Critical theory analysis of the launch of the Taber Community Standards Bylaw

Kris Hodgson

University of Alberta MACT program

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Introduction When the Town of Taber released its Community  Standards  Bylaw (CSB) on February 23 of this year, there were many issues with how it was released to the public. I will be looking at three ways Taber’s town council mishandled this event. I examine what transpired in the Corn Capital of Canada from a language and communications perspective and identify the dysfunctionalities of communication that occurred from a critical theory perspective. Background The Town of Taber is 30 minutes east of the City of Lethbridge in southern Alberta. It has a population of over 8,000 citizens who mostly work in the agriculture sector. According to the town’s website more than 30 per cent of the town’s residents are under the age of 15. The Town of Taber has a large Mexican Mennonite population who speak Low German. According to Statistics Canada close to 1,000 people call German their mother tongue. In a CBC News article from March 13 called “Taber bylaw attention blown out of proportion, say residents in Alberta town,” police said they “have received 70 complaints from residents concerned about gatherings in the local Mennonite community, which prompted them to request Taber's police commission and town council to include something to address the issue in the new bylaw.” Lack of public consultation The CSB, drafted by the Taber Police Service and the Police Commission, includes a $75 fine for spitting in public; $150 for yelling, screaming or swearing; a $100 fine for a minor breaking curfew; a $2,500 fine for graffiti, while police are allowed to order groups of three or more people to disperse. The CSB was brought to town council with a recommendation for its adoption by the police service and commission. At the February 23 town council meeting, council gave third reading to the bylaw and it passed with a vote of 6-1. With only one councilor calling into question some of the vagueness surrounding the enforcement of the CSB, one local media organization pointed out its flaws. In a March 4 article titled, “Community Standards bylaw passed” Trevor Busch of the Taber Times wrote, “the General Definitions section of the bylaw includes no description or definition of what would be considered ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ nor defines what actions would actually constitute a disturbance of the peace. Sec. 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms includes ‘freedom of peaceful assembly’ as one of the fundamental freedoms assured to Canadians under the charter.” As Craig states “communication that involves only the transmission-reception or ritual sharing of meanings is inherently faulty, distorted and incomplete” (2007, p.85) and this distortion can be seen in challenges the CSB had, as there was no consultation with the public or legal representation about what can and cannot be included in a community bylaw. Below is a March 10 tweet from Lisa Lambert, a sessional Political Science instructor at the University of Lethbridge.

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Not only did members of the Lethbridge Defense Bar find the CSB unconstitutional, they actually offered to defend anyone who was found guilty of breaching it. The CSB continued to gain national media attention because of the inaccuracies within it. A group from Edmonton created a YouTube  video on March 10 asking Kickstarter to help raise $100,000 calling CSB the “Footloose bylaw” and asked actor Kevin Bacon to attend an organized dance party outside town limits. In a March 12 Globe and Mail article by Bill Graveland, he interviewed the campaign’s creator Jordan Bloeman who said “Help us host a raucous dance party-protest against an archaic, vaguely worded law passed by an out-of-touch town council, held of course, just outside of Taber.” Despite academics and lawyers dismissing the CSB as a faulty piece of legislation, the members of Taber’s town council and the police service continued to defend it, which brings me to my next point. Multiple spokespeople The second oversight Taber’s town council created was having multiple spokespeople communicating with the public that caused confusion and mixed messaging. Taber’s mayor Henk De Vlieger became one of the spokespersons after the adoption of the new bylaw. He is very hard to comprehend because of his thick German accent and he also said some things on camera that he shouldn’t have said. This ties into Habermas’ points as he says the rational validity of any act of communication is based on four implicit claims. One of which is that the act has an intelligible meaning. “Our account of his theory has a clear meaning (comprehensibility) … and that we are doing so in a sincere effort to achieve an understanding with readers” (2007 p. 427-428). In a radio interview with the CBC on March 11, De Vlieger said, “It's just like every other tool, you can use it and abuse it," he said. "A hammer I can use to pound a nail, which it is intended for, or it can kick in your brains." Jarring statements like this surprised members of the public across Canada who tried to interpret what was going on in this small town. Considering that Deetz says, “All communication is distorted to some degree (p.457),” having multiple spokespeople only compounded the issue. When town council decided not to elect a single spokesperson and let everyone speak to the media, it made the message more distorted. By becoming a spokesperson for town council’s actions, De Vlieger incorrectly assumed the rest of the town felt as strongly as he did about the CSB. With the amount of backlash

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against it, he then backpedalled saying the town and police service would run the CSB for a trial period of six months. Taber’s police Chief Alf Rudd also became a spokesperson for the CSB, as it was his department that encouraged town council to adopt it. “It’s certainly not the intention of the police to enforce this thing when somebody swears,” he said in a March 11 CBC Edmonton AM radio interview with host Mark Connolly. “Three or more people standing on a corner having a visit is not going to come to the attention of the police.” This statement runs contrary to a further statement later on in the same interview where he said, “If you have got some group of people cussing and swearing up a storm, you are going to want to have that managed.” Having a CSB that says residents will be penalized because of breaching it and then having the police chief say the opposite created confusion for citizens who didn’t know when, or at what point the local detachment would step in. Taber Police Service Inspector Graham Abela became a third spokesperson for the CSB further damaging the town council’s reputation to have a cohesive single message. In a Calgary Herald article by Bill Graveland on March 14, Abela is quoted as saying “We had a bunch of good people trying their best to make good decisions for this community. The way the public has reacted in our community has been very positive. But external to this community — the way that others have laughed and joked and made fun of this community – it’s absolutely inappropriate and it’s unwarranted and that’s what I’m mad at.” From a public relations standpoint, whenever a controversial decision is made by an organization, it is always best to have a single voice communicating to the public. The various spokespeople the town used to speak with various media outlets just compounded the problems. Argyris says conflict and solution avoidance can become systemic in corporations in what he calls a defensive routine. “The culture and chaos of an inability to deal with significant problems can become routinized.” (2007 p. 470). This sounds exactly like how various spokespeople in the Town of Taber treated this bylaw. Instead of acknowledging that it had flaws, they put up a false front to try and convince the public they had nothing to worry about in the adoption and enforcement of this new law. “The unowned, routinized strategy of chaos production protects the corporation from examination, discussion and possible change” (2007 Argyris p. 470). From a critical theory perspective, multiple spokespeople for the Town of Taber only created more issues as it was trying to save face when the media called the CSB into question. Not realizing how gravely out of touch the police force and town council were with Canadian citizens caught them off-guard and only contributed to more issues. Lack of social media strategy My final point rests in the fact that the Town of Taber and its police service had no social media strategy to combat the viral communication that was unfolding online. On March 10, the Town of Taber was one of the top 10 topics trending on Twitter across Canada. In a Taber Times article “Social media having heyday with bylaw” article by Garrett Simmons he said, “Taber nearly topped the list of topics trending across the entire country. The notoriety came with a number of Twitter hash tags, such as #TaberTaliban, #boycottTabercorn, #SwearInTaber, #TaberRules and #DumbestByLaw.”

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Deetz says discursive closure exists whenever potential conflict is suppressed ( 464) and this was apparent in Taber as the multiple spokespeople tried to assure the public there was nothing wrong with its bylaw. While three different spokespeople were talking with the media, they did not have a social media strategy or a representative who dealt with the social media firestorm that unfolded in front of them. When the town council and police service refused to join in the conversation and provide their perspective online in one cohesive message, other media and individuals took the absence as a huge issue. Their absence gave the public the impression that the community was not going to listen to what the public had to say and they would continue to stand in defiance. This is a huge challenge to critical theory as Deetz says “all topical avoidance leads to systematically distorted communication” (p.467). The avoidance by the Town of Taber to participate in an online discussion about the CSB was a huge error and one that brought even more attention to the community for all the wrong reasons. Conclusion To conclude my critical theory analysis of the launch of the Town of Taber Community Standards Bylaw, one can get a strong picture of the many faulty ways the community handled the release of this important piece of legislation. Clear, effective communication by any organization is extremely important when addressing controversial topics. Critical theory is the best way to analyze this topic because it was a clear case of the media and the public challenging norms and commonly held beliefs the citizens of Taber no longer felt were relevant. Taber’s council and police service did not effectively consult with the public, they did not choose one effective spokesperson to address the media and they did not have a social media strategy when it became the top trending hash tag on Twitter across the country. These three dysfunctionalities of communication that occurred from a critical theory perspective highlight the ways other municipalities and organizations can learn from events like this.

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References Busch, Trevor. (2015, March 4). Community Standards Bylaw Passes. Taber Times. Retrieved from http://www.tabertimes.com/news/2015/03/04/community-­‐standards-­‐bylaw-­‐passed/   Canadian Press. (2015, March 11). Taber bylaw bans public swearing, spitting and yelling in Alberta town. CBC News. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/calgary/taber-alta-bans-public-swearing-spitting-and-yelling-under-new-bylaw-1.2988992 Connolly, Mark. (2015, March 11) Police Chief Alf Rudd – Taber. Canada AM. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/edmontonam/episodes/2015/03/11/police-chief-alf-rudd---taber-bylaws/ Craig, R. T., & Muller, H. L. (2007). Theorizing communication: Readings across traditions. (pp. 85, 427-428, 457-470). Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Graveland, Bill. (2015, March 12). Albertans invite Kevin Bacon to protest Footloose-style law. Globe and Mail. Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/edmonton-group-wants-kevin-bacon-to-party-in-taber-in-protest-of-new-law/article23416558/ Graveland, Bill. (2015, March 14). Taber Police Angry at town’s black eye over bad behavior bylaw. Calgary Herald. Retrieved from http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/taber-police-angry-at-town-s-black-eye-over-bad-behaviour-bylaw Simmons, Garrett. (2015, March 11) Social Media having heyday with bylaw. Taber Times. Retrieved from http://www.tabertimes.com/news/2015/03/11/social-media-having-heyday-with-bylaw/ Town of Taber. (2015, Feb. 23). Regular meeting of Town Council. Retrieved from http://ab-taber.civicplus.com/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/900