Evidence of meeting #33 for Justice and Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was assembly.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank both our witnesses for their presentations.
Chief Graham, I have a quick question. Are you here as a representative of the Victoria police force or as an individual?
12:15 p.m.
Chief Constable, Victoria Police Department
I am simply here at the request of Mr. Richards and this committee to give evidence.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC
Okay, but you're not there as a representative of a group. You're there as chief of the Victoria Police?
12:15 p.m.
NDP
Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC
That's okay. That's not a deterrent or anything; it's still very valuable.
After reading the bill of my colleague Blake Richards, I'm not sure it would help us attain the objectives that you also just spoke to us about. Chief Graham, I don't think you're telling us that people can never take part in a peaceful demonstration without sometimes having something on their face that makes it absolutely impossible to recognize them. If someone wears a Vancouver Canucks mask to celebrate a Vancouver Canucks victory, I wouldn't be able to recognize them. That person might not have any harmful intentions. In fact, that person is simply a fan of the team and wants to express it. I don't think you're saying that we can never do this. It's just in the context of a riot and unlawful assembly. Are we agreed on that?
12:20 p.m.
NDP
Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC
Very good.
I am very concerned about public safety. I see what's going on in Quebec right now. I saw what happened in Toronto and in Vancouver, and there will probably always be these kinds of things. I understand that, allowing people to express themselves and assemble peacefully becomes a challenge when things get out of hand and the situation becomes difficult to control.
How do you think this bill will be more helpful than section 351 of the Criminal Code? I'm having difficulty seeing how this could be the case. How will you make the distinction? If these legislative measures existed, could you have made more arrests in Vancouver? I'm not getting it. It isn't clear. How is it possible, since you weren't able to catch the members of the Black Bloc? When we see them in action, we take them, remove them from the crowd and arrest them These would be good arrests because we know what these people are doing. If we weren't even able to arrest them, how will we be able to assess a person who is protesting peacefully, perhaps with a scarf over the face or in a V for Vendetta mask because he or she wants to make a point and so on?
12:20 p.m.
Chief Constable, Victoria Police Department
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.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Thank you, Chief.
I wonder if you could expand a little bit on how this will give you the additional tool to deter and de-escalate. How will it help with the public safety? Can you expand on that a bit? Perhaps you've used up your time explaining that, but is there anything more you can add to that?
12:25 p.m.
Chief Constable, Victoria Police Department
Most groups who protest, certainly in Vancouver and Victoria, come to the police. We have meetings ahead of time. We set boundaries and guidelines. The huge majority of them are peaceful.
This would simply send a message. We would do proactive marketing, if and when this legislation is passed, to explain to people that these are the rules by which we allow protests. We adopt, as most departments do now, an “adopt a protester” method. When protestors show up and mask up, we assign an officer to walk with them—so they're side by side—until they can gather the impunity of a larger crowd, and that helps. We would simply use this kind of a tool to proactively market and advertise the fact that what they're about to think about is unlawful.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
It's almost a well-known protocol as to what the behaviour could be.
12:25 p.m.
Chief Constable, Victoria Police Department
We usually take out ads. We rely on our media to explain the rules behind it, when we know there's going to be a large protest—and we know ahead of time. Vancouver has hundreds and hundreds of protests per year. Because we're the provincial capital in Victoria, we enjoy a large number, too. This kind of legislation on the books would have certainly a calming effect on our business community and would send a very clear message to those who are up to unlawful behaviour. It would send them a clear message that what they're thinking about doing is unlawful and we'll be there to make arrests.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
A lot has been said about the slowness in laying the charges in the most recent riot. Had this bill been in place, do you think it would have been helpful in bringing the perpetrators to justice more quickly?
12:25 p.m.
Chief Constable, Victoria Police Department
I think so, but I wouldn't.... There are a number of reasons the charges were slow in coming.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
12:25 p.m.
Chief Constable, Victoria Police Department
No.
B.C. has a unique charge approval system to get people before the courts, not like other provinces have. It's simply different. But any tool, especially a tool like this, would have been extremely helpful had it been in place prior to the Vancouver incident.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
I'd like to ask Mr. Gauthier a question.
You talked about the damage to businesses. Do you have an estimate of the amount of time it took businesses to get up and going again, and what kind of economic loss they would have incurred as a result of the riots? Do you have data on that?
12:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association
Unfortunately, I don't, but I have a couple of anecdotes. We know that some businesses took literally months before they were able to reopen, because their businesses had been trashed in the interior. For example, a coffee shop near the epicentre of where the riots started was literally closed down for a number of months before it could reopen, as a result of the riot. So there are some individual situations that I'm familiar with, but unfortunately, I don't have an aggregate number for you.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Of course in tandem with that, some municipal authorities had to take some steps, and I guess, undergo some expenditures to clear up behind the riot, as well. Do you have any sense of the time taken to clear up the streets in a suitable fashion? There was disruption; there's no doubt about it.
12:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association
I'm not aware of what the municipal costs were, but I can assure you that our organization literally had to shift gears. We spent literally the next couple of months working—we still are working—with a number of the riot victims who are dealing with the trauma they suffered as a result. We're linking them to the resources that are available.
There's a restorative justice event that's happening next week. We're working with a local group focused on restorative justice, in terms of trying to find a way to help the victims. Obviously, without being overly critical, the criminal justice system has been slow in terms of dealing with rioters. So they're becoming very disillusioned and frustrated by this.
Certainly, as the Canucks were in round one of the playoffs and didn't get beyond that, the stress levels had gone up significantly among our members. They were concerned about the repeat of a riot, including up until last week when the Canucks were eliminated in the playoffs.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
What do you think would have happened had they won?
You don't have to answer that.
