Alberta city wants to ban spitting
Lethbridge wants to educate the public about ‘community standards’
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 Toronto passed a bylaw against spitting in public and on streetcars in 1904, though it appears to have been repealed.
Lethbridge, a southern Alberta city, could become the latest Canadian locale to ban spitting.
A new bylaw before the city’s council, proposes a ban on a number of “antisocial behaviours.” Spitting is among them, and could carry a fine of $300. Council is also poised to try and 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 a city council meeting on Tuesday.
It’s not altogether clear what precipitated the decision to introduce such a bylaw in Lethbridge, although the report to council notes that 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,” wasn’t the best place to have a bylaw on undesirable behaviour.
A survey on the proposed bylaw 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 simply 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.
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 when it banned spitting, swearing and yelling in public, back in 2015.
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 Toronto passed a bylaw against spitting in public and on streetcars in 1904, though it appears to have been repealed.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 Starphoenix 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 “s tanding or placing one’s feet on tables, benches, planters, or sculptures … in a public place.)
A possibly tongue-in-cheek letter to the editor in the Calgary Herald suggestedthe bylaw was meant to penalize overly hydrated runners who pee in bushes, put their legs on tables to stretch, and spit out water as they hydrate.
“One can only imagine the active bylaw officer at the next 10-km race ticketing those who wish not to wait for the porta-potty line, or who spit on the road at water stations,” wrote John Dumonceaux.