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The Kanata couple is being told they must move the garden by the end of the month. If they don’t, the city will move it for them — and send them the bill, of course. This seems somehow especially insulting given that one of the two gardeners, Will Needham, says he served in the military for over a decade. “I’ve served this country, and you’re telling me I can’t grow a little garden to feed myself?” he said in an interview with the CBC. “That’s just not on.”

But it is on the books, unfortunately. As are bylaws in municipalities across North America banning the helpful act of feeding another person’s parking meter before it expires. In Keene, N.H., a group that went around dropping coins in strangers’ almost-lapsed meters before parking officers could issue tickets was recently taken to court by the city, which claimed that the behaviour constituted tortious interference, among other things.

Fortunately, the state’s Supreme Court sided with the parking do-gooders and declared their feeding of meters an activity protected by the First Amendment, which safeguards Americans’ right to free speech and expression. Even expression in opposition to parking laws that happen to be revenue-generating cash cows for local governments.

According to the government, we’re all supposed to be staying active, getting fit, spending time outdoors, eating healthfully and locally, shunning junk food, protecting the environment and being good to our fellow citizens. So why in a single week do we see people punished by their cities for enjoying a soccer game at a park, growing a lush vegetable garden and saving some poor saps they don’t even know from parking fines and a lousy day? One reason is that things like being neighbourly, taking care of yourself, having clean fun and being a good person simply can’t be legislated.

Efforts at doing so are worse than just ineffectual; they create a topsy-turvy world in which the very qualities and actions we value in people are punished as being contrary to the law.

National Post

msoupcoff@theccf.ca

Marni Soupcoff is executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation (theccf.ca).