There are some additional measures planned to help prevent the tossing of candy from floats at the Northwest Territorial Days Parades.
The tossing of candy was identified as a safety concern in a letter from concerned citizens to a recent city council meeting. The correspondence called for candy to be banned entirely from the parade, citing safety concerns to parade participants as well as health concerns.
While council stopped short of totally banning candy from the parade, they did express concern about the City's liability, with concern that children might run in front of floats and get injured while candy was being tossed along the route.
Council had sought an outside opinion on the issue of what their liability would be. In his response, Jim Sutton, branch manager at Cherry Insurance, advised the City could be held vicariously liable.
While the City's general liability insurance coverage would generally protect them in this sort of situation, Sutton advised the City to pursue a "best practice" code of conduct and not allow items to be tossed by parade participants to spectators.
In any event, it is already policy of the Battlefords Ag. Society to ask, for safety reasons, that all participants not throw any candy or items from the floats, but to have people walk the parade route to hand out any giveaways instead.
"Maybe this is something that we can ask organizers to reiterate to participants to not throw the candy," said councillor Ryan Bater at council Monday.
The indication is that the City's bylaw officers could be called upon to help with the safety efforts. Mayor Ian Hamilton said there were recent discussions with organizers on the subject, with the City's assistance sought by having the bylaw officers go to each of the participants on parade night to remind them not to throw candy from the floats. "I'm sure we could do something like that," Hamilton said.
