Protesting is now effectively illegal in Toronto
City Council spits on civil rights
I turn my back for one minute, and suddenly protest is illegal in the City of Toronto. Well, effectively illegal, in every meaningful sense of the word.
Today, Toronto City Council voted to impose a bubble-zone bylaw, restricting protest with 50 metres of any building fulfilling the role of a childcare centre, a place of worship, or a school, if that building files with the city to impose an “Access Area”.
This was initially a “mere” 20 metres, before a motion by Councillor James Pasternak of York Centre expanded it to fifty, which would displace protest from anywhere in the vicinity of the block. Instead of motions that would narrowly tailor the restrictions on civil rights, motions were passed by Council to expand the violations.
As per Motion 4c, moved by Councillor Rachel Chernos Lin for Don Valley West, no person inside an Access Area may “perform or attempt to perform an act of discouragement concerning a person’s attendance at, use of, or attempts to attend or use” the building.
This has obvious negative consequences. For example, if the reverend of a church protected by one of these Access Areas sexually abuses a child, and you protest outside the church discouraging people from taking their own children inside, you have now violated the bylaw, and can be fined heavily.
Further, even if the building is not primarily for the purpose of childcare or religion, according to Motion 4d, also moved by Ms. Chernos Lin, it can still be subject to the restrictions of an Access Area. This means that a large corporation engaged in unethical conduct could use an employee daycare as a shield from protest around their entire campus.
And according to Motion 4f, again moved by Ms. Chernos Lin, an Access Area must be established whenever the city receives a request from the owner of one of these buildings. An Access Area lasts for a total of one year, according to Motion 4g, moved once more by Ms. Chernos Lin, and is infinitely renewable for further one-year terms. There is effectively no limit on the ability of a property owner to file for an Access Area.
Councillor Josh Matlow of Toronto—St. Paul’s attempted to move Motion 6b, which would limit the Access Area to only restrict protest when the building is being used for its “primary purpose”, but this failed. They also rejected his Motion 6c, to explicitly protect Charter activities by protestors, including freedom of expression.
These motions failed, and they really give the game away. This is not about safety or bigotry, it is entirely about protecting the powerful from public scrutiny.
You see, people are not merely protesting outside synagogues because they are Jewish. Protests are happing because synagogues, in a disgrace to our Jewish traditions, are hosting real estate auctions for illegal settlements in the West Bank built on stolen Palestinian land.
That’s fully deserving of protest! You don’t get to use our religion as a shield for doing shitty things! People have every right to protest a place of worship when that place of worship does something bad!
But the majority of City Council disagrees. With sixteen votes in favour, including Mayor Olivia Chow, and only nine votes against, the bylaw was passed as described above, and now “Access Areas” will spread like a cancer across the city, making entire swaths of public streets illegal to protest in.
Full credit to Councillors Ainslie, Bravo, Fletcher, Malik, Matlow, Moise, Morley, Myers and Perks for voting no on this bylaw. There weren’t enough of them to make a difference, but they tried.
This bylaw is a joke, one which will immediately be overturned upon Charter challenge, because it cannot even hope to pass the Section 1 test for reasonable limits. But someone will have to take it to court before that occurs.
So if any of you are feeling bold enough? Please, be my guest.
There is no stolen land.