Canadian ‘drag queen’ censorship zones face court challenge

The legality of a Canadian city’s ‘bubble zone’ bylaw, used to penalise a man protesting a drag queen event, is to be considered by senior judges.

In 2023, Larry Heather was fined under Calgary’s ‘Safe and Inclusive Access Bylaw’ for comments made near to a ‘drag queen story time’ at Calgary’s Central Downtown Library.

After a lower court upheld the decision, free speech group the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) intervened on his behalf. The group has now been allowed to challenge the constitutionality of the bylaw at Alberta’s Court of Appeal.

Free speech

The bylaw bans “specified protests” — including those against ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’ — “within 100 metres of an entrance to a City-operated recreation facility (or other designated facility), or library”.

Calgary City Council claims the restrictions strike “a balance between respecting the right to protest and providing safe and inclusive access to public services”.

But the CCF argues that “governments should not be instituting dead zones for certain views simply because they are controversial or unpopular”.

CCF Interim Executive Director Christine Van Geyn said: “Protesters should not be forced to hold their demonstrations blocks away from an event that they wish to protest against.

“A society that values freedom of expression presupposes that people will hear expressions they find offensive or vehemently disagree with.”

‘Slow suffocation’

Last year, in article for the Canadian think-tank The Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Van Geyn warned: “If freedom of expression is the lifeblood of democracy, then bubble zones are its slow suffocation: silent, polite, and increasingly permanent.”

Rather than protecting the ‘vulnerable’, she argued, “they are building a new architecture of censorship, where fear, offense, and subjective mental wellbeing become the legal standard”.

She called on governments and civil society “to maintain spaces where controversial ideas can be expressed and debated” and to “resist the rhetoric of safety and recognize that subjective offense doesn’t justify speech restrictions”.