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This is really, really serious

“Even with the rationale he provided, the meaning is the exact same regardless of what race — human or alien — it applies to. My only concern is if we get asked why we issued it in the first place. We are still vulnerable.”

Alarm bells started ringing when a fellow Manitoba government employee saw a Facebook post about the plate and forwarded it to MPI on April 24, 2017, asking: “Is this a real MPI-issued plate?”

By day’s end, a whirlwind of emails had ensued, stretching into the evening.

“I hope the people involved in this mess now see why we take this stuff so seriously and expect some common sense judgment to apply — or at the very least, following our own procedures,” Keith wrote.

Bosses at MPI were asking how the plate passed through the committee set up to stop inappropriate plates from being issued. The documents include a long list of plates that were refused, including INJIN, DRG DLR, and HITNRUN.

The committee, the emails say, searches requested words on the online slang repository Urban Dictionary.

Photo by File

“An Urban Dictionary search was done on the slogan and no hits were found. No concerns were raised to the committee about the slogan,” wrote Dave Burns, manager of licensing services.

In response, Carla Hocken, Registrar of Motor Vehicles, sent a link to the website’s entry on assimilation that defined it in racist terms. Burns replied: “I can’t say with certainty why that entry in the Urban Dictionary wasn’t called out.”

The day after MPI staff heard of the plate, Troller was called to return the plate to any MPI bureau. He said he wouldn’t be able to do that until the end of the week.