It’s tough to know exactly what to say about Taber, the southern Alberta corn capital that has outraged so many morally righteous journalists and law professors in the past week.
Everyone is just so damn mad that town’s elected officials had the temerity – no make that gall – to suggest that anyone wanting to spit, swear, yell, or congregate in groups of three or more, could be asked by the local constabulary to cease and desist or face a crippling fine of between $75 and $250. Oh, the horror! Oh, the jackboots! Has such a threat visited our land since Justin Trudeau’s father imposed the War Measures Act in the early 1970s? You wouldn’t think so.
The egregious (the big legal word for shocking) attack on spitting, yelling and swearing is not exactly uncommon in our freedom-loving country. In fact, as reported in these pages in Saturday’s edition, St. Albert (and many other small communities) have similar laws on the books and local residents can face a whopping fine of $10 if police have to tell them to keep their unpleasant yaps shut. But enough on that.
Where things get dicey or more egregious, according to the numerous experts on Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, is when three or more persons of a type not deemed appropriate by police gather for some unspecified activity, such as to protest the local G20 summit in Taber. If the law-abiding council wanted to avoid the controversy, it could simply have looked up similar abhorrent behaviours in the Canadian Criminal Code, which provides law enforcement with similar tools.
But then, research does not appear to have been central to the theme of any part of this story. Rather, the plot has been driven in 140-character bursts on the Twittersphere, where it is sometimes easy to wonder if commentators have the ability to construct a second sentence. Please give us a law to deal with lame references to Kevin Bacon. LOL.
Even the CBC’s National folks, who reported that the controversy somehow involved a Mexican Mennonite’s restaurant, appears to have resorted to covering the story with the same patronizing, smug glee they usually reserve for reports about Alberta’s struggling economy. Those crazy Albertans are at it again. The connection between Mennonites who fled violence in Mexico to settle in Taber, and the new bylaw has never been made clear and, we suspect, could well be where the real drama may be found. It is strangely suspicious that in a country so deeply fearful of cultural headgear, that the cafe-owner was wearing a kerchief during her TV interview. Enough said, except to note that the national newspapers haven’t exactly done a fine job covering this story themselves.
For a week now, Taber has been the butt of a national joke and the townspeople are hurt and embarrassed. But soon, the entire episode will have passed from the news cycle and media types, from broadcast, to social, to those who can write to those who can’t, will have moved on to other click-bait sensations as they ignore actual egregious threats to our freedoms in the name of the war on terror.
And that’s a shame.
