For the benefit of the G8 leaders, who arrive next month in the Alberta resort of Kananaskis, government authorities have laid on the largest security operation in Canadian history. If the past is anything to go by, the targets of the security operation will include organizations such as Development and Peace, a Quebec social-advocacy group, the National Council of Catholic Women, Greenpeace, Amnesty International and the Canadian Council of Churches, all groups that have engaged in public debate in Canada.
Recent history would suggest, however, that more plausible sources of danger are international terrorism and organized crime. Ahmed Ressam, for example, was arrested in December 1999, trying to smuggle across the border from Canada into the United States enough explosive material to blow up Los Angeles airport. The Hells Angels, meanwhile, have spread throughout the country. Quebec finally nailed Maurice (Mom) Boucher this week on first-degree murder charges in the deaths of two prison guards, but even with 75 Hells Angels behind bars in Quebec, and their leader facing 25 years in prison, another 45 remain active on the outside.
What if the attentions of the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the RCMP's National Security Investigations Section and a variety of provincial and municipal police departments had been trained on organized crime? Would more than 150 Quebecers have died in the biker wars?
While it's true that a relatively small number of protesters have committed violent acts, the forces of law and order in Canada seem to have difficulty drawing a distinction between legitimate democratic dissent, publicly expressed, and criminal activity. As the Kananaskis summit approaches, here is a brief - and hardly reassuring - history of how the state dealt in the past year with legitimate dissent, with examples taken from a series of artaicles by the Ottawa Citizen:
- In May 2001, about 20 students demonstrated peacefully outside Newfoundland's Memorial University convocation hall when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien arrived to receive an honourary degree. As the prime minister walked by, the students turned their backs on him in silent protest against government funding cuts to higher education. Allison North, a member of the Canadian Federation of Students, was one of the students. Before Chrétien arrived in Newfoundland, she told a local newspaper she disapproved of the university's granting him a degree. Shortly afterward, North was questioned by the RCMP.
- In the weeks leading up to April 2001's Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, the RCMP in Quebec visited Development and Peace, a social advocacy organization linked to the Catholic Church, to question people about their summit plans. .
Also in preparation for the Quebec City summit, the RCMP's National Security Investigations Section questioned University of Lethbridge professor Tony Hall, an expert in aboriginal affairs. Hall was questioned about his criticism of free trade agreements and their effects on indigenous peoples.
- In much the same vein, in January 2001, police threatened a group of young people with arrest after they handed out pamphlets denouncing the security fence erected for the Quebec City summit as an affront to civil liberties. Police told the students any group of people numbering more than two would be jailed for unlawful assembly. A month later, plainclothes police in Quebec City arrested three youths for distributing the same pamphlet.
As far as the Quebec City summit was concerned, it would have been more to the point to ask security forces about their plans. A government report found that police were wrong to fire more than 900 rubber bullets and that the use of 6,000 cans of tear gas to subdue protesters at the summit was abusive.
No one has the right to commit acts of violence. But police should not be as unclear as they seem to be that Canadian citizens have the right to take to the streets or mountain passes or any other public place in as many numbers as they deem fit to voice their disapproval of government policy. For the state to behave as though this were not true has nothing to do with public safety. It is an effort at intimidation. It is the desire to stifle freedom of speech. Neither should be tolerated in a free and open democracy such as Canada prides itself on being.
- Janet Bagnall is a Gazette editorial writer. Her E-mail address is jbagnall@thegazette.southam.ca.
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