[Peace-discuss] Montreal’s anti-protest law Being Defeated through Solidarity in the Streets

Tue Oct 28 09:20:33 EDT 2014

  Montreal Protest Law Is Being Defeated By Ongoing Protest

manifestation_du_14_avril_2012_a_montreal_-_02_0
Resist! <http://www.popularresistance.org/category/resist/> Canada 
<http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/canada/>, Civil Disobedience 
<http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/civil-disobedience/>, Freedom of 
Speech and Assembly 
<http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/freedom-of-speech-and-assembly/>, 
Law <http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/law/>, Montreal 
<http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/montreal/>
By Macho Philipovic, www.montreal.mediacoop.ca 
<http://montreal.mediacoop.ca/story/p-6-being-defeated-through-solidarity-streets/31991>
October 27th, 2014
   Powered by Translate <https://translate.google.com>

    Being Defeated through Solidarity in the Streets

Print Friendly 
<http://www.printfriendly.com/print?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularresistance.org%2Fmontreal-protest-law-is-being-defeated-by-ongoing-protest%2F>

    P-6 Is Being Defeated through Solidarity in the Streets

After longstanding speculation about whether Montreal’s anti-protest 
by-law P-6 can more effectively be challenged at theballot box 
<https://www.facebook.com/notes/jaggi-singh/some-reminders-about-%C3%A9quipe-bergeron-and-projet-montr%C3%A9al/10151657227626946> or 
in the courts 
<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>, 
a court decision released on Thursday suggests that the answer is 
neither: sustained mass action and solidarity in the streets 
<http://www.clac-montreal.net/en/against-P6> itself may be straining the 
court system to the point that P-6 will become unenforceable.

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.

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:

    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)

The judge lamented what he called a “Gordian Knot” that makes it 
impractical to prosecute P-6 tickets handed out /en masse/.

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 /en masse/ 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.

Last week, Anarchopanda and Jaggi Singh announced that the city is 
spending over $100,000 in legal fees alone 
<http://montreal.mediacoop.ca/newsrelease/31910> 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 class action lawsuits 
<http://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/5964> against its enforcement of 
P-6, such as the $21-million class action 
<http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Court+accepts+class+action+lawsuit+against+Montreal+police+tactics+during+2012+student/10154682/story.html> that 
was certified in August to proceed to trial.

By-law P-6 traces back to the 1970s, but during the /printemps 
érable/ 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.

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 
police raid of the Sex Garage 
<http://dailyxtra.com/ideas/montreals-sex-garage-raid-watershed-moment> made 
it impossible for conditions on protests to be enforced.

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.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20141028/74c66467/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: manifestation_du_14_avril_2012_a_montreal_-_02_0.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 68228 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20141028/74c66467/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: google_logo_41.png
Type: image/png
Size: 2357 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20141028/74c66467/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: pf-button.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 1848 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20141028/74c66467/attachment-0001.gif>