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<h1>Montreal Protest Law Is Being Defeated By Ongoing Protest</h1>
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<span class="cat-date-line3"> <a
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<span class="cat-date-line4">By Macho Philipovic, <a
href="http://montreal.mediacoop.ca/story/p-6-being-defeated-through-solidarity-streets/31991"
target="_blank">www.montreal.mediacoop.ca</a><br>
October 27th, 2014</span><br>
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<h2 class="nodetitle" style="color: #000000;"> Being Defeated
through Solidarity in the Streets</h2>
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<h2 class="nodetitle" style="color: #000000;">P-6 Is Being Defeated
through Solidarity in the Streets</h2>
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<p>After longstanding speculation about whether Montreal’s
anti-protest by-law P-6 can more effectively be challenged at
the<a style="font-weight: bold; color: #336699;"
href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/jaggi-singh/some-reminders-about-%C3%A9quipe-bergeron-and-projet-montr%C3%A9al/10151657227626946"
rel="nofollow">ballot box</a> or in <a style="font-weight:
bold; color: #336699;"
href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/jaggi-singh/contestation-de-la-constitutionnalit%C3%A9-du-r%C3%A8glement-anti-manifestation-p-6-p-6-by/10151696954621946"
rel="nofollow">the courts</a>, a court decision released on
Thursday suggests that the answer is neither: sustained mass
action and solidarity <a style="font-weight: bold; color:
#336699;" href="http://www.clac-montreal.net/en/against-P6"
rel="nofollow">in the streets</a> itself may be straining the
court system to the point that P-6 will become unenforceable.</p>
<p>On Thursday 23 October 2014, Judge Gilles R. Pelletier of the
Municipal Court of the City of Montreal dismissed the cases of
twenty-seven self-represented people who had been detained and
given P-6 tickets at a demonstration on 21 April 2012. The cases
were not dismissed because the judge recognized a violation of
the protesters’ rights to assembly, expression, or protest, but
because there were simply too many cases for the system to
effectively process. Pelletier ended his decision by suggesting
that P-6 cases are at risk of bringing the rest of the trials
heard by the court to a crawl.</p>
<p>Pelletier noted that the defendants had already had to endure
waiting twenty-nine months without their trial being anywhere
near over, and that the prosecution was unable to provide any
plan to bring the trial to a timely conclusion. In his decision,
Judge Pelletier continued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And if no one has a concrete and realistic plan … allowing us
to process these cases within a reasonable delay, will it take
a generous and anonymous benefactor to pay the modest sums at
stake in these cases to stem this massive hemorrhaging of
resources and funds, both public and private? In doing so, a
person might successfully avoid this sabotaging of the
sustained, daily efforts of all the players in our court
system—judges included—to ensure that trials of defendants who
are charged in all other cases, whatever their nature, are
held within a reasonable delay. (my translation from French)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The judge lamented what he called a “Gordian Knot” that makes
it impractical to prosecute P-6 tickets handed out <em>en masse</em>.</p>
<p>When protesters are prosecuted through a multitude of
individual trials, contradictory judgments are sure to result:
One protester will be acquitted while another standing right
next to her will be found guilty without any basis on which to
explain the distinction. For Pelletier, these “contradictory
decisions harm public perceptions of justice.” But when
protesters are tried together <em>en masse</em> to avoid
contradictory verdicts, the trial becomes a “monster”, in
Pelletier’s words, too unwieldy to bring to a close in anything
resembling a timely manner.</p>
<p>Last week, Anarchopanda and Jaggi Singh announced that the city
is spending <a style="font-weight: bold; color: #336699;"
href="http://montreal.mediacoop.ca/newsrelease/31910"
rel="nofollow">over $100,000 in legal fees alone</a> to defend
against their two constitutional challenges to P-6. Legal fees
do not represent the full cost, which in turn is only a fraction
of the cost to attempt to prosecute the tickets and the cost
that will accrue as the city attempts to defend itself against a
number of <a style="font-weight: bold; color: #336699;"
href="http://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/5964" rel="nofollow">class
action lawsuits</a> against its enforcement of P-6, such as
the <a style="font-weight: bold; color: #336699;"
href="http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Court+accepts+class+action+lawsuit+against+Montreal+police+tactics+during+2012+student/10154682/story.html"
rel="nofollow">$21-million class action</a> that was certified
in August to proceed to trial.</p>
<p>By-law P-6 traces back to the 1970s, but during the <em>printemps
érable</em> it was amended to allow police to issue a
fine—which has commonly been in the amount of $637—to any person
at a public gathering for which the itinerary has not been
provided to police, or to any person wearing a mask at a public
gathering.</p>
<p>Before these amendments came into force Montreal police had not
required notice or permits for public gatherings, including
protest. In the early 1990s, police had agreed to allow protests
to take place permit-free after popular mobilization of queer
Montrealers in the wake of the <a style="font-weight: bold;
color: #336699;"
href="http://dailyxtra.com/ideas/montreals-sex-garage-raid-watershed-moment"
rel="nofollow">police raid of the Sex Garage</a> made it
impossible for conditions on protests to be enforced.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether a return to a permit- and
notice-free policy is on the way, but Judge Pelletier’s decision
on Thursday reveals that Montreal’s Municipal Court is feeling
the strain of the hundreds upon hundreds of challenges to P-6
tickets.</p>
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