You've posed about five different questions. I'll try to cover them.
You ask a lot of these brave young police officers who we put in harm's way to protect us during assemblies. It is not a desirable job for the police. Next to domestic violence calls, these are the calls we don't particularly like to go to.
There are very specific tactics used to try to dissuade riotous behaviour. We'll do whatever you ask us to do. I provide training and equipment to the officers. The government provides the legislative tools.
I am simply suggesting this is one additional tool that I think will be extremely helpful for helping us, first, to deter people who have evil intent, who go to peaceful demonstrations and want to trigger those demonstrations to the next level.
You could leave here today, walk down the street with a mask, and you're quite right, you commit no offence. But the moment you pick up a brick or you pick up a Molotov cocktail or marbles to cripple police horses, my thought is that you commit an offence.
Your colleague might be alongside you with a knapsack full of marbles, full of ink-filled eggs, full of 10 or 15 scarves and masks to provide to his colleagues. This would make that an offence under the preventive measures that we enjoy under the Criminal Code.
Every tool that you can give the police I support. The issue that hasn't been talked about a lot when you talk about the police is issues of discretion. Police officers have the right to use discretion no matter what they face and they do it pretty well on a daily basis. When we see offences take place during riots, traditionally the officers don't intervene immediately because the crowd is so large and the police numbers are usually so small that it's simply dangerous. So they rely on technical expertise, film, personal observations, to gather evidence afterwards to make the necessary arrests.
These kinds of provisions would help deter people, in my view, from that participation in the next level where assemblies become unlawful or riotous.