August 20, 1997

Council, MPP want to put heat on Province over toplessness

By SHAWN SIMPSON / staff writer

OSHAWA - It's a thousand to none.

Last Monday, Oshawa MPP Jerry Ouellette presented petitions to the Ontario Legislative Assembly with about 1,000 names of people from around Durham opposing the court's decision allowing women to go topless in public.

Mr. Ouellette says he's received numerous complaints from the public about the topless issue, but none supporting the court's ruling handed down late last year.

"We're trying to get the Attorney General (Charles Harnick) to deal with the issue more directly," he says. "That administration is pretty soft on some issues." Mr. Ouellette says he's looking for some clarification of Sections 173 and 174 of the Canadian Criminal Code, the sections dealing with public nudity. He says clarification is needed to help put the topless issue into context. These sections, he adds, are too vague and don't provide adequate protection of community standards.

"The Attorney General's response has been wishy-washy," he says. "The best we can hope for is for the Province's Attorney General to deal with the federal minister and get some clarification."

Despite the amount of press the topless issue has received in recent months, the Durham Regional Police Service has had relatively few problems or complaints, says Sergeant Jim Grimley.

"From a police perspective we haven't had the problems we had anticipated or expected from all the publicity," he says, other than a few calls to the beach and one to an Oshawa office building on Adelaide Street.

Oshawa Ward 9 Councillor Jim Potticary, one of the more vocal opponents of the topless issue on City council, says council has sent the matter to its legal department to see what, if anything, can be done to ban toplessness in Oshawa through appropriate bylaws.

"The people of Oshawa don't want topless people on their beaches, on the streets or in the parks," he says. "In our society we are brought up to cover up. There are sun lovers but they should go to a nudist beach and not be walking in front of our kids."

Coun. Potticary says it will likely be early September before the City's legal department completes its report and council makes a decision on the matter. "But if the Province won't sanction (the City's bylaws) we're in big trouble."

Mr. Ouellette says the petitions should at least force the government to review the issue and arrive at some sort of final decision. He hopes, however, the government does more than just sanction local bylaws. Few municipalities, he says, have the resources or the personnel to enforce bylaws prohibiting public toplessness.