04-07-2025
Edmonton to consider mandating envelopes, warnings for graphic flyers
Edmonton's city council will consider adding restrictions aimed at preventing people from unwittingly seeing flyers with graphic imagery.
Ward Dene Coun. Aaron Paquette introduced a motion during Wednesday's city council meeting that administration prepare changes to the community standards bylaw to require all unsolicited print material containing graphic images to be contained in a sealed opaque envelope with a content warning and senders' names and addresses.
Paquette said he regularly receives complaints from residents coming across flyers in their mailboxes with pictures of aborted fetuses.
He said such images have traumatized his constituents for a variety of reasons.
"It's often children who bring in the mail and they're confronted with imagery that they are not emotionally or developmentally prepared to process in a healthy way," he told CBC News on Thursday.
Paquette's motion, which passed unanimously, proposed a minimum fine of $500 for violating the rules.
The motion did not mention abortion and the city councillor said he thinks the rules should also extend to other types of graphic imagery.
Ward Anirniq Coun. Erin Rutherford said at the meeting that her office has also received complaints about this topic.
Ward Sspomitapi Coun. Jo-Anne Wright said she hasn't been hearing the same complaints but she's willing to explore restrictions to address concerns.
"I think I'm going to take the guidance from our legal department as to what they define as being graphic," she said in an interview Thursday.
Edmonton follows other cities
Calgary's city council approved a change to its community standards bylaw in 2023. The regulations apply to graphic images of fetuses and violations carry fines of $1,000.
The City of Edmonton's legal team told councillors Edmonton's bylaw requirements could be modelled after Calgary's.
Cities in other provinces have also passed similar bylaws, but several have faced legal challenges.
The City of St. Catharines, in Ontario, repealed its graphic images bylaw last year after the Association of Reformed Political Action, a Christian political advocacy organization, launched a legal challenge against it.
The ARPA filed a notice of application last month challenging the constitutionality of a similar bylaw in London, Ont.
Who's distributing flyers?
Blaise Alleyne, the eastern strategic initiatives director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, said the organization distributes abortion-related images across the country.
He said volunteers with a partner organization, Edmonton Against Abortion, deliver postcards in Edmonton year-round and an internship team from Calgary visited the city for a week of outreach in June. Both groups use the same flyers, he said.
CBC News has not confirmed which flyers have prompted complaints to city councillors' offices.
Alleyne said there are a few versions of the group's most up-to-date flyer and the organization rotates photos every few years, with slight variations since 2017.
Alleyne said the CCBR believes bylaws like Calgary's won't survive constitutional court challenges.
"City councillors would be better off to recognize that victim photography is a part of discourse in a democracy, even on contentious issues," he said.
Gerard Kennedy, an assistant professor of law at the University of Alberta, said there can be limits to expression but the duty is on the government to prove that any are reasonable and proportionate.
"Freedom of expression is supposed to be content-neutral with very rare expression limits, which means that you by all means regulate the time, place and manner in which expression is done, and by all means protect vulnerable persons, but you shouldn't be stopping a message being sent out simply because you disagree with the message," he said.
Richard Dur, executive director with Prolife Alberta, said Albertans won't reject abortion until they see the reality of it.
"When something is so horrifying we can't bear to look at it, perhaps we shouldn't be accepting it," he told CBC News in an emailed statement.
Dur said Prolife Alberta launched a province-wide advertising campaign, in part "to bypass unjust municipal censorship."
The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada says on its website that graphic images of aborted fetuses are harmful and encourages people to complain to municipalities and ask for regulations.
Alleyne said he has not heard of any cases of people being fined under graphic images bylaws.
He said the CCBR complies with municipal bylaws, usually by not delivering in communities with them since doing so is much more expensive and time-consuming.
"We've not faced fines, but it's impacted our ability to share our message with the public," he said.
Councillors on Edmonton's community and public services committee are set to discuss possible bylaw amendments early next year.
