A 27-Year License for Canadian Political Correctness

A Canadian man is locked in a legal battle to regain his personalized Nova Scotia license plate after it was jacked by the Canadian government in 2016. He's been trying to get it back through appeals ever since.

His name is Lorne Grabher.

Grabher first got the GRABHER plate for his father 27 years ago as a celebration of his family name.

He had been using the "GRABHER" plate for decades until someone complained that it promotes sexual violence against women.

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Lawyers for the Calgary-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms are filing appeal documents that say a judge was wrong to rule that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not protect freedom of expression on a license plate.

The province's Registrar of Motor Vehicles revoked the plate in December 2016 following a single public complaint on the grounds it could be interpreted as a call to grab a woman without her consent.

On Jan. 31, 2020, Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Darlene Jamieson ruled that revoking the plate did NOT violate Grabher's free expression or equality rights.

The lawyers cite eight other possible grounds for appeal, including the vagueness and arbitrariness of the registrar's decision power, and challenging the judge's determination that the plate promotes sexualized violence against women and is potentially harmful to the community.

The appeal also claims the judge was wrong for not finding that suppressing Grabher's Austrian surname was an unjustified violation of his charter right to equality.

The appeal documents ask the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal to review and reverse Jamieson's decision.

It asks for the court to strike the regulation allowing the Registrar of Motor Vehicles to revoke a plate if it contains offensive or bad taste message "in the opinion of the Registrar."

It also asks the court to order the GRABHER plate to be reissued, and for Grabher to be awarded costs for both the original court challenge and the proposed appeal.

And in a completely unrelated but coincidental note, the new license plates in Ontario, Canada are controversial on a number of fronts, but basically the biggest hurdle is that the plates are unreadable from distance at night, posing potential serious problems for the police.

Ya think?

Good day.

Categories: Automotive, Travel, Weird News