FRIENDS AT COURT
Supporters gather at a Regina courthouse on Thursday to back Tristen Durocher, the man who has put up a teepee near the Legislative Building to push for action on suicide prevention. The province wants a court order to have the teepee removed.
REGINA With an end date set for Tristen Durocher’s occupation of a protest camp in Wascana Centre, lawyers for the province and the Provincial Capital Commission want a court decision on whether or not the camp has to move sooner rather than later.
Eleanore Sunchild, lawyer for Durocher, requested an adjournment on Thursday of an application by the province and PCC to have the camp ordered removed. She told the court she and her client need more time to research and prepare written materials pertaining to a constitutional argument they intend to levy.
Durocher has suggested that removal of the Walking With Our Angels camp would be a violation of the charter and the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code, and feels those laws override municipal park bylaws.
“I really would like to go through all of this material — there’s a lot — and do research,” Sunchild told the court, suggesting the second week in September for the hearing.
Michael Morris, lawyer for the province and PCC, said his clients want the hearing held sooner given Durocher’s statement he intends to end the protest on Sept. 13.
“In their view, and I know this will be contested, but there’s daily breaches of a 2018 court order going on,” he said. “And to the extent that the hearing is pushed back later in September, we may run into an issue of mootness — which certainly the work that’s already gone into the file, we don’t want that to occur.”
The 2018 order in question relates to the Justice for Our Stolen Children Camp, which was set up in Wascana Park that February as a protest by Indigenous groups against inequalities in the foster care and justice systems. That camp remained until a Regina Court of Queen’s Bench judge ordered it gone in September 2018.
In her 2018 decision, Justice Ysanne Wilkinson wrote that the camp was in contravention of The Wascana Centre Bylaws, with bylaw infractions pertaining to lack of permit and the kindling of a fire, among other breaches.
“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. “In terms of normative values, society has achieved more through order than disorder, more through respect for the law than disregard for the law’s application.”
The province and PCC have said their application closely mirrors the one in 2018.
Justice Graeme Mitchell set arguments on Durocher’s matter for Sept. 4.
After walking 639 kilometres from La Ronge to protest the Saskatchewan Party government’s decision to vote down an NDP suicide prevention bill, 24-yearold Durocher and others set up a camp, including a teepee, on a lawn near the Legislative Building.
The provincial government and PCC subsequently filed an application seeking court intervention in having the camp removed from Wascana Park. The application further seeks the court order the Regina Police Service to step in to assist. According to the application, city police have said they won’t take action without a court order specifically directed at Durocher. The 2018 decision included an order authorizing the police to assist the province and PCC in dismantling that camp if the protesters didn’t do it themselves.
Durocher did not attend court on Thursday, although a number of supporters did. Two courtrooms were set up in preparation for the matter, one in which the judge sat and the other for any overflow as needed. Outside, several supporters held up signs in support of Durocher’s attempts to further suicide prevention.
Durocher has said that even though he plans on ending his protest next month, he believes he has achieved a goal in terms of public awareness on the issue.