Taber isn’t Pyongyang East yet

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As a person who lived not long ago in South Korea, a wake up Skype recently from someone thousands of kilometres away asking if the North Koreans had reached my place was disorienting. When living within artillery range of the demilitarized zone, one doesn’t like being rousted out of bed hearing the People’s Army is on the move. Yet this is what happened after our Community Standards Bylaw got international notoriety.

The Community Standards Bylaw is not an unconstitutional grab at my civil rights and the Taber Police Service is not the Korean People’s Army. I am not quite sure when I got the right to spit at people or their property but it is now taken away according to eminent experts.

It is important for our bylaws to be constitutional. Single use bylaws which are blown out of court the first time a ticket is written are in nobody’s interest. The Taber Times is congratulated for advising readers to research this issue and arrive at our own conclusions.

Risking a gathering of three in town last Friday, I met at a local coffee house with a TPS member. The barista was listening so closely she must be considered part of the meeting. Even though an f-bomb was dropped and my critical questioning might be considered incitement of tumultuary behaviour (the criminal code version letting police break up a grouping of three or more people), no bylaw tickets were issued nor was a truncheon raised.

There are strong arguments that the Community Standards Bylaw is constitutional. But for sure a Charter challenge is available to anyone who believes it is not.

So until Taber Police Service members start moving around town with Kim Jong-un style haircuts and eyebrow pluckings, I’m not worrying too much about the unconstitutionality arguments about the bylaw. If they do change their coif, expect bylaw trouble. Females in North Korea launch into paroxysms of tumultuary behaviour at the sight of Kim Jong-un fashion sense.

BRUCE WEBSTER

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