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The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms took a wee hit last week when a Nova Scotia Supreme Court justice told a retired Dartmouth resident that he has no right to put his surname on a vanity licence plate.

Thirty years ago, Lorne Grabher bought a plate that reads “GRABHER” as a gift for his father, whose Austro-German family immigrated to Canada in the early 20th century. After the elder Grabher’s death, his son took the plate and used it until 2017, when a single anonymous busybody complained that it was offensive. Janice Harland, then the province’s registrar of motor vehicles, responded by yanking the plate.

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“While I recognize this plate was issued as your last name,” Harland wrote Grabher, “the public cannot be expected to know this, and can misinterpret it as a socially unacceptable slogan.”

This infuriated Grabher, who pleaded with Harland to reverse her decision, then filed a charter challenge when she declined. The Alberta-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), which opposes efforts by the left to limit charter protections, underwrote his suit.