This week's Calgary Herald column from yours truly looks at the debate over how Toronto Police responded to G20 protests, and why conservatives who are otherwise pro-freedom and pro-liberty are so willing to defend police actions:
...Just as the Charter guarantees freedom of expression, it also guarantees us freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association.
Why then are those who bemoan the overreach and intrusiveness of government so often willing to give police a pass? Police forces, after all, are merely an extension of the state.
It can lead to interesting contradictions. Take the pro-police conservatives who oppose to the national long-gun registry despite the fact that the two major national police organizations both endorse it.
The case against the registry, though, is based in part on the principle of less state intrusion. The fact that branches of the state wish to keep it in a way proves the point.
But it also demonstrates that the state does not always have the best interests of individual liberty and freedom in mind.
Still, a poll released late last week found that 66 per cent of Canadians believe the police response to the G20 demonstrations was justified.
Was it the part where police stood by as private property was smashed and police cruisers were torched? Or was it the part when peaceful protestors, reporters, and passers-by were rounded up and detained in the largest mass arrest in Canadian history? The poll didn’t specify.
According to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, nearly one thousand people were detained. Peaceful protests were abruptly and violently broken up. Many more people were subjected to arbitrary searches, violating yet another Charter freedom (Section 8, if you’re wondering).
Defenders of the police response put the blame for all of the above on the actions of violent protestors. It’s unclear why an underreaction justifies an overreaction –it merely compounds the original error and leaves us with the worst of both worlds: smashed windows and violated freedoms.
It was of course virtually guaranteed that we would see these violent elements. Why, then, did we allow protests in the first place?
Well, this is still Canada, after all. The authorities concluded they could deal with any violence and still respect the freedom to peacefully protest. Why must liberties pay the price for such a miscalculation?
The violent or otherwise illegal actions of a few should not be an excuse to infringe on the freedoms of everyone else.
There have been, for instance, elements of the pro-life movement who have committed vandalism or threatened – and even committed – acts of violence. That should not give the state license to restrict the freedoms of law-abiding pro-lifers.
Yet it so often does.
Just ask Linda Gibbons, the peaceful pro-life grandmother who has spent the last 500 days – and approximately half of the last fifteen years – in prison. Her “crime” is having protested within 60 feet of a Toronto abortion clinic. Her “protest” involves asking women approaching the clinic if they wish to talk to someone. Those who say no are left alone.
The list can and does go on and on: a gay teenager was assaulted, so no criticism of “the gay agenda” must be published anywhere. Some mosque’s window somewhere was broken, so let’s make it illegal to draw cartoons of Mohammed. Some gangbangers shot it out last night, so let’s ban handguns.
In such instances, conservatives are quick to come down on the side of freedom. Is that in part because those whose rights are being infringed also happen to be ``conservative” to some degree?
Have we all forgotten the quote which became so ubiquitous during our free speech debate: “I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it”?
Conservatives should reconsider their support for the actions of Toronto Police. It was clownish and clueless anti-capitalists this time, but it’s easy to imagine a similar fate befalling a rally of gun owners or pro-lifers. What will the objection be then?
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