National Post (National Edition)
Pro-oil T-shirt banned from Hill − again
Matter to be re-raised in Senate
A Calgary couple were prohibited from participating in a tour of the House of Commons because of their “I love Canadian oil and gas” shirts — the second time in as many weeks that the clothing has been the subject of a ban at Parliament.
On Monday night, Conservative Senator David Tkachuk said he believed guards were being told to ban visitors wearing pro-oil clothing. He vowed to raise the issue at a Senate committee.
Chris Wollin, who was visiting Ottawa with his partner, Mallory Hartviksen, last Saturday, said a security guard at the main entrance to the House of Commons said his shirt was too political to be worn in Parliament.
“We were in Ottawa for a wedding over the weekend and we wanted to do a tour of Parliament,” said Wollin. “We booked a tour for later that day and as we were leaving, a security guard came over to us and said ‘Just so you know if you come back for a tour, you can’t have those shirts on because they are too political.’”
Wollin said he was “taken aback” by what the guard said. “It’s kind of sad that on Parliament Hill, they are not supportive of your freedom of speech,” he told National Post over the phone from Calgary.
Wollin, who works at Simark Control Ltd., a Calgary-based sales company that services the oil and gas sector said that he wore the Canada Action shirt in Ottawa because he wanted to “proudly support” Canada’s oil industry.
“We walked around the city with our shirts and didn’t get negative feedback from anybody except the Parliament incident. What’s political about showing support for our energy sector?”
Two weeks ago, over the Labour Day long weekend, William Lacey, chief financial officer of Steelhead Petroleum, was attempting to tour the Senate while wearing the same Canada Action-branded shirt when he was stopped by a security guard.
“The guard looked at me and he said, ‘Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to remove your shirt because some people may be offended by the message,’” Lacey told National Post. He was asked to either leave or turn his shirt inside out in order to participate in the tour.
The Parliament of Canada’s website states that participating in “any form of demonstration” inside any of the buildings is prohibited, and that includes “wearing items or clothing with visible political messages.” It is unclear, however, what exactly constitutes a political message, and whether a shirt displaying pro-oil messaging falls into that category.
The Post’s attempts at clarifying if Wollin and Hartviksen’s clothing violated visitor rules was met with a generic response from the Parliamentary Protective Service, whose personnel manage the security of Parliament and its vicinity.
“Unfortunately for security reasons we do not comment on the specifics of any incident. We have initiated a review of practices and provided guidelines to our operational staff. Our internal communications and training continue. Our goal is to avoid such incidents from reoccurring,” said chief of staff of the Service, Guillaume Vandal, in a statement.
In the first incident involving Lacey, the issue was raised at a meeting of the Senate’s internal economy committee, which deals with Senate administrative matters. Later, the Parliamentary Protective Service ended up issuing an apology, saying that guards “misinterpreted a message” on Lacey’s shirt.
Vandal did not respond specifically to a question on whether, just two weeks later, a security guard had again made a mistake in interpreting Wollin and Hartviksen’s “I love Canadian oil and gas” shirts as a form of political messaging.
“Unfortunately, as it has been said before, for security reasons we do not comment on the specifics of any incident,” Vandal said in a follow-up email.
Tkachuk, who sits on the Senate’s internal economy committee, called the incident “very odd”, adding that he now believes the guards at Parliament are “getting instructions from superiors” to bar visitors who are wearing pro-oil clothing. “I can excuse one person making a mistake. But now I think someone is telling (the guards) to do that,” he said.
Tkachuk said he intends to raise the latest incident at the committee. “I don’t care what they have on their T-shirts as long as they don’t have swear words,” he said.
“My direct feeling is this is part of the progressive agenda, and I think it is all nuts.”