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Date sent: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 10:20:36 -0500 From: Grant Orchard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Poster supporter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Attention! We need your help in this fight! Please forward. Dear Freedom of Expression supporter, The following is a request for your help in the fight for our right to poster in Toronto (see more information below). The City of Toronto’s proposed postering (ban) bylaw is going before City Council on April 16 - 18. Between now and then our messages of opposition to this bylaw must be heard by our City Councillors! Phone, write and fax the Mayor and City Councillors to express your outrage and opposition at this attempt by the City to thwart our freedom of expression under the Charter and our legal right to poster! The agenda for the Council meetings will go to the Councillors on April 11. To be most effective in getting our messages to the Council, the City Clerk's office advises that our written submissions should reach the Clerk's office by April 10. Letters sent by April 10 will be copied and included in each Councillor's agenda package (which they all read). Continue to send your letters after April 10, as submissions that are sent to the Clerk's office will be distributed to the Mayor and Council right up to the day of the Council meeting. The Clerk's office also advises that letters mailed, delivered and faxed are more effective than emails in reaching the Councillors. Please call, write and fax your letters immediately to the councillors to express your opposition to this bylaw! Direct your your written correspondence to the Mayor and City Council, and mail to: Marilyn Toft, Office of the Clerk Second Floor West 100 Queen St. W. Toronto, ON, M5H 2N2 Fax your submissions to: (416) 392-2980 (The Clerk’s office will distribute them to Council) The office of the City Clerk tel: (416) 392-8021, 8016 You can fax to the Mayor and Councillors individually if you wish. Their numbers are in the Blue pages of the Toronto phone book. In addition to the above, don’t hesitate to email your concerns (with a note requesting that your message be distributed to the councillors) to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Note: If you sent in or presented a deputation to the Planning and Transportation Committee on March 25, your deputation was not distributed to the Councillors outside of the committee. Send it to the Clerk's office (above) with the request that it be distributed to all of City Council. Help us build the opposition to this assault on our democratic rights by postering, calling open-line shows, writing letters to the papers, telling your friends, family, co-workers, others about this proposed bylaw and the upcoming City Council meeting. Plan to attend and bring as many people as you can to the City Council meetings on April 16 - 18 where this bylaw will be debated. Let us pack the City chambers to give them our message! Even after the Council meetings of April 16 -18 we must be prepared to carry on the fight against this poster ban. Add your own suggestions to this list and let us know about how you are opposing this bylaw! For more information contact: Grant Orchard, Citizens Concerned About Free Trade, tel: (416) 922-STOP(7867) fax: (416) 778-6348 For information on the postering bylaw go to: http://www.publicspace.ca ------ April 4, 2002 City of Toronto attempts to thwart freedom of expression ? again! Quietly and without open public discussion, the City of Toronto, as part of it’s amalgamation plans is now turning against its citizens’ democratic rights. It is planning to pass an anti-postering bylaw which would make it impossible for individuals and organizations lacking megafunds to get their message across to their fellow citizens. It is cleanliness “uber alles” again! (City Council, April 16 - 18, 2002, Council chambers). The proposed bylaw would allow for approximately 2000 postering collars for the whole of amalgamated Toronto with posters restricted to 22 by 28 centimetres (8.5 x 11 inches) in size and similar posters to be no closer than 100 metres of each other. Woe to anyone who posters outside these highly restrictive conditions (on the plentyful and available lamp poles and light standards): they will be whacked with a huge fine, $60 per “illegal” poster! Citizens Concerned About Free Trade (CCAFT) has successfully fought for the freedom to poster since the 1988 free trade election, when its members were arrested in all the major cities across the country, and thousands of its urgent posters were confiscated (along with its paste, brushes and other working tools!) In Toronto, it won its case in 1990, when Judge Charlton agreed that Toronto’s bylaws were unconstitutional, and overturned them. The city appealed this verdict, but eventually lost again in the 1994 ruling of Justice Abella of Ontario’s Court of Appeal who described the city’s ban on postering as “profoundly impair[ing] freedom of expression.” Between these two decisions the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Ramsden vs City of Peterborough case that the citizens have the right to put posters on telephone poles, and cities cannot impose restrictions that amount to a ban - which is happening in the latest attempt by the City of Toronto to curtail its citizens’ freedom of speech, using a variety of excuses, all previously rejected in the postering trials. There must be a full public discussion on the postering issue, including how to encourage self-regulation among the posterers and how to make the existing spaces available to all who need to use them. We must at last view the postering facilities (poles) as public utilities, to be maintained the way we maintain, for instance, streets and sidewalks: just because there is wear-and-tear on the latter, we do not prohibit their use! Let the people communicate; let a hundred posters bloom! Let the city councillors concentrate on real problems, not imaginary ones! For more information, contact: Marjaleena Repo, National organizer, CCAFT, tel: (306) 664-8443 fax: (306) 244-3790 Grant Orchard, Toronto co-ordinator, tel: (416) 922-7867 fax: (416) 778-6348 See Dave Matthews Band live or win a signed guitar http://r.lycos.com/r/bmgfly_mail_dmb/http://win.ipromotions.com/lycos_020201/splash.asp --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
