Council votes on censorship

Monday saw some controversy during a Calgary City Council meeting after a motion came forward regarding censoring letters written that include racist language.

In one case, Ward 7 Cllr. Druh Farrell said, one such letter read, “If I wanted to live in a community of savages, I would move to a third world country.”

Some councillors argued censoring the writing would set a bad precedent.

But Farrell said the City is starting to see more and more of these letters.

“It displays an underbelly of Calgary’s nimby, and we’ve seen it before, and we’re seeing it more and more,” she said. “I certainly am in my office, where people are putting voice to the reasons why they don’t want ‘those people’ in their neighbourhood and it’s very sad.”

In the end, the motion was defeated by council, but they also decided to work on a new policy.

“I think that council did the right thing today by forwarding that,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi said. “We should think about what we publish in the corporate record and in our public ageda, that said, people should think about what they write and if those are your points of view, I’m sorry but those are not points of view that are particularly interesting or helpful for your city government.”

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