The CBC reports: Anti-Olympic signs could mean jail: rights group (Oct 9):
A proposed B.C. law would allow municipal officials to enter homes to seize unauthorized and possibly anti-Olympic signs on short notice, civil libertarians say.
Violators could be fined up to $10,000 a day and jailed up to six months, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Friday.
The BC Civil Liberties Association has launched a court challenge:
Earlier this week, the association helped two anti-Olympics activists launch a legal challenge of Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics bylaw in B.C. Supreme Court, claiming it was an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.
[…]
The association is suspicious of the timing of the provincial bill’s introduction so close to the Olympic games, which have been planned for years.
“We’ve seen them timing things so that they don’t put in place laws that are special to the Olympics until the last minute,” Holmes said. “And part of that leads to the suspicion that they’ve done it in a calculated and deliberate way, to remove the ability of the courts, and people who might want to take it to court, to have their rights protected.”
The BCCLA has their statement of claim up on their website:
“Going to Court on a clear-cut free expression issue is a waste of time and money,” said Westergard-Thorpe. “We’ve all got better things to do, but if the City insists on passing bad bylaws, people who value free speech have no choice but to stand up and challenge them.”
