Andre Schutten describes the challenge in a piece that ran in The Calgary Herald this weekend. Have a read. I hope the group fights this restriction. I think they have the law on their side.
In December, the Barrhead/Neerlandia ARPA group contacted Pattison billboards to see if they could place an ad on the Edmonton Transit System (ETS) buses. The poster is a simple design, non-graphic in nature, honest in its inquiry. There is clear contact information in the form of a website for where the conversation on the questions posed can be continued. Having personally checked the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards, this poster was good to go. (Judge for yourself — the billboard is kindly reproduced here.)
The billboard poses a simple, yet provocative, pair of questions designed to get Edmonton citizens thinking and talking. The poster wants the viewer to consider the reality that Canada has absolutely no laws protecting pre-born human beings (a reality, I might add, unique to any democratic country in the world). The wording of the poster is carefully crafted to elicit discussion about the meaning of the word “choice,” about the acceptability of late-term abortions, and about the reality of gendercide, a phenomenon happening in Canada (as documented by the CBC) where female babies are aborted simply because they are female.
All of this is legal. All of this should be discussed. All of this made a nameless bureaucrat at the ETS too squeamish to allow the posters.
by 
Leave a Reply