A constitutional challenge has been filed against the Parliamentary Protective Service (PPS) for banning a pro-life group from showing images of aborted fetuses during a press conference on Parliament Hill. .“There is a certain irony to the fact that our government is currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars, domestically and abroad, promoting and facilitating a procedure it feels must be censored from the public eye,” said Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) spokesperson Josie Luetke in a Thursday press release. .“We don’t like seeing the images of abortion either, and we hope Canadians do a lot of soul-searching as to why presenting its victims brings them such discomfort.” .CLC organizes a National March for Life in Ottawa every year. It organized a press conference the day before the March for Life in May. .The release said CLC planned to show signs during the press conference which depicted victims of abortion at various stages of development. Prior to the press conference, it said a PPS officer reviewed the signs. .The officer prohibited it from showing them because they were too graphic. .This decision to prohibit the signs was later confirmed via email, referring to the General Rules on the Use of Parliament Hill prohibiting obscene, offensive, or hateful signs..The policy said it prohibits “signs or banners that display explicit graphic violence or blood.” .A notice of application was filed in the Federal Court of Canada on June 30 on behalf of CLC and a woman who planned to hold one of the signs at the press conference. They challenge the constitutionality of the limits on freedom of expression on Parliament Hill. .This notice of application challenges the versions of the General Rules on the Use of Parliament Hill and the action by PPS to prevent the applicants from using the signs to convey their message..They ask the court to make a declaration its policies and actions violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. .“Parliament Hill is historically a public square where people of various viewpoints come to convey a message to the government and other Canadians,” said Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF)-funded lawyer Hatim Kheir. .“Subjecting political expression on Parliament Hill to literal police censorship based on subjective criteria strikes at the core of Canadians’ democratic right to freedom of expression.” .The PPS detained a person waving a Canadian flag on Parliament Hill, who was marking the one-year anniversary of the Freedom Convoy, in January. .READ MORE: WATCH: Parliamentary Protective Service detains man for flying Canadian flag.“That’s my flag,” said a bystander.. “Let go of him.”
