Legal organization gets involved in licence plate fight
A Manitoba man is seeking out the legal aid of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) after the provincial insurance company revoked his licence plate. The Alberta-based legal organization picked up the case of Nicholas Troller after Manitoba Public Insurance refused to reinstate his licence plate, which reads “ASIMIL8”.
“It’s definitely an overreaction when you consider the border of the licence said ‘We are the Borg’ and ‘Resistance is futile,'” says John Carpay, president of the JCCF, to Yahoo News Canada. Troller and Carpay both have said the plate is a reference to the Borg, a fictional alien race in the Star Trek world that assimilates other races into its own through a process called assimilation.
“Manitoba Public Insurance had, for the prior two years, not considered it the plate to be offensive,” says Carpay. “They had granted the application to have the plate, they had renewed the plate and then suddenly Mr. Troller got a letter saying the plate was getting pulled because it was offensive.”
The right for governing bodies to ban offensive words is not being contested in the upcoming legal battle, but rather how that right should be exercised. Obscenities and swear words are banned from appearing on licence plates already, but Troller’s case presents a different set of concerns. While some might be offended by a licence plate that says “ASIMIL8”, it isn’t a universally offensive word.
“The biggest threat to freedom of expression in Canada today is this notion that some people have that they have a right to go through life without seeing and without hearing things that they find offensive,” says Carpay.
Troller’s story is reminiscent of Lorne Grabher’s licence plate troubles, which saw Nova Scotia’s Registry of Motor Vehicles revoke his personalized licence plate on the basis that it was a “socially unacceptable slogan”.
The JCCF is currently filing its court papers, a process that should be complete by the end of July. From there, hearings would take place at the Queen’s Bench of Manitoba, the province’s superior court. The legal group plans on invoking Troller’s Charter rights to freedom of expression to challenge the licence plate confiscation.
There is no set court date yet.
