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| Dissent and Quebec City: FTAA Tens of thousands of demonstrators will soon descend on Quebec City, all with creative ways of grabbing media attention for their particular concern about the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. Here we take a look at several Charter Rights, their history in Canada. We will notice a deep division, a disturbing sense that our leaders’ understandings of or commitment to them is shallow. In the end we will have to ask whether freedom of speech as envisioned by the protesters is what we want for Canada, or if the narrower interpretation of politicians and industrialists is what we want for our nation. I will move from history to the situation on the ground in Quebec City. In the end each Canadian citizen will have to make up his/her own mind. Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms entrenches the right to freedom of expression and association. We each have some idea of what those rights are. Likely our ideas have developed, through watching what has been done in our society. Law does not work that way. It is built in response to actual situations and is based in a cumulative body of thought about justice which goes back thousands of years. In Canada, our rights and freedoms are not inviolable. They are subject to "such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." This language allows the Supreme Court leeway in interpreting limits to those rights. To understand, we must look to the limits placed on freedom of expression, particularly limits to dissent, in our country’s past. To start our look at dissent, we note that the Criminal Code says it is treason to use force or violence to overthrow the government of Canada. Let us note that it is not the intent of any protesters to overthrow the government of Canada. There is another serious threat to the state, sedition. Sedition is the advocacy of the use of force to effect a change in government. It is this definition, which could be applied to protesters so that their very presence could be treated by the government as seditious. While I do not believe the government would own up to believing that the protesters are seditious in their intent, I do believe that the planned treatment of the protesters is as though they were posing seditious threats. The Supreme Court has indicated that demonstrations are not a form of speech, but a collective action and are of the nature of a display of force! (Borovoy, p. 23) The protesters bound for Quebec City oppose as many things as there are groups. Some oppose capitalism. Others are opposed to human rights and workers rights violations, environmental degradation, the erosion of nationalism’s boundaries, even free trade itself. Some may simply want to socialize with other radical liberals, others may want to feel the rush of a face off with the authorities. This last group is a small anti-authority, anti-nationalism, anarchistic group which was well trained for Seattle and caused most of the violence we saw there. They did not seem to be present at the APEC Summit in Vancouver when the RCMP used pepper spray on Canadian citizens who were simply holding up protest signs in sight of the visiting dignitaries - embarrassing our Prime Minister. The Quebec City protesters want to change the attitude of the government and would be willing to change the ruling party to effect a change in policy if that is what it took. They are willing to put pressure, considerable pressure on business and the government to bring about some of these changes. So look at the definitions - they are advocating the use of force to change the government - it is a liberal interpretation of the words - but the interpretation fits the definition of sedition. Force is not always physically violent, it can be political as our history will show. So what’s the history? Let’s look at Joseph Howe in Halifax in 1835. He accused the magistrates of negligence and corruption. A charge of sedition was brought against him. While he defended himself successfully, it is clear that simply disagreeing with the elected or appointed officials and making that disagreement public has been called sedition in our past. William Lyon MacKenzie denounced Upper Canada’s Lieutenant Governor, Sir Francis Bond Head, in June of 1837 when he wrote in his newspaper, The Constitution : "I have exposed their oppressions, their peculations, their tricks of state, their conspiracies against freedom, their hostility to truth, their bribery, favouritism, rottenness and corruption. Canadians I pray that you lend me your aid in continuing this bold, dangerous, but delightful course." (Berger, p. 129) MacKenzie was speaking for thousands of farmers, freeholders of Upper Canada against the merchants, bankers, and lawyers who made up the Family Compact. For these words he was expelled from the Assembly! We may remember that MacKenzie eventually did take up arms and was labelled a traitor. He fled to the States. Louis Real’s dissent was never easy. He was a real in your face type of guy. Yet today we wonder if he ought to be honoured or reviled. During a large part of this century Communists in Canada were considered a seditious group. Belonging to the Communist Party became illegal. The fear of Communism was based on a Marxist belief that communists should promote revolution in capitalist countries. While some communists did promote revolution in Canada, most did not. The fear within the establishment was great enough to trample on all Communists rather than honour the philosophical distinctions between them. In 1918, workers in the metal and building trades went on strike and closed down Winnipeg. Eventually there were 60,000 Canadians on strike across the country. The government viewed the strike as the first step in overthrowing the elected government and installing a Communist regime. The rhetoric which filled the press was not civil discussion. Typical were the comments published in the Manitoba Free Press: "The time has come "to clean the aliens out of this community and ship them back to their happy homes in Europe which vomited them forth a decade ago." (Berger, p. 132) A Royal Commission was struck and reported back in 1919. It determined that there was no evidence of any Communist plot to overthrow the government. The cause of the strike was the plight of workers facing low wages in the face of post war inflation. The people involved were good loyal Canadians. The treatment of Communists by the Canadian government was based in paranoia which clearly led to abuses of our rights which would likely be illegal today. While I say "illegal," I am not implying that such turmoil would go unchallenged. Abuses of power, such as those associated with the APEC Summit in Vancouver, do exist. For many years form 1917 onward, the government saw to it that Unions were tarred with the association of Communism. Under Robert Borden’s tenure as Prime Minister, Section 98 of the Criminal Code was enacted. In part, it reads: "Any association . . . whose professed purpose . . . is to bring about any governmental, industrial, or economic change within Canada by the use of force . . . or which teaches, advocates, advises, or defends the use of force . . . (against) persons or property . . . . in order to accomplish such change, or any other purpose, or which shall by any means prosecute or pursue such purpose . . . or, so shall teach, advocate, advise, or defend, shall be an unlawful association." (Berger, p. 133) While the Sedition laws would have been enough to cover real dangers to Canada, this law widened the governments the ability to condemn trade union activity and the passionate demonstrations of students. There were stringent punishments for violations of Section98. To become an officer, a member or even wear a badge supporting an unlawful organization could bring a sentence of 20 years in prison. The result of this was that some body had to find out which groups should fall under section 98 so that the law could be enforced. The RCMP began spying on Canadians. Years later this caused an uproar and led to the formation of CSIS, which has had its own problems. Clearly there is a strain in Canadian history of paranoia about criticism of the government, the economy and industry. So what is going on in Quebec City - criticism of the government, the economy, and industry. Should we expect radical repression from the government? If history is to be our judge - of course we should. It was not until the early fifties that Communist party affiliation was separated from Union membership by the Supreme Court of Canada. Justice Rand argued with a bare majority. Rand rejected the notion of guilt by association and said that it was not the role of government to ride herd on union leaders for their philosophical beliefs, it was the province of the Canadians who belonged to the union to do so. He wrote: "The Canadian social order rests on the enlightened opinion and reasonable satisfaction of the wants and desires of the people as a whole . . . . to all citizens, we must look for the protection and defence of that security within governmental structure, and in these days on them rests an immediate responsibility for keeping under scrutiny the motives and actions of their leaders." (Berger, p. 154) Rand was an amazing person. In 1957, as the Supreme Court overturned Duplessis’s Padlock Act, he wrote a landmark opinion regarding freedom of expression stating that the government of Canada was one of free open public opinion. To maintain free and open public opinion, he wrote: " . . .demands the condition of a virtually unobstructed access to and diffusion of ideas. . . . Liberty in this is little less vital to man’s mind and spirit than breathing is to his physical existence." (Berger, p. 159) Le Devoir carried the question in response, whether the defence of freedom must go so far as to defend and to respect an alleged right to propagate error . . ." Without the right to propagate error, there can be no true freedom of speech, no real exchange of ideas, writes the great BC Justice, Thomas Berger. (P. 159) Writing in one of the many decisions related to the suppression of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Canada and in Quebec in particular, Justice Rand said: "The only security is steadily advancing enlightenment, for which the widest range of controversy is the sine qua non." (Berger, p. 181) Now here is the point of all this history. There is in the Canadian soul a chasm close to the right of freedom of expression. I do not know enough yet to know just where it came from. But it is there. We have a long penchant for the powerful to protect their power in ways which trample on the rights of those who are different. Oh, one might point to the fact that the examples are old. But alas, my friends, they are not old. When the Supreme Court has to write about it, the issues are not old. When we face the prospect of Quebec City becoming Seattle II we have not outgrown the paranoia nor the willingness to unleash the power of our own police against their fellow Canadian Citizens for the protection of the ruling power and its policies. There is no difference between What Joseph Howe did, what MacKenzie did and what may happen in Quebec City. There is no difference between what brought about section 98 of the Criminal Code and the attitude toward protesters in Quebec City. There is no difference between the media campaign to label the protesters as anarchists and anti-capitalists and the campaigns to defame Communists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The ambivalence toward democracy is not in the protesters - all they are asking for is a voice and transparency in the process of negotiating the FTAA. The ambivalence toward democracy is found in the government and its willingness to stifle what Justice Rand said is "as vital to man’s mind and spirit . . . (as) breathing is to his physical existence." We know that the right to dissent does not mean the right to disobey laws. It is the right to oppose the passage of laws, the right to petition for repeal, amendment or replacement, the right to promote the enactment of different laws, and to campaign for and vote for alternative lawmakers. (Borovoy, p. 19) Aside from this there is the right to dissent. Dissent is forged in the rights of freedom of expression, of association, of assembly. "Democratic principle proclaims that people should be free to speak, write, publish, broadcast, assemble, demonstrate, picket, and organize on behalf of their interests, beliefs, opinions, and points of view." (Borovoy, p. 19) When the government limits these rights, I believe we are in trouble. I strongly believe that it is an unreasonable limit on these rights to say we can not demonstrate within view of visiting dignitaries whose repressive cultures do not allow these freedoms as happened when Prime Minister Cretien bowed to the whims of the leader of Indonesia at the APEC Summit in Vancouver. With that precedent behind us, is it any wonder that there is a chain link fence being erected around the core of Quebec City to keep protesters out of sight of the visiting dignitaries? With the Canadian history of influential people using their power to limit the rights of dissenters to speak, from the Family Compact to this administration, is there any wonder that motel rooms have been bought up with our tax dollars so that protesters will have no place to stay? Is it any wonder that community centres and schools have closed their parking lots to the vehicles of protesters? Is it any wonder that potential protesters are being turned away at the border? Is it any wonder that insurance companies have refused to insure busses going to Quebec City that weekend, so there will be few busses available? What other draconian measures will the government have its hands in? A long standing native protest tradition in this nation is to wear a scarf over part of the face. It has also been a tradition in protests in the States. The scarves prevent identifying people in police surveillance videos. Is it any wonder that St. Foy passed a law preventing the wearing of scarves? This law did not last long, but it certainly has a history in the long struggle by Canadian citizens to stop the RCMP and CSIS from doing mass surveillance on Canadian citizens. That story is not yet over. The strains of conflict over rights run deep in our history and these strains are coming into full conflict at Quebec City. We must take a strong look at one of the traditional remedies, normally available, in the past, to citizens when governments abuse their rights. The first line of defence has always been a free press. A great diminution of the normal protection of democracy provided by a free press surrounds us today. The centralization of the ownership of the press in so few hands, the polemical view of most news, the bottom line mentality, the willingness to demean the mass reputation of protesters and the total avoidance of any form of civil discussion on important issues points to one of the most massive sellouts of our rights. The right to a free press is not a right to be exercised or not at the whim of an editor, a publisher, or the stockholders or owner. It must be a mandated right. If you own a newspaper you have to provide a free press which supports and upholds the other rights in the charter or you are as guilty of undermining those rights as anyone. Today, the power of our society is held in too few hands. Competition is nearly dead. Competition should mean many smaller media outlets competing against each other, printing all the news that is fit to print, engaging in civil discussion and setting community standards for democratic diversity - all the time. We do not have that and it has been many years since we have seen it. Lacking such support for civil discussion and redress of grievances with the government, citizens have no alternative but to turn to protest. For the government to frustrate that protest says it is either blind or it has sold itself out to the highest bidder. And, we must ask, is that what has happened? When we learn that, under the guise of saving Canadians money, the government has turned to the powerful and the rich to make contributions, ranging from $75,000 to have your name and logo attached to a coffee break to $1.5 million for the Prime Minister’s special Saturday Night entertainment. For their largess, the wealthy industrialists from Scotia Bank, Alcan and others, are being granted the right to rub shoulders with and network with the leaders of the 34 nations present at the summit, we must ask - WE MUST ASK - Why are ordinary good citizens locked out and kept at bay by 5000 police? Why are ordinary good citizens who have logical gripes about some of the provisions in the FTAA as they had about some provisions in NAFTA or the proposed MAI, being blocked out by a nine foot chain link fence? To be fair we have to recognize that there has been some access to the process over the past several years by NGO’s and several groups which disagree with provisions in the agreements. There are forums the week before Quebec City at which groups may make presentations. There is, however, no evidence that any provisions which might protect workers but cost industry more money have been taken seriously. There is no indication that any environmental regulations which might cost industry have been preserved. There is no indication that corporations will accept responsibility for bad products, instead they are guaranteed the right to sue for lost profits or character assassination. There is no indication that human rights which might cost industry money to uphold will be observed. Why would our government support such an agreement? Why would the newspapers place a near total blackout on news about the provisions of such an agreement? Collusion my friends. The rich sleep together and get richer while the poor get poorer. The gap grows. Friends this may seem like a political diatribe to you, but I assure you it is not. If you are visiting here, rest assured that in the words of William Lyon MacKenzie it may be a dangerous, but it is a delightful course. It is delightful because it upholds so many of our cherished religious principles - the practice of democracy in human relations, the support for dignity and worth of all people, the nature of the interconnected web of all existence, justice, equity and compassion in human relations, a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, the right of conscience, the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all - My GOD which of these cherished principles are we willing to give up to allow this travesty. Not one my friends - that is why we preach about it. That is why we have groups working on this issue along with other churches and other groups nation wide - nay world wide. We are in league with indigenous groups the world over who are trampled by those seeking their land. We are in league with the people living in the slums of Sao Paulo, the sewer children in Rio De Janeiro, the Zapatistas of Mexico, and the Mohawks of Akwasasne. Our religion has historically been a prophetic religion, working for rights and dignity, worldwide. Ours is a religion of grand vision which believes that each person will take responsibility, as they are able, for supporting the rights we wish to enjoy in this world. It is our ethical way. Friends it is time for me to stop. I am concerned, yes for the protesters and what will await them, but even more so for the soul of this nation, torn again by the rift between the powerful and the voice of the people. Our historical path is not clear. We struggle with this issue. We are given this month an opportunity for the government to clearly and vehemently come down on the side of its people and make this an accessible place to practice our freedoms. Not to do so, not to do so with great hospitality, is to make a sham of our freedoms in front of the entire world. We are being treated as though we are committing sedition by questioning the leadership of our elected officials. With an opportunity to showcase our democracy to the world being squandered, I am upset. What is happening weighs deeply on my heart. References: Berger, Thomas R., Fragile Freedoms (Clark, Irwin & Co.: Toronto) 1982. Borovoy, A. Alan, When Freedoms Collide (Lester & Orpen Dennys:Toronto) 1988. |
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