Pro-life ads on buses
Anti-abortion group’s ads will rotate at random on transit routes for three months
Pro-life ads were posted to the backs of two Peterborough Transit buses on Tuesday – and they happened to be on buses to Trent University.
Although the ads will remain for the next three months, the buses carrying them are expected to rotate at random through the city’s various routes.
Still, the fact that they were on Trent buses on the first day was jarring for one citizen.
Crystal Mosey founded Love Team Peterborough, a group that gathers outside the hospital with pro-choice pickets on Saturday mornings – right alongside a pro-life group that’s been picketing the hospital on Saturdays for years.
Mosey found it appalling that the ads were on Trent buses on the very first day. Women who may need abortions – or have already had an abortion – will be riding those buses, after all.
She saw the ads on the back of Trent buses herself, early Tuesday morning.
“It blew my mind,” she said. “Like wow – this is going to be the first bus you put the ad on?”
The city is expected to make $1,800 from the two ads between now and the time they are removed, at the end of June.
On Tuesday, Coun. Dean Pappas said he wants council to consider donating that money to one or more women’s charities.
He said he will ask councillors at the next committee of the whole meeting – scheduled for April 18, at City Hall – for a vote on whether to donate the money.
He mentioned the idea at Monday’s city council meeting, but didn’t make a motion.
At the meeting on Monday, councillors were voting a final time on a plan to make changes to the city’s advertising policy to try to block similar ads in the future.
But five women spoke to council prior to the vote, all of them saying city council should have prevented the ads from being used on the buses in the first place.
The issue stems back to 2016, when a national pro-life group called the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform (CCBR) first wanted to place ads on Peterborough Transit buses.
The city initially turned down the ads; city officials told CCBR the images would be a turnoff and would discourage people from riding the bus.
Later, the city relented and said the ads couldn’t be banned after all because a refusal would constitute a violation of the pro-life group’s freedom of expression.
CCBR then obtained a court order to ensure the city would stick to its promise to use the advertisements.
But when that case came up in court in Hamilton, a bit more than a year ago, the city didn’t send a lawyer; that’s because the city had decided it wasn’t going to contest the CCRB’s wish to take out ads on local buses.
Ariel O’Neill told council it was too bad the city didn’t at least send a lawyer.
Erin Dyson said the CCRB uses “horror” imagery to disturb people.
Dyson wondered what would happen if another group with a hateful message wanted to buy an ad.
“I would hope the city would not be so flippant if a white supremacist group tried to run an ad on a bus.”