Thirty years ago, Lorne Grabher bought a plate that reads “GRABHER” as a gift for his father, whose Austro-German family immigrated to Canada in the early 20th century. Devotion to free expression should not depend on the ideological bent of the speaker. Devotion to free expression should not depend on the ideological bent of the speaker. But that’s the thing about free expression: bland, inoffensive speech rarely needs judicial intervention; offensive speech is precisely what needs protecting. But Jamieson rejects the comparison with municipal bus advertisements on the grounds that, unlike the sides of buses, “government licence plates are not ‘public places’ with a history of free expression.

Source: National Post February 07, 2020 15:01 UTC