Council rejects new begging and loitering bylaw, but balks at repealing old ones
At their meeting on Tuesday evening, Tantramar council voted down a newly proposed bylaw on loitering and begging, and then opted to keep two existing and similar bylaws on the books in Sackville and Dorchester.
The proposed bylaw is part of the review and consolidation of bylaws for the new municipality of Tantramar being carried out by the municipal clerk.
The Tantramar-wide bylaw would have made “asking for money, food, or help as charity” illegal, and also banned loitering, defined as “remaining in an area with no obvious purpose.” The new bylaw also included a ban on soliciting door-to-door, unless what’s being sold is a book that’s been previously approved by council. (That provision appears to be a call back to the former Municipalities Act, which set up exemptions to solicitation laws for publishers of encyclopedias, educational texts, and Bibles. While Tantramar council has no list of exempted books, the province did keep a list of specific books that were allowed to be sold door-to-door in the province.)
Councillor Josh Goguen was the first to speak on the proposed Tantramar-wide bylaw, and referenced issues that the city of Halifax has had with police street checks. In 2017, Halifax police street check data showed that Black people in the city were three times more likely than white people to be stopped by police.
“We’re basically saying to somebody that, you’re sitting down, and the bylaw officer can come up to you and say, What are you doing?… Continue