This weekend, protesters led by Adam Pitcher lined Prince Phillip Drive and surrounding streets with posters calling for Dwight Ball’s resignation. As Pitcher told the CBC, “We’ve been pushing and pushing. It should not be this hard to direct your elected representatives.” 

While Pitcher vowed his group would take down the posters when Ball resigned, a government-contracted outsider beat Pitcher to it: all the posters were hastily taken down overnight on Sunday. Even Transportation Minister Al Hawkins disagrees with how this was handled.

Hawkins says he would have handled it differently, if only he’d known about it. Which is fishy indeed. For whatever reason, he says the decision to take down the posters did not come across his desk, so the decision was ultimately made by unelected officials; people who allowed other political signs to stay up on that street.

While the premier told media no one from his office was involved, PC leader Paul Davis says he finds that hard to believe, and Ball, further contributing to his increasing dodginess, would not take any questions on the matter. All we know is $200 was spent to hastily remove the posters (the edges of the posters still remain on poles).

So there we have it, the pittance we’re saving from closing our libraries is already being squandered by a senselessly childish and undemocratic act in defiance of free will and speech. Ultimately, Pitcher didn’t need a permit to put up those posters, and had a right to do so.

The optics of this really make you wonder what these people were thinking. $200 is not going to bust our bank, but it’s the principle of the matter: Our government is expecting us to swallow tax and fee hikes and levys and job cuts, while spending money to sookily remove posters.

Lorraine Michael quipped about how we can’t even get our roads ploughed in the middle of the night, but Ball can get his posters taken down. Pitcher’s response? “This week is going to be full of very strange and unique actions against this government, absolutely.”