Canadian City Being Sued for 25.5 Million for Cancelling a Caribbean Festival
In August of 2018, the City of Vaughan, (a Suburb of Toronto, Canada) cancelled a Caribbean festival midway due to noise complaints and is now being sued for $25,000,000. The city revoked the permit one day into the three-day festival, and ticket holders and performers were left stunned. The Summer Of Sound, SOS festival launched a lawsuit today for reputation damage and financial loss and wishes the city of Vaughan to give anti-racism and cultural competency training to all its staff members.
The situation can be read about in greater detail here I think the allegations of racism are overboard considering the councilor who ordered the festival canceled is a Canadian with Chinese heritage who is married to a Canadian of Italian heritage and she represents an extremely multicultural region. However, the financial concerns of the plaintiff are definitely warranted.
source
The defendant ordered the concert to shut down because of the noise. The festival was permitted to be held in an area that does not typically permit such things. Apparently, there were a lot of noise complaints, the festival went beyond its time limit on the first day and there is a noise law in the area that limits noise to 61 decibels after a certain hour. The city says the festival did not comply with the conditions of the permit. Now I didn't attend the festival, the plaintiff says the noise wasn't beyond 55 decimals after hours, but I think that is laughable. For those who don't know, 55 decimals is about as loud as a refrigerator and is quieter than your average conversation source.
What do you think? Is the lawyer lying and the festival was louder than 55 decibels after hours? Should they just accept the loss and never hold a festival in that prudish neighborhood again? Or, do you think they should pay 25.5 Million and go through mandatory anti-racist training? Bear in mind, the region is 35% visible minority and only 45% of residents claim English as their mother language source. I'm going to be interested to see how this lawsuit plays out.
Chinese and Italian cultures in Canada are not free of prejudice. Diverse and multicultural just means mixed, it doesn't mean an absence of prejudice.
I think finding people in Vaughan who have prejudice views towards Caribbean culture is not too difficult.
I would prefer a three day cCaribbean festival, but I think they should have 3 days of sensitivity training if that is what they want instead.
There is an archived reddit thread that has locals talking about hearing the base from that concert a few kilometers away or more until 320am, posts from before it was shutdown. Most complainers likely had no idea it was a Caribbean concert. Base travels.
We can't rule out racism but I can understand someone being angry about a concert still going after 3am no matter what the colour of the attendees may be. Sensitivity training won't do anything those politicians don't benefit from any ethics lessons.
Nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors and circumstantial evidence that requires thorough corroboration to be admissible in court.
Does the city have legal right to cancel an approved permit in less than 24 hours because of a noise complaint?
When Italy is in the Football World Cup and the games are in Europe, Vaughan seems to permit parties long past 11pm, however, if it is something they find less tasteful, it must be stopped at all costs to preserve the peace.
The municipality has the legal right to revoke permits for breaking noise laws. The lawyer is claiming that the festival was not over 55 decibels and that no noise laws were violated. Damages may/may not be owed are are a different matter.
This is why it's funny, even if they turned off the microphones, amplifiers and speakers it would have been over 55 decibels unless everyone was having a quiet conversation. But the city may not have proof to the contrary. Also they said something about 3am but went on to 320am.
The case will set a precisdent and may go to the supreme court. Police records should also still be available to show the noise complaints.
I hope they win at the long run. There should be designated places for parties. Cancelling it a day is wrong.
I agree they shouldn't have cancelled it partway through and owe compensation for that. There are plenty of other places in the region where people can be as loud as they want with better transit options. Vaughan is a bedroom city and issues like these don't help it with such a reputation. 61 decibels after 11 PM is a joke. The location was in an industrial area next to 6 lane highway and one of the biggest cargo train yards in the country- Diesel trains and heavy trucks are like 90 decibels. The nearest houses are over 1km away past 24-hour major factories.
Hi @crypticat!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 3.768 which ranks you at #5269 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has not changed in the last three days.
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 95 contributions, your post is ranked at #62.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
Thank you for supporting @CatsMakeKittens by being a part of our community @crypticat.
Each CATS you purchase gets you daily upvotes from me @CatScientist as our community grows so do your rewards for being a member!
This post has been resteemed by @original.content.
Follow me to keep up-to-date with posts tagged #oc and the author on ocdb's follow list.
If you don't like this message, please reply
STOPand I'll cease notifying you ASAP.Powered by witness untersatz!