Judge sides with MPI in ASIMIL8 licence plate legal challenge

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This article was published 23/10/2019 (2173 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Resistance is futile, indeed.

A Winnipeg man has lost a court challenge to keep a Star Trek-inspired vanity licence plate Manitoba Public Insurance had deemed offensive to Indigenous people.

In a 35-page decision that quoted from Star Trek, Marshall McLuhan and the online Urban Dictionary, Queen’s Bench Justice Sheldon Lanchberry ruled MPI was within its rights when it ordered Nicholas Troller to turn in a previously approved personalized licence plate (PLP) that read: “ASIMIL8.”

“The word ‘assimilate’ and its continued use in the historical context of the Indigenous experience in Manitoba could not be more apparent,” Lanchberry said. “In examining all these circumstances, the actions of MPI to limit Troller’s freedom of expression are a reasonable restriction in a free and democratic society.”

Troller, an avid Star Trek fan, had been driving around with the licence plate since 2015; MPI received a complaint two years later, and ordered its recall. “ASIMIL8” is a reference to a well-known phrase by Star Trek science fiction villains the Borg. Troller placed the plate in a border that included the phrases “We are the Borg” and “Resistance is futile.”

MPI can reject vanity plate submissions for a number of reasons, including being offensive, sexually suggestive, discriminatory or include racial or ethnic slang. MPI said Troller’s submission was vetted by a committee who did not initially recognize its potentially offensive content.

“MPI submitted that there is a striking similarity to the context of assimilation in Star Trek to the colonization of the Indigenous peoples of Canada,” Lanchberry said. “Academia has devoted much time to this argument.”

Troller argued by recalling the licence plate, MPI was infringing on his charter right to freedom of expression.

Lanchberry said he accepts Troller had no ill intent in choosing the vanity plate, but context must be considered when using a word that carries such heavy historical weight.

“MPI’s position is the word ‘assimilate,’ when considered in the context of Canadian history, is on its face objectionable,” Lanchberry said. “The assimilation of Aboriginal people was the official policy of the government of Canada.

“Federal and provincial governments have publicly recognized that the policy of assimilation is a stain on the Crown,” he said. “The word assimilate has taken on a new meaning within this country.”

Troller is free to submit any number of other Borg- or Star Trek-related phrases for a vanity plate, Lanchberry said.

“Although the Borg character may believe in assimilation, any restriction to eliminate anything from the Borg character, or indeed the Star Trek franchise, would be unacceptable in a free and just democratic society,” he said.

Troller has stayed true to the Borg. In 2017, the same year his original vanity plate was recalled, he replaced it with one that read COLLECTV, after a Star Trek: Voyager TV episode with a Borg plotline.

He was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca