Alberta city wants to ban public spitting

Proposed bylaw suggests fine of $300

EDMONTON, ALTA. •Lethbridge could become the latest Canadian city to ban spitting.

A new bylaw before the city's council proposes a ban on a number of “anti-social behaviours,” suggesting a $300 fine for spitting.

Council is also poised to try to put a stop to public urination and defecation, panhandling, littering and fighting in public.

The spitting ban would penalize spitting “on another person or the external surface of any building, structure or other personal property in a public place,” the bylaw says.

“The intent of the proposed bylaw is not to persecute individuals but instead to clearly define expected behaviour and educate the public as to community standards,” reads a report on the proposed bylaw, which passed first reading at city council on Tuesday.

Jenn Schmidt-Rempel, Lethbridge's deputy mayor, said the decision to introduce the bylaw emerged from discussions around reforming a prior bylaw regulating the use of streets, which bans fighting on a “public sidewalk, boulevard or highway,” the placement of “indecent placards” and the use of “loud blasphemous, abusive or grossly insulting language.”

“It had nothing to do with COVID or anything like that,” Schmidt-Rempel said. “It was just bringing the bylaws more in line with what we needed them to be.”

While public urination and defecation are not permitted in parks, a search of Lethbridge's bylaws did not turn up evidence of a prior ban on spitting.

A survey found that 81.3 per cent of respondents — 13 people — favoured the new bylaw. In addition to spitting, fighting, littering and panhandling, it also bans carrying a loaded weapon — though “weapon” is defined as anything that is capable of “launching or firing a projectile” — shooting off fireworks without a permit, “throwing or propelling an object” in a way that may hurt someone or damage property, obstructing a building's entrance or harassing someone in the streets.

Julie Blais Comeau, chief etiquette officer at ettiquettejulie.com, said spitting can be one of those things where the acceptability changes over time, and so if a place decides against spitting in public, the “etiquette of being a good citizen” means not spitting.

“I've always thought that should be a solitary activity,” she said. For some people spitting is “almost like a fulltime job.”

“Doing it in the presence of others, well, it's simply quite vulgar and disgusting,” she said.

If Lethbridge adopts the ban on spitting, it wouldn't be the first place in Canada to do so.

The town of Taber, about 50 kilometres east of Lethbridge, made international headlines in 2015 when it banned spitting, swearing and yelling in public.

Larger cities, too, have bans on spitting. Toronto passed a bylaw against spitting in public and on streetcars in 1904, though it appears to have been repealed.

“A person must not expectorate, urinate, or defecate on or in any street or other public place, except in a location in a public building or facility provided specifically for such purpose,” says Vancouver's health bylaw (which rather implies one might find a spittoon for the purpose).

Saskatoon has also prohibited spitting, since 2004. At the law's five-year anniversary, the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix found statistics that said 23 spitting tickets were prosecuted in 2008-9. (Seventy-three urinating in public tickets went to prosecution.)

Not only is it illegal to spit in Calgary in a public place, it's also illegal to spit on private property, under an expansive definition that prohibits a person from “eject(ing) phlegm, saliva, chewing tobacco juice or any other substance from the mouth.”

(The same bylaw, passed in 2006, bans standing or placing one's feet on tables, benches, planters, or sculptures ... in a public place.)

(FOR SOME PEOPLE) SPITTING IS

ALMOST LIKE A FULL-TIME JOB.