Thank you.
I'll speak from the perspective of being an on-the-ground public order commander.
I understand that there are avenues in the Criminal Code that touch on wearing a disguise while committing an indictable offence. I'm not a legal expert, but I know that the threshold is higher when you're wearing a disguise when committing an indictable offence under the Criminal Code. The threshold is much higher.
What we're looking at is the safety of people who want to come down and protest, bring their children to show them how to express themselves on a position they feel strongly about, and not be hijacked by a small cluster of people who are bent on wearing facial coverings to either intimidate a point of view or hijack the event for their own ends. As a police officer, as an on-the-ground commander, I don't have the tools to expediently, concisely, and surgically go in and have the strength of a tool to mitigate and diffuse that path towards taking that protest in a different direction. We see that now more and more.