The constitution disagrees with you
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
They're muzzled if she wants to play soccer Brian. Play your word games as you wish, but it's a simple case of shut up if you want to play soccer. But allow me to look at your reasoning......
Sorry, but you don’t understand what that part of the constitution was intended for. That part of the charter is not
carte blanche for an individual to say and do as they wish. As the link says below – it is not absolute. Two of the most notable cases were Ernst Zundel and James Keegstra who were charged for promoting hatred against Jewish people. Although both tried to argue that their views were protected by the charter – the courts saw it differently and for good reason because it was found to infringe on the rights of those they were impacting. In addition, spreading obscenity and pornography would not be protected by that part of the charter nor would slander and libel. Although some of these are on the extreme end of the spectrum it goes to show that the Section 1 is not a licence to say what you want all the time.
However, let’s look at other more familiar examples where a Section 1 challenge would not be very advisable like internet fish forms or online newspaper blogs. Forums such as this have a code of conduct that members agree to abide by when they register. These rules are meant to discourage members from using these boards to promote personal business as well as protect members from bullying, personal attacks, intimidation and offensive language. Thus, if members attempt to do any these things they can have their posts deleted or edited without their consent, or in some cases have their membership terminated
. Members can express their views, but there are restrictions and they are reasonable to most people I would think.
In the case of amateur sports, there really is no difference – there are rules of conduct that participants abide when they sign up. When they sign up they are agreeing to those rules. Again, this is not something new – every amateur sport association has rules of conduct. In this particular case, the conduct of this soccer association states (as it said in the CBC news article) any parent who engages in negative comments in social networks, texts, emails, website blogs, correspondence, bullying, gossip, misinformation, intimidation or any other activity as related to soccer is subject to discipline. Marine Harvest is sponsor of this soccer team so it relates to soccer. Do you believe that any other sport association, at the amateur or professional level, would permit its players or the parents of those individuals to bully and intimidate their sponsors in social media? That’s not reasonable at all. The charter was not intended to protect people from engaging in that sort of behaviour and I would highly doubt that the Reeds would have leg to stand on if they pursued it in court. The Reeds can express their opinions on Marine Harvest, but not through the soccer association because it’s not the place to do (what the association is saying).
This is a decision from the soccer association – not Marine Harvest. I find it strange that critics are blaming Marine Harvest when they really have nothing to do with enforcing these rules. The question that should really be asked now is why is Freyja still playing on this particular soccer team, clearly benefiting from the financial resources Marine Harvest is putting into training and coaching, if she and her mother have these objections to Marine Harvest as a sponsor? Seems kind of hypocritical to me because if this sponsor goes against everything they believe in then one would think they would choose a different team, league or sport.
Personally, I don’t buy the argument from the Reeds that they have little choice to comply because there is a choice, but they chose not to exercise it. Freyja is not being denied to play soccer. The issue is that the Reeds want their cake and eat it too. The Reeds are not the only family that had to drive their kids distances to play sports. An hour or slightly more than that is not an extreme burden, but again the Reeds have to weigh that against their beliefs. In this case, they chose that the travel was too much, but that was their choice. Others on the team likely didn’t get the same treatment that Freyja is getting by being exempted from certain functions and wearing branding. It is also not reasonable for the soccer association to customize the optimal environment for every participant playing which takes into consideration their pet peeves, political views, likes and dislikes. Like I said before, there are other people on the team to consider which the Reeds are ignoring. That’s selfish. Just because the choices are limited in the eyes of the Reeds doesn’t necessarily equate to them being disadvantaged in reality.
http://www.fishingwithrod.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=20181.0http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/just/06.html