‘Vulgar’ ads cited in bid to regain licence plate

HALIFAX • A Nova Scotia retiree who is fighting to regain a personalized licence plate after it was deemed unacceptable says governments allow many potentially offensive phrases and names.

The provincial government withdrew Lorne Grabher’s licence plate — it reads simply “Grabher” — after officials agreed with a complainant that it was a “socially unacceptable slogan.”

In an affidavit filed this month in support of his constitutional challenge of the decision, Grabher cited Halifax Water transit ads headlined “Powerful sh*t,” and “Be proud of your Dingle,” the last a reference to a waterfront tower.

“In my view, it is glaringly arbitrary and hypocritical for government to engage in such vulgar expression, when I am prohibited from displaying my surname on a licence plate,” he says in the affidavit, filed in Nova Scotia Supreme Court.

He cited “governmentregulated” place names including Dildo, N.L., Crotch Lake and Swastika in Ontario, and Old Squaw Islands in Nunavut.

Grabher’s battle is supported by the Alberta-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which argues that the wording of regulations for personal licences are so vague they violate freedom of expression guarantees in the Charter of Rights.

Grabher notes his family had used the plate for 27 years in Nova Scotia before the province withdrew it on Jan. 12, 2017, and a family member continues to use a similar plate in Alberta.

He says he has not intended to offend anyone, and is “profoundly insulted and humiliated” that his name had been deemed offensive.

“I am dismayed that some anonymous, misinformed, overly sensitive individual, hiding behind their anonymity, can dictate to an entire province that my good name is suddenly an ‘offensive slogan,’ when it has never before been any such thing, nor is it today,” he says in the affidavit.

A spokesman has said while the Department of Transportation understands Grabher is a surname with German roots, this context isn’t available to the general public who view the plate.

The personalized plate program, introduced in 1989, allows the province to refuse plates deemed offensive, socially unacceptable or in bad taste.

Grabher’s case will be heard next September.