A future amendment to the City’s Community Standards Bylaw could allow for the prohibition of graphic images from flyers and posters within the municipality, following a council decision Dec. 2.
“Back in August, council had asked staff to report back on how the distribution of graphic flyers and the display of graphic posters in public spaces could be managed,” said City Clerk Sharon Pollyck. “At that point in time, there were individuals going through the city delivering graphic flyers to homes.”
While Pollyck said “little can be done” to regulate this, a proposed bylaw amendment was presented to council Nov. 18 with provisions that would give residents the ability to more generally limit materials delivered to their own property with a sign indicating flyers are not wanted – and any distributor in contravention of the bylaw would be forced to pay a fine of $50 per household.
Although several councillors raised concerns regarding the wording of the bylaw and potential enforcement issues, first reading was carried to allow for the scheduling of a public input session to let council hear from impacted residents.
“We did do a push on local social media, and…the public sentiment was in favour of changing the Community Standards Bylaw to limit the distribution of flyers,” Pollyck said. “There were very few who were opposed or responded neutrally.”
Coun. Al Jones, who recused himself from the discussion and vote on the item, spoke in opposition during the public session. According to Jones, who operates a distribution business within the city, the only “legal way” to address the issue is for the City to require that all distributions are done through a licensed distributor within the municipality.
“We are held accountable for what we, ourselves, let through our organization. We’re not looking at the money, we’re looking at the repercussions of what we’re doing in our own community and what that means to our organization in the future,” he said.
“This is something from outside of our community that’s causing us angst from within. And I would suggest the only way to deal with that is to hold them accountable by the same business licenses the rest of us are.”
Coun. Tina Petrow questioned how feasible that process would be for a non-profit or smaller business unable to afford distribution costs, but added she also worried the proposed bylaw would “cause more issues,” based on the wording.
Deputy Mayor Candice Kolson said she felt a more appropriate solution would be to simply specify what type of content (blood, gore, nudity, etc.) would be disallowed from any distributed or publicly-viewable materials.
“I just don’t understand how we have those other laws to protect children from seeing graphic content, and we don’t have these ones,” she said. “If the province can say kids can’t see graphic images that are on cigarette packages, why can’t we, at a local level, say we are not OK with graphic images being distributed door-to-door in our community, where children can view them, and here is the definition of what we consider a graphic image to be? It doesn’t prevent them from distributing their literature, it just prevents them from putting these images out there for children to see.”
She presented a motion to that effect, requesting administration further amend the bylaw with a simple definition as to what content would be prohibited from materials that could be seen by anyone under the age of 16. By a unanimous vote, the item was tabled until a new draft has been prepared.
“If we have to, like Mr. Jones said, take up that challenge in court, that’s what we do,” Kolson said. “Let’s take a stand.”
