Civil rights in Canada are not always rights, it seems

I'm intrigued by the political machinations of the Ontario provincial leadership in Canada, who seem to think that civil rights can be subordinated to political expediency at the stroke of a pen. The Canadian blog Postcards Of The Hanging reports:

Premier Dalton McGuinty decided that the G20 summit was an excellent opportunity to relieve the populace of some of their rights.

The province has secretly passed an unprecedented regulation that empowers police to arrest anyone near the G20 security zone who refuses to identify themselves or agree to a police search.

A 31-year-old man has already been arrested under the new regulation, which was quietly passed by the provincial cabinet on June 2.

The regulation was made under Ontario’s Public Works Protection Act and was not debated in the Legislature. According to a provincial spokesperson, the cabinet action came in response to an “extraordinary request” by Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, who wanted additional policing powers shortly after learning the G20 was coming to Toronto.

The regulation kicked in Monday and will expire June 28, the day after the summit ends. While the new regulation appeared without notice on the province’s e-Laws online database last week, it won’t be officially published in The Ontario Gazette until July 3 — one week after the regulation expires.

. . .

The Public Works Protection Act is a nasty piece of work to begin with. It allows the government and the cops to designate anyone a "guard," who has full police powers and can arrest you without the constitutional niceties of a warrant, probable cause, or even a violation of the Criminal Code of Canada.

According to the new regulation, “guards” appointed under the act can arrest anyone who, in specific areas, comes within five metres of the security zone.

Within those areas, police can demand identification from anyone coming within five metres of the fence perimeter and search them. If they refuse, they face arrest. Anyone convicted under the regulation could also face up to two months in jail or a $500 maximum fine.

“It reminds me a little bit of the War Measures Act,” said lawyer Nathalie Des Rosiers of the new regulation. Des Rosiers is a lawyer with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which has been working to monitor arrests during the summit. “This is highly unusual to have this declaration done by order-in-council without many people knowing about it.”

You'll notice that this doesn't apply to any breach of the security perimeter, it apples to being close to it. Insisting on your rights regrading probable cause before submitting to a search is now a crime in and of itself.

This was done in secret and by regulation, which is antithetical to a country that is supposed to be governed by the rule of law. Criminal acts are defined by the legislature and passed into law, which decidedly didn't happen here. McGuinty's Cabinet did this all on their lonesome, without any input from anyone.

To say that this is unconstitutional is to understate the matter greatly. Firstly, rights - such as those governing probable cause and freedom from interference - are just that, rights. They are not privileges, subject to government whim. That's to say nothing about the right to freedom of assembly. Remember, these regulations apply to five meters outside of the security zone, where you would expect the zillions of protesters currently in the city to assemble.

If you're going to subject folks to arrest and conviction for something that isn't a crime (because this is a regulation and not a law that we're discussing), it would have been greatly helpful to advise the public of it. To do this in secret leads to no other conclusion that McGuinty and Blair want to arrest a lot of people, rather than provide security.

Another neat circumvention of democracy is that Toronto's mayor, David Miller, was as in the dark about this as the rest of us were. The chief of police - a municipal officer - went around the mayor and city council, to which he's at least supposed to be nominally accountable.

There's more at the link.

The Toronto Globe and Mail opined:

The Ontario government was more than just heavy-handed and oppressive in giving police wide powers at the G20 Summit in Toronto – it was sneaky, too. With no forewarning, no chance of debate, no time for a court challenge, it quietly declared the downtown area within the security fence an “island of non-constitutionality,” as a civil liberties lawyer describes it. The secrecy is nearly as bad as the substance. While the state has a right to prevent violence, what right has it to pre-empt debate and challenge?

. . .

Police in Canada don't typically have the right to stop people and demand their name and address, and an explanation of their purpose in being there, as they do under the Public Works Protection Act invoked for the summit. (What public works are being protected here, by the way?) Police don't have an automatic right to search people and their vehicles, to refuse permission for them to enter an area and use force to stop them. People can't usually be sentenced to two months in jail for failing to abide by these otherwise non-existent duties. An increased need for security at international summits isn't enough to justify these rules; the right to expression needs protection, too, when the world's leaders are at hand.

. . .

Government has no civil liberties watchdog as such; it is, however, obliged to act in conformity with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Its behaviour can be challenged in court. That may yet happen if arrests begin to pile up. But in such a short event, the damage to freedom of assembly and expression may have been done. Government itself has a duty to be vigilant, not just against radicalized protesters, but against its own temptation to compromise individual freedom.

Again, there's more at the link.

Toronto's Chief of Police tried to defend the additional powers he requested from the provincial government, but doesn't seem to have convinced many people. The police position has been made worse by the blatant falsity of many of their claims about items confiscated from passers-by. The Toronto Globe and Mail noted that many of the 'weapons' seized from alleged 'demonstrators' were not what they seemed.

Toronto Police staged a display of weaponry to demonstrate “the extent of the criminal conspiracy” among hard-line G20 protesters, but several of the items had nothing to do with the summit.

Facing criticism for their tactics, police invited journalists on Tuesday to view a range of weapons, from a machete and baseball bat to bear spray and crowbars.

Chief Bill Blair, who told reporters the items were evidence of the protesters’ intent, singled out arrows covered in sports socks, which he said were designed to be dipped in a flammable liquid and set ablaze.

However, the arrows belong to Brian Barrett, a 25-year-old landscaper who was heading to a role-playing fantasy game when he was stopped at Union Station on Saturday morning. Police took his jousting gear but let Mr. Barrett go, saying it was a case of bad timing.

In addition to the arrows – which Mr. Barrett made safe for live-action role playing by cutting off the pointy ends and attaching a bit of pool noodle covered in socks – police displayed his metal body armour, foam shields and several clubs made of plastic tubing covered with foam and fabric.

Mr. Barrett said he was “appalled” at the placement of his chain-mail beneath a machete. He regularly takes public transit from his Whitby, Ont., home to Centennial Park to play the game, called Amtgard, while wearing the 85-pound armour and is worried people will think: “Oh my God, that’s one of the terrorists from G20.”

Police also displayed a crossbow and chainsaw seized in an incident on Friday that they said had no ties to the summit. When asked, Chief Blair acknowledged they were unrelated, but said “everything else” had been confiscated from demonstrators.

On Wednesday, however, Michael Went and Doug Kerr e-mailed a letter to Chief Blair saying their bamboo poles may have been included in the exhibit. As they headed to a picnic to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots on Sunday morning, police seized seven or eight of the long poles, citing the G20 summit. The couple had planned to use the poles to fly a rainbow flag and decorate the park.

“It makes you wonder what are the other things that they’ve displayed [that] were taken from people on the street that weren’t doing anything wrong?” asked Mr. Kerr, a 42-year-old management consultant.

Julian Falconer, a Toronto lawyer representing four independent journalists in summit-related police complaints, called the display of unrelated objects a “public-relations exercise [that] borders on the absurd.”

More at the link, as usual.

Sounds like heavy-handed, undemocratic police conduct to me . . . eerily reminiscent of the habit of some US law enforcement agencies of sending armored, heavily-armed SWAT teams to make arrests on the flimsiest of evidence, causing injury and death to innocent persons, all because they couldn't be bothered to do things the usual way, gathering evidence and making arrests using normal police powers.

Shame on all those who made it possible, and all those trying to justify or excuse it. This is no way to exercise the 'rule of law'.

Peter