Protestors take on new Regina library board rules

About a dozen people dressed up against the cold stood with their hands over their mouths in front of the central branch of the Regina Public Library on Tuesday afternoon. Some wore signs saying “we (love) libraries” while others read “library patrons won’t be silenced.”

The group was rallying against relatively new rules around presenting to the board.

The procedures implemented last year tighten up timelines around presentations by the public at board meetings – when they need to be submitted, how long they can be and what they can be regarding.

Sean Quinlan is the library board’s chair. He said the rules are now very close to the rules for presenting in front of Regina City Council.

The changes stem from a situation early last year when the library decided to go from a local programmer for its film theatre to programming from elsewhere in the country.

Several people made presentations to the board, and according to a later assessment, some of them went over the line.

“Some of them were disrespectful of people, some of them were quite rude – not all of them but some. So we had to put a stop to that,” explained Quinlan.

The submissions had been posted to the library’s website, along with the board meeting agenda and minutes, but all were taken down months later after a lawyer engaged by the library board told the members that some of the comments met the test for defamation.

That frustrated some patrons of the library who made presentations, like Jeannie Mah.

She said the presentations being taken down is like erasing their voices on the issues and removing the criticism from the record.

There are also some parts of that which still aren’t clear for Mah.

“They were taken down because they were possibly defamatory. We were also told that we were disrespectful and rude, but we weren’t told which parts were possibly defamatory or rude or disrespectful,” she said.

Joanne Havelock, chair of the group Friends of the Regina Public Library, echoed Mah’s concerns.

Quinlan said he doesn’t know which of the statements in the presentations were deemed to be defamatory. The board wasn’t going to pursue any action on them so he didn’t ask the lawyers for those details.

This presents a problem for Mah and Havelock. The new presentation rules include a clause that submissions from the public will be gone over by the board chair and any rude or abusive statements would be redacted by the chair, or the submission could be removed altogether.

Without details on what was wrong with those submissions from last year, Mah says they don’t really know where the line is or what crosses it.

“I would like to ask what are we allowed to say? Are we never allowed to mention a staff person’s name in criticism or in praise?” she asked.

She’s concerned the situation will discourage people from speaking up, and that it’s going to stifle public discussion about issues with the board.

For his part, Quinlan said the board isn’t stifling anything, pointing to the meeting on Tuesday evening where three presenters had their say on these issues.

“We had three presentations, there was no redactions, they got to say whatever they wanted to say, so we’re open to that,” he said.

Havelock isn’t sure about the chair having the final say on presentations; she wants someone a little more removed from the board to have the reins.

“The tricky part comes when there’s stakeholder groups and there’s a difficult decision coming up. The difficulty is consulting with those stakeholder groups in advance and being willing to handle discussions that may be uncomfortable when those stakeholder groups don’t necessarily agree with the future direction.

“Let them know in advance, have a discussion, be collaborative rather than just coming up with decisions from upper levels that surprise people,” she said.

Referencing the comments and concerns brought up at the meeting, Quinlan said that’s just a microcosm of the library’s customers, and that the comments the board receives about the library’s services are ten to one positive.

He said you can’t please everyone. “We’ll listen to them and we’ll take their comments into consideration. If we feel we have to tweak something, we’ll look at doing that as well.”