Justice committee  There are occasions when officers, patrolling a crowd prior to an unlawful assembly or as one is about to erupt, will come across individuals with masks, large groups of masks, for no legitimate reason. There is that fine line between encouraging someone not to wear a mask to the

Justice committee  I like the way the bill is drafted now, to include unlawful assemblies and riots. I personally don't think it needs further clarification. If I could jump on the answer from my colleague, the Downtown Victoria Business Association simply verbally has agreed with the position th

Justice committee  That's true, yes.

Justice committee  I think the exemption for officers in these kinds of cases is covered in existing Criminal Code sections. I don't put a lot of faith in the argument that this kind of law would apply to police officers. Officers either working on emergency response teams or in these kinds of si

Justice committee  I would simply encourage the committee to seek that kind of answer from a legal scholar; I am not. I will simply use the common sense approach that was used by your colleague, I think, when describing the escalation of a gathering to a public disturbance, to an unlawful assemb

Justice committee  It depends on the circumstances surrounding one's wearing a gas mask. If one shows up at a lawful demonstration with a gas mask, it sends a message that perhaps one is expecting further trouble. So at this stage you couldn't answer that, but in the middle of a riotous situation o

Justice committee  I'm not sure, but I don't think the legislators should have a lot of sympathy if the defence for wearing a mask is that one doesn't want to appear on camera or be captured by photography. Everywhere a police officer goes nowadays.... I'll give you my own example. Every time I a

Justice committee  There are a wide variety of circumstances that might be of interest. The difficulty in a riot or unlawful assembly is the protection of the officers who are there to protect the public. You know, we're given a certain amount of tools to try our very best to do that, but in realit

Justice committee  I was going to say yes, no, yes, yes, but I can't do that. Of all your question areas, I think the one that requires further discussion is a person who would protest and want to have his face covered because he knows that there may be a foreign government that will cause harm t

Justice committee  I would say that the slowness and the thoroughness that our prosecutors require before a charge is laid are some of the reasons. They require a complete court brief before a charge is even contemplated. So it's a slow process. Our prosecutors are some of the best in the country.

Justice committee  I presented a slightly different version of this bill last year. I think it was looked at by their law amendments committee, but I don't think there's been a formal recommendation on it yet. Certainly the chiefs of the bigger departments who I know personally wholeheartedly suppo

Justice committee  Once again it depends on the circumstances. As was the case I outlined earlier, with the observations of officers who saw people getting prepared to engage in this kind of behaviour, with masks, who are weaving their way in and out of lawful assemblies, and we know what they're a

Justice committee  No, no. I think the strongest rationale, as put forward by Mr. Richards, was certainly the deterrent value and the example this would send to people who are thinking about engaging in a riot. There would be a deterrent effect so that they would not engage. I think there are a nu

Justice committee  As I mentioned in my remarks, I'm aware of New York State and other American jurisdictions. France and the United Kingdom have laws that deal with people who wear masks during assemblies and gatherings.

Justice committee  It's almost a common sense application of the law. You require identity. The courts in Canada require a pretty strict interpretation of identity to successfully prosecute. I know the efforts and the time the Vancouver police have put into identifying the rioters so far is stagger