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County Discusses Safety Concerns During Pride Events

Thursday, 25 April 2024 11:22

By Marcie Culbert X @marcieculbert

Oxford County Pride would like Oxford County to prevent protests from happening within 150 metres of libraries during Pride events this June.

OXFORD COUNTY - June is only a few months away, and Oxford County Pride has some safety concerns for some of its Pride Month festivities.

President Tami Murray presented a delegation to Oxford County Council yesterday. She asked Council to introduce a bylaw to prevent people from protesting matters related to race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, age, place of origin, and marital or family status within 150 metres of county facilities. This would allow people to safely access those facilities without having to pass through a demonstration. You can read the full bylaw that was proposed online here.

Warden Marcus Ryan says protests were held outside library branches while Pride events were being held last June.

"I saw children being yelled at and people's access to and from the library being blocked. At one point we were sneaking children and families out the back of one of the libraries and I just thought to myself this is not good, these are people just trying to access services that their municipality provides."

But if you limit someone's ability to protest, it impacts their freedom of expression, so Warden Ryan says the matter has been referred to the Safe and Well Oxford Steering Committee.

"The Safe and Well Oxford Steering Committee can come up with some recommendations as to how we can proceed to make people feel safe and well when they attend such Oxford County Pride events at Oxford County facilities, so residents and staff can feel safe in doing that."

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