohibition is so broad, and it relates to the most important kind of speech, political expression, at the place where that should be the most protected, Parliament Hill, where Canadians can gather to make their opinions, their displeasure with the government known.”
Matthew Wojciechowski, CLC vice president, said, “Using graphic images to expose injustice has long been a catalyst for social change.” He said, “Though difficult to look at, images of abortion expose a truth that words cannot” and “censoring them on Parliament Hill — the heart of our democracy — reveals a deep hypocrisy and an alarming erosion of freedom of expression.”
As several sub-issues have arisen, no timeline has been provided for an expected decision.
Kheir said, “We hope that the court will agree that the Rules for the Use of Parliament Hill unjustifiably limit the freedom of expression of demonstrators.” He also said, “If there is any place in our country that should be maximally available for people to proclaim a political message, it is Parliament Hill.”
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms said in a press release:”The case raises questions of national importance, as the rule at issue effectively prohibits all images that PPS regards as objectionable.” It added that “This restriction affects expression in service of many causes, from anti-war protests to health campaigns to animal rights advocacy.”
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