The Globe and Mail's editorial board says that the Trudeau regime has made a good choice. We must hope that the next (Poilievre) government follows through and expands on it:
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There is no Charter right to intimidation
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
PUBLISHED 4 HOURS AGO
The federal government’s decision this month to confront extremists by listing the registered charity Samidoun as a terrorist entity is an important step in making this country safer for all its people. But there are other steps that could and should be taken.
Consider the speech given by a masked woman at a Samidoun event on Oct. 7 this year, in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Samidoun, according to the U.S. State Department, is a “sham charity” – an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is considered a terrorist organization in both Canada and the United States.
“Men who have lived their entire lives under the thumb of one of the most powerful settler colonies in the world built paragliders to fly over walls so high that it blocked out the sun when you stood underneath it,” the speaker said, celebrating the massacre of 1,200 women, men, babies, old people and revellers at a music party, a year earlier, just inside Israel’s border with Gaza.
And then, in the next breath: “Do not wonder how revolution can be done.
We must do it. Death to Canada, death to the United States and death to Israel.”
Here we have what might be termed, for police, the low-hanging poisonous fruit of the post-Oct. 7 era in Canada. Free speech should have a wide ambit, but it is not an absolute right. Indeed, the very first section of Canada’s constitution states that rights are subject to “reasonable limits” that can be justified in a free and democratic society.
The right to free speech is not a license to harm others; counselling an audience to commit terrorist activity is a crime in the Criminal Code, for instance. And this is so whether the incited terrorism happens or not.
Protests by their nature aim to disrupt. The mere fact that protests are inconvenient is not sufficient reason for police to intervene. But as this space has previously argued, police do have a duty to intervene when protests morph into something else, when demonstrators assert control over streets and sidewalks, school board meetings or public skating rinks. And there are already legal tools police can use, without resort to draconian measures.
Freedom of speech is important, as is public safety. But laws on mischief, intimidation, unlawful assembly and disturbing the peace have their place, too.
About that masked revolutionary. As a general principle, masks worn by demonstrators are not and should not be against the law – though to be clear, we don’t like them because they can create a mob-like atmosphere and shield the wearers from accountability.
Wearing a mask to conceal one’s identity during the commission of an offence is itself a crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Police in Toronto laid such a charge just last week, in connection with a pro-Palestinian protest. In that case, police allege that a woman and man, each masked, entered a private building in March, followed a woman and prevented her from entering her workplace, causing her to flee. They were charged with mischief, which the police said meant to obstruct, interrupt or interfere with the lawful use, enjoyment or operation of property.
We do have sympathy for the police, who need to protect public safety and enforce the Criminal Code while also respecting free speech. But some of what has gone on is simply baffling, as when a small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked a man from entering a federal Liberal fundraiser in Toronto’s Yorkville area in March, and police merely watched. Weren’t the demonstrators obstructing property? Didn’t their lawful assembly become unlawful at this point?
Bubble zones around religious institutions, schools and daycares are a worthy idea, striking a reasonable balance that gives room for demonstrations while minimizing the potential for intimidation. Such zones would be akin to those around abortion clinics: opponents have a right to hold up signs with pictures of a dead fetus but not to shove those signs in the face of a woman on her way into a clinic.
The city of Vaughan, north of Toronto, has adopted the bubble-zone approach in response to concerns over intimidation, restricting protests within 100 metres of certain institutions. Both Jewish-Canadian and Muslim-Canadian groups have voiced support for such an approach.
Bubble zones would protect everyone’s right to be free of harassment as they go into community spaces. The right to demonstrate cannot become a licence to intimidate.
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"The right to demonstrate cannot become a licence to intimidate," is exactly right.
I need to repeat myself; not all, not even, I suspect, most
Muslims are out trying to intimidate their fellow citizens; most are just trying to be good citizens and good neighbours.