Hello. My name is Grayson Lepp. I'm the financial coordinator and executive chair of the Students' Union of UBC Okanagan, Local 3 of the Canadian Federation of Students.
I was arrested after participating in a peaceful rally planned to coincide with the recent G-20 summit in Toronto. Despite what some pundits would have you believe, however, I am neither a thug nor a hooligan. I am in fact a university student about to graduate from the management program at UBC Okanagan. I was in Toronto not to attack the city, as has been alleged, but to highlight the importance of public education here in Canada and around the world.
I was sent by the executive of my students' union to represent some 7,000 students of UBC Okanagan. For my efforts, I became one of the victims of the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. I was placed under arrest on a variety of trumped-up charges and denied my basic civil rights.
My colleague Kirk Chavarie and I arrived in Toronto on the morning of June 26 and took public transit to the University of Toronto, which was the muster point for a rally organized by the Canadian Federation of Students. Upon arriving around 7 a.m. at an empty campus, we were cut off by a police cruiser that jumped the curb onto the sidewalk, blocking our path. The police proceeded to bend us over the hood of the cruiser and rummage through our belongings. They went through our bags and read through all the text messages on our phones. They even confiscated an article of my clothing.
At this point, they told us that if we stayed out of trouble, we would in turn not be troubled by the police. Unfortunately, this turned out to be untrue.
Later that day, we participated in a peaceful, well-planned, and organized rally in favour of public education. We marched through downtown Toronto and we witnessed no acts of violence, neither against people nor against property. When we arrived at Queen and Spadina, we were told that we should go no closer to the site of the G-20 meetings as we would most likely be arrested if we did so. And we certainly did not want to be arrested.
At this point, we were told that the rally was basically over, so we decided to do a little sightseeing. We had dinner at the Red Room pub and then decided to retire for the night. We had been told that the gymnasium owned by the University of Toronto students' society had been set aside as a hostel for visiting students free of charge. So in order to save on costs, we decided to stay there for the night.
The next morning, at around 9 a.m. on June 27, I was awakened at gunpoint. I was kicked and cursed at by an officer in riot gear—I will not go into details of what the officer said unless the committee asks for that—and was told to wake up. I looked around the room to see other people being subjected to the same rough treatment. One young man who had the audacity to ask what was going on was grabbed by the throat and slammed against the wall by a police officer.
At this point, we were told we were being charged with unlawful assembly. We were placed in zap straps, which were briefly taken off so we could be paraded in front of the media in handcuffs. Other than this brief respite, however, we remained in zap straps for around 16 hours.
We were then escorted to the Eastern Avenue Detention Centre and placed in the holding cages there. I say “cages” because I feel that to call them “cells” is an insult to holding cells everywhere. These were cages made of modular fencing, around 10 feet by 20 feet, and despite the small size, these cages were crowded with upwards of 30 people. We were not given toilet paper for over 12 hours. We were not given water for another two hours after that.
I saw detained people denied basic medical treatment, including one diabetic man who was denied access to insulin until he fell into shock. I saw an officer even make a death threat against a man in my cell. What had the man done to provoke the officer? He'd simply had the audacity to ask for more water.
I was detained for approximately 40 hours and never granted a phone call. Luckily, I was able to see a lawyer, one that had been hired on my behalf by the Canadian Federation of Students. She told me that she'd been looking for me for over a day. After around 36 hours, I was told that the charge against me was conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, to wit, mischief over $5,000--not unlawful assembly, as I had previously been told.
Throughout the entire ordeal, I was never treated as a citizen of Canada, a citizen who had the right to engage in peaceful protest. Instead, I was treated as an invading alien whose supposed rights were an inconvenience to the police who were supposed to be there for my safety.