Tense demonstrations in Quebec

Photo: Jacques Boissinot The Canadian Press Police officers in riot gear patrol around the Quebec Legislative Assembly, where thousands of people were protesting COVID-19 restrictions, in Quebec City, 2022.

Sébastien Tanguay in Quebec City

Published and updated on September 27

• Ville de Québec

The Quebec City Police Department (SPVQ) is assuming “excessive power” in the conduct of the demonstrations, according to several community organizations in the capital. According to them, the cause is a regulation adopted last year that opens “all sorts of loopholes” and undermines the fundamental right to express oneself and mobilize.

On June 1, about a hundred demonstrators made their voices heard in front of Parliament on the sidelines of a rally organized by the Québec-Vie campaign. “Barely five minutes after their arrival,” laments the Regroupement des groupes de femmes de la région de la Capitale-Nationale (RGF-CN), “a worker was violently restrained and given a ticket for crossing the street.”

“Why this ticket when the street was closed to traffic ?” asks the protester who was fined, Anne-Valérie Lemieux Breton.

On September 15, the Comité logement d’aide de Québec Ouest (CLAQO) organized a convoy to visit, on board a bus, the “Wild West for tenants” that, according to the organization, the Sainte-Foy sector has become.

“There were barely twenty of us. However, three patrol cars and about fifteen police officers were deployed to follow us,” denounces Charles-Olivier P. Carrier, a CLAQO organizer. “I guarantee you that all the participants did not feel safe. »

A recent “festive and family” demonstration also did not escape the SPVQ’s attention. On September 18, a few dozen people, including children and people with reduced mobility, gathered near a school to demand better security on rue Marie-de-l’Incarnation, a four-lane artery where motorists disobey speed limits in school zones on a daily basis.

“A few minutes before the march began, two police officers intervened to tell the protesters to stay on the sidewalk and that anyone who marched in the street would receive a ticket,” explains Naélie Bouchard-Sylvain, from the Regroupement d’éducation populaire en action communautaire des régions de Québec et de Chaudière-Appalaches (REPAC). This undermined the message and one of the protesters’ means of expression: the occupation by pedestrians of the space reserved for cars. »

Once again this week, the dockers at the Port of Quebec, who have been locked out for more than two years, denounced the “abusive police repression” deployed during a demonstration where the SPVQ allegedly demanded, according to Frédéric Brisson of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), to limit themselves to pedestrian crossings.

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A decried by-law

All of these police interventions draw on the same source: by-law 2817, adopted in 2023 by the city council. This aims to “ensure the safety of people” during gatherings on public roads, “while respecting the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly. »

It provides that “any person must, during a gathering on the roadway of a public highway, comply with an order from a police officer asking them to move from the place where they are for safety reasons.”

This regulation succeeded its predecessor, 19.2, adopted in the wake of the Maple Spring, only to be deemed unconstitutional by the Court of Appeal in 2019.

From its inception, the new regulation 2817 was the subject of challenges from Quebec organizations. “We challenged it as soon as it was filed,” explains Josyanne Proteau, coordinator of the Quebec section of the Ligue des droits et libertés. “For us, it was clearly a political desire to control the way in which freedom of expression can be exercised in public spaces. »

For the past year, she has observed “a clear escalation” between the SPVQ and the protesters in Quebec City. “Demonstrations increasingly have to take place on the sidewalk in the name of security,” observes Josyanne Proteau. “If the SPVQ lacks the personnel to properly supervise street gatherings, that’s no reason to restrict the population’s freedom to demonstrate.”

“Not only are the regulations problematic in themselves, but the police don’t even respect them,” laments Naélie Bouchard-Sylvain of REPAC. “Even when we give the route of a demonstration, the police allow themselves to change the route at the last minute, to rush us in time… The SPVQ allows itself to decree that if there are not 50 or 200 of us, we can’t take to the streets. It’s completely arbitrary!” »

The SPVQ defends its action and emphasizes that its police officers respect the fundamental right to demonstrate guaranteed by the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

“Our mission is primarily to facilitate and protect the right to demonstrate legally and peacefully,” it wrote in response to Devoir. It also consists, the email adds, in “limiting the scope of the obstacles to traffic and economic life.”

“We have confidence”

Several organizations had already brought their grievances to the doors of city hall on June 18 to request the repeal of the by-law. They plan to perform again on October 1st.

The current administration refuses to give in to their request. This regulation, assures the advisor responsible for police files, Marie-Josée Asselin, seeks first and foremost to ensure the safety of the population.

“The regulation does not apply differently depending on the causes defended or the people who support them,” she assures. We wanted a regulation that, precisely, applied equally to everyone, whether they are truckers on Parliament Hill or families near a school.”

Now that several organizations are denouncing a regulation that discourages them from mobilizing and making their voices heard, the administration does not intend to change its approach. “No one would want a city where politicians tell police officers how to do their job,” she believes. “We have confidence in our police department, its officers are trained for this and they supervise about 300 demonstrations each year without any problem.”

In Josyanne Proteau’s eyes, however, politicians cannot “exonerate themselves” from a regulation “that opens all sorts of breaches” in constitutional freedoms.

“The City,” she concludes, “has a very clear responsibility in this. I don’t think it can shirk its responsibilities.”