TEEPEES MUST LEAVE: JUDGE
The province is pleased By A judge’s decision Friday that the protest Camp set up near the legislature must Be taken down. Protesters Are Angry, saying the issues they have Been raising for months still have not Been Addressed. And the police, who have to
The province is “pleased” and the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) is “outraged” with a court decision that orders that the Justice for Our Stolen Children protest camp in Wascana Centre must vacate the land near the Legislative Building.
In a decision released Friday, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Ysanne Wilkinson wrote campers are “restrained from unlawfully using the Land or any land within Wascana Centre ... in contravention of The Wascana Centre Bylaws.”
According to her ruling, protesters are not allowed to establish or maintain a camp, or erect or maintain a tent or other shelter for use as lodging within Wascana Centre.
In an emailed statement, Ken Cheveldayoff, the minister in charge of the Provincial Capital Commission (PCC), said the government is pleased with the court’s decision.
“We expect the Justice for our Stolen Children Camp will abide by the Court Order and remove the teepees and other structures from Wascana Centre within a reasonable time. If they fail to obey the court order, the order gives the Wascana Centre Authority and the police the full authority to remove these structures,” Cheveldayoff said.
The Regina Police Service, which has discretion on how to enforce the court order, issued a release on Friday responding to the decision. It said Chief Evan Bray will take time to consult with all parties involved in the situation, to reach a peaceful resolution.
Bray was not made available for comment.
He had pushed for mediation rather than forcibly removing the protesters. Although police arrested several protesters on June 18, Bray declined to take further police action, in part because the camp is a peaceful protest and does not present a threat to public safety.
While addressing media Friday afternoon, members of the protest camp said it was hard because they feel the issues they are bringing forward remain unheard.
As of Friday, the camp had existed for 192 days.
It was originally established in February following the acquittal of two men charged separately in the deaths of two young Indigenous people, Colten Boushie in Saskatchewan and Tina Fontaine in Manitoba. The protest grew to include more than 12 teepees after the first iteration of the camp was dismantled.
Robyn Pitawanakwat, one of the camp members, said Friday there is an open line of communication with the province and the protesters’ lawyer.
“We will be here through the weekend,” she said. “We just want the focus to remain on the issues we’re bringing forward, on the Indigenous youth, Indigenous children, the ones who are in care, the ones who have died and whose deaths have never been investigated, and the children who are also incarcerated.”
What happens after this weekend, including the potential option of launching an appeal, remains unknown.
FSIN said it was outraged over the decision.
“This ruling only solidifies what we have known for many years; the inherent and treaty rights of our First Nations children are not a priority for Saskatchewan or the Justice System,” said FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron in a news release.
Speaking to reporters Friday afternoon, Mayor Michael Fougere, who chairs the Regina Board of Police Commissioners, said he hadn’t yet read the decision but had learned of it through media reports.
“I just am aware through media outlets that the court has decided to request removal of the teepees from the park, and enforcement of the law is important. The rule of law is important and I suspect that the protesters will abide by the law and remove those structures from the park,” he said.
Asked what might happen if they don’t, the mayor replied: “It’s not for me to decide. The courts made a court ruling and the enforcement is with the Regina Police Service, and we’ll see what happens in the coming days.”
If the campers refuse to comply with the court order, the PCC and the Government of Saskatchewan are authorized to dismantle and remove the camp and belongings of the campers.
“The protesters’ claim to a right to encamp around the clock, on a permanent or indefinite basis, on the location of the West Lawn, is not one that can be endorsed by this court,” Wilkinson wrote.
Police are authorized by the court to stand by and keep the peace, use all reasonable force required, including making arrests, to carry out the court order.
The protesters were ordered to pay $800 to the Regina Police Service “in relation to the filing of a supplementary response which was necessitated by the late filing of material on the part of the police.”
Lawyers for both the government and protesters argued their respective sides of the case at the end of August.
The court heard arguments about the June 18 arrests of six camp members, which Meara Conway — representing the protesters — called unlawful. She said police didn’t articulate proper grounds for their actions, which involved officers forcibly removing protesters from the teepee.
She pointed out Bray had long resisted calls to clear out the camp, and later wrote in an affidavit that he did not consider doing so to be in “the public interest.” She argued police “caved” to “inappropriate mounting pressure from the government.”
“They did not act as police should,” Conway said. “They did the government’s political work. They acted, we say, as enforcers.”
Police lawyer Katrina Swan countered the protesters were indeed obstructing the PCC efforts — pointing out that a protester kept adding logs to the fire and tied himself to part of the teepee to resist being removed. Beyond that, she said because campers were trespassing, police had ample authority to act.
In her decision, Wilkinson found the arrests to be lawful and concluded the detention was not arbitrary.
I expect that the protesters will abide by the law and remove those structures from the park.
MAYOR MICHAEL FOUGERE