The Communist Party of Canada’s Central Committee calls for democratic‑minded people to join in the condemnation of Montréal municipal bylaw P‑6 and support the ongoing court challenge against this law. Montréal is on the front line of a much broader, reactionary attack on democratic and civil rights which must be reversed.
Bylaw P‑6 was created during, and in response to, the Québec student strike of 2012. Refusing to negotiate in good faith, and responding to the outpouring of public support, the provincial Charest Liberal government imposed draconian legislation under the title of Bill 78 which grossly violated civil and democratic rights by effectively outlawing all student protest and blocking any attempt of solidarity actions by the labour movement.
It is well known that this tactic further discredited the Charest Liberals. Public pressure helped trigger an election in which the Liberals were defeated, and the new minority Parti Québecois government struck Bill 78 from the books.
What is not well know is that on the municipal level, both Montréal and Québec City either adapted or adopted city bylaws mirroring Bill 78 ‑ and that these were never struck from the books.
In Montréal the city substantially amended bylaw P‑6, “a bylaw on the prevention of disturbances of the peace, public security, and public order, and on the use of public space.” (This bylaw was originally the notorious Reglement 3926 from 1969, in response to the police and firefighters’ strike of that year.) In Québec City the bylaw was entitled RVQ 1091 “for peace and good order.” The key provisions of both bylaws are an escalating series of fines (in Montréal, starting at over $600) for the first offense and continuing to several thousand dollars. Participants in a any gathering of more than three people which impedes traffic, did not submit its route for advance approval to the police, or whose faces are covered ‑ including a puppet costume, winter scarf, etc. ‑ can be fined. (The police can also refuse the route given to them).
To enforce this bylaw the police use the internationally condemned form of mass arrest known as “kettling.” Kettling is a type of detention and usually lasts for two to four hours or longer surrounded by police. The arrested are squeezed tightly together by police lines, denied water or toilet access, subject to intrusive and abusive police searches, and kept out in the cold ‑ or heat. Often kettling will begin before the protest actually starts. This means that, whether or not the person is proven innocent or guilty in the end, a certain level of punishment has already been handed out, for a legal infraction equivalent to a parking ticket. The law has no justification and is often accompanied by police brutality. Literally thousands of protesters have now been kettled and fined now in the city of Montréal, in a wide range of protests which have in common basically one basic theme, that they were organized by young people. Late this summer, a total of eight class‑action lawsuits against the city of Montréal on behalf of over 1,600 ticketed protesters were approved to go forward to the Québec Superior Court. (This is just a small part of the total people who have been detained or arrested under these laws). Included in the court challenge are members of the Parti Communiste du Québec and la Ligue de la jeunesse communiste.
Since the approval, charges were suddenly dropped for some 518 students arbitrarily arrested under P‑6 during the student strike. While not compensating for the violation of their rights, it does show that the bylaw is illegal and unconstitutional. The next step must be getting rid of the law itself, which is the joint demand of many organizations from across Québec including trade unions, student groups, feminist organizations, housing activists, human rights groups and the Québec Bar Association.
The Communist Party expresses its continued and long‑standing full support in the struggle for democratic and civil liberties, and the necessity for people’s movements to be able to mobilize on an immediate basis with “permission”. All across the country, labour and social movements face reactionary city governments and police forces which attempt to restrict the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ‑ whether it comes to putting up a poster, to picketing on a public sidewalk, or marching down a street.
Heavy‑handed police tactics are increasing across Canada. Last fall there was public outcry when members of the Elsipogtog First Nation protesting shale gas were assaulted by more than a hundred camouflage‑clad tactical police with assault rifles and attack dogs. Similarly, the mass arrests, “caging” and effective imposition of martial law for three days in the streets of Toronto during the G20 resulted in a limited investigation by the Ontario Ombudsperson, which called abolishment for the legislation supposedly justifying that big scoop. Four years later, the Public Works Protection Act remains on the books, and is still a danger, while a class‑action law suit for the G20 arrestees is still slowly proceeding through the courts.
Further, as the Council of Canadians has exposed, since 2007 the RCMP has been operating an intelligence clearing house called the Government Operations Centre which monitors all known demonstrations across the country, no matter how mundane, and with special emphasis on aboriginal actions.
Therefore Communist Party of Canada calls for mass united action to turn around the serious and intensifying attack on civil and democratic rights:
- Abolish P‑6 and all corresponding municipal bylaws across Québec; * Drop all associated charges and bail conditions for those charged during the student strike under P‑6, the Highway Traffic Code, and various sections of the criminal code;
- Grant amnesty for the protesters who released a small smoke bomb in the subway and have been subsequently charged with the never-before used sections of the Anti‑Terrorism Act, “Hoax regarding terrorist activity”;
- Abolish all laws on the municipal, provincial and federal level prohibiting freedom of assembly, including those requiring special permits or otherwise criminalizing so‑called “spontaneous” protests;
- Require police to explicitly affirm that even when protests are strictly considered “unlawful,” they are equally protected by the right to freedom of peaceful assembly;
- Launch an independent public inquiry into recent crowd control techniques, mass arrests and police violence across Canada ‑ including during the Québec student strike with events like the police riot at Victoriaville, where several protesters sustained traumatic injuries including jaw fractures, permanent blindness and deafness;
- Strengthen and enforce sanctions against police officers convicted of using excessive force;
- Stop the use of agents provocateurs and all forms of entrapment and coercive police techniques;
- Enact a Parliamentary moratorium banning the use of plastic bullets, stun grenades and tasers, and strictly regulating all other so‑called “non‑lethal weapons” such as pepper spray and tear gas;
- Abolish all forms of profiling such as political profiling and the notorious racial‑profiling tactic;
- Abolish the Government Operations Centre and stop “lawful access legislation” which allows online spying without a warrant or safeguards to rights such as covert, real‑time surveillance and access to personal or private information;
- Crackdown on police violence by enacting legislation to put police under public control in every jurisdiction;
- Provide civilian and community control bodies legislative “teeth” to independently investigate and enforce real civilian controls, including over detention and arrest, the use of force, and search and seizure.
The Communist Party has long proposed guaranteeing civil and democratic rights by enshrining them in a radically new Constitution actually written by the peoples and nations of Canada ‑ not big business and its reactionary political parties ‑ and protecting the habeas corpus right, so the people cannot be arbitrarily deprived of liberty.
Statement adopted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada, Sept. 13-14, 2014