Lawn signs already popping up a day into federal election campaign, but not everywhere

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Barely one full day into the federal election campaign and lawn signs are already starting to take over front lawns and some public property.

However, while the colours of red, blue, orange and green will seem to be all over the place, there are some areas Canadians won’t be seeing campaign signs this year.

Surrey is one of the cities to ban political campaign signs on public property since the last federal election.

The Liberal candidate in the city’s Fleetwood-Port Kells riding, Ken Hardie, believes it’s a disadvantage for the people trying to unseat him.

“If anything, as the incumbent, I have a bit of an advantage because, of course, I’ve had four years to work in the community and establish a presence,” he says. “It’ll be more difficult who are competing for the seat, because they’ll have to do other things in order to get their names out there.”

The bylaw means Hardie and his campaign have had to get creative.

“The approach that we’re taking is to speak to property owners, particularly people who have locations along the major corridors, to see if they’ll allow us to put up a sign on their property, because then it wouldn’t be city property,” he explains. “We also have had quite a number of people step forward as a result of our post on Facebook to ask for a lawn sign.”

While Hardie believes the bylaw may be an obstacle for some trying to get their name out there, he says nothing beats old-fashioned door-knocking.

“Everybody can do that, and I know they are,” he adds.

Sign pollution and managing campaign signs are just some of the reasons Hardie thinks the city moved to implement its ban years ago.

Every municipality is different in their bylaws. For example, in Vancouver, certain public property is off-limits for campaign signs like the area between sidewalks and streets, while in Coquitlam, candidates can only set up their signs on 10 locations that are city-owned.

The City of Coquitlam’s Lauren Hewson says the bylaw came in years ago because of clutter signs cause.

“It originally came around years ago when we used to get a lot of complaints from the public about the mess of election signs — because they used to be everywhere,” she says. “We also used to get a lot of them sort of knocked over, and candidates wouldn’t pick them up and it would just make the whole city look a mess.”

She notes because of these reasons, a suggestion to adopt a “more regulated approach” came about.

Candidates are still able to place campaign signs on private property, with permission from the property owner.

-With files from Lasia Kretzel and Kurtis Doering

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