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An atheist organization says billboards it planned to run in downtown Vancouver have been rejected by advertising agency Pattison Outdoor.

The Centre for Inquiry Canada ad plays with a biblical reference by featuring the image of a woman with the words: “Jenn 13:1 Praying won’t help. Doing will.” It goes on to say: “Without God. We’re all good.”

It mentions the organization but doesn’t use the word atheist.

The Vancouver ad campaign was made possible with a $20,000 anonymous donation, said Pat O’Brien, a board member of CFI Canada.

O’Brien said the educational charity was surprised Pattison Outdoor rejected the ads.

“The idea of the ads is not to upset anyone,” he said.

“When we designed the ads, we went out of our way to make them as soft as we could. Our purpose is to find those people out there who think the same way we do but don’t know there’s an organization that will support their views. It’s like any other advertising campaign: we’re looking for people who are interested in our message and our product.”

He said Pattison Outdoor didn’t give a clear reason for rejecting the ads nor did they supply any guidelines involving their decision.



Steve McGregor, vice-president and general manager for Pattison Outdoor for the Pacific Region, did not respond to a request for comment.

O’Brien said CFI is looking at its options, which include filing a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

The B.C. Human Rights Code prohibits discrimination without a “bona fide and reasonable justification” in providing services available to the public on the basis of “race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age.”

In October, LifeSiteNews.com reported that Pattison Outdoor designed a pro-life billboard in Halifax called Signs for Life. The ad featured the head of a fetus and text that read: “Abortion: aren’t we forgetting someone?”

“If they don’t like controversial ads,” O’Brien said, “they certainly ran anti-abortion ads in Halifax.”

O’Brien said Pattison has a “virtual monopoly” on billboard space in downtown Vancouver. Denying the organization its ad amounts to denying it the ability to communicate with the public, he said.

Being told that the ad needs to be changed or modified isn’t acceptable, O’Brien said.

“They seem to have dug their heels in a little bit. I’m quite certain that if we sat down with them that the answer would be the same: we’d like to see something different that they consider more appropriate,” he said.

“We’ve already spent our budget on design. By saying, ‘Give us an ad until we like it,’ it’s censorship by bankruptcy.”

There have been several examples recently of groups using billboards to communicate what are considered political messages.

In August, the Palestine Awareness Coalition ran ads called Disappearing Palestine on SkyTrain and buses. In October, a pro-Israeli group countered those ads with its own Stand With Us ad campaign.

In May, an animal rights group called Mercy for Animals Canada ran 100 ads on SkyTrain asking why people eat some animals such as pigs but not others such as dogs.

Political ads on transit systems have been made possible because of a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2009. In a unanimous decision, the court decided that a TransLink and BC Transit decision to ban political advertising on the sides of buses violated the free speech of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation and the Canadian Federation of Students as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

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kevingriffin@vancouversun.com