CALGARY, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) – Calgary City Council is looking to pass new legislation that would place a 100-meter buffer zone around city recreation centres and libraries that would ban concerned parents and pastors from protesting against drag queen story time or other LGBTQ events at those facilities.
Calgary City Council began debating a new “Safe and Inclusive Access Bylaw” that would disallow “specified protests” both inside and outside all city-owned and affiliated public buildings.
According to the wording of the bylaw, a “specified protest” is defined as follows:
As a “means an expression of objection or disapproval towards an idea or action related to race, religious beliefs, colour, gender, gender identity, gender expression, physical disability, mental disability, age, ancestry, place of origin, marital status, source of income, family status or sexual orientation by any means, including graphic, verbal, or written means, but does not include messaging at an event scheduled by a library or recreation facility.”
Those who are found guilty of breaking the new rules, should they become law, could be hit with fines of up to $10,000 or one-year jail time.
The sudden introduction of the new “buffer” zone bylaw comes after Christian pastor Derek Reimer was jailed and charged for protesting a children’s drag queen story time at a public library over a week ago.
He was released from a Calgary jail last week after he decided to sign bail papers to take care of an urgent medical condition.
Also, in recent weeks concerned parents have been protesting outside a public swimming pool in Calgary after an incident that saw a 15-year-old girl horrified after witnessing a naked man, who now lives as a “transgender woman,” in the women’s change room at the pool.
Family lawyer Don Wilson said Calgary’s new “buffer” zone bylaw could be considered a stretch for city authority.
“Mayor Gondek’s bylaw is probably outside of the jurisdiction of the city and, in any event, an unreasonable infringement on freedom of expression,” Wilson tweeted.
Calgary’s left-leaning mayor, Jyoti Gondek, since being elected in 2021 has pushed forth a radical agenda that has gone after pro-life and pro-family citizens.
In June 2022, Calgary City Council under Gondek amended the city’s bylaws to “specifically prohibit insulting or demeaning behavior, including unwanted sexual advances, or harassing anyone on the basis of age, race, sexual orientation, disability, gender, gender identity or gender expression, among others.”
Gondek had vowed to use the city’s street harassment bylaw to go after drag queen story time protesters about a month ago after some of the events were postponed by objectors.
Last year, Calgary City Council passed a motion directing its managers to draft a bylaw that would severely limit the distribution of pro-life flyers to people’s homes in what is being described by a leading pro-life group as a direct attack on “pro-life speech.”
While new Conservative Premier Danielle Smith seems to be pro-freedom and against people being coerced into taking COVID shots, she did say last year to LifeSiteNews it’s “polite” to use biologically incorrect pronouns when asked to do so.
Also, she said she would not re-examine the province’s “bubble zone” law that bans pro-life protesters from gathering near abortion clinics.
Alberta’s “bubble zone” law, passed in 2018 under then-Premier Rachel Notley of the far-left, pro-abortion New Democratic Party (NDP), made it illegal for pro-lifers and counselors to come within 50 meters of an abortion facility for any activism-related purposes.
Under the harsh law, first-time violators face a $5,000 fine and up to six months in prison.