March, kneel, just let us all out
Justin Trudeau is no stranger to ballsy, eyebrow-raising photo-ops. But his taking of the knee on Parliament Hill on Friday, supposedly in solidarity with protesters decrying anti-black racism, was a first-ballot hallof-famer. The echoing vacuity of the gesture, coming from a prime minister who has done precious little to make the justice system fairer, almost beggars belief: doing away with mandatory minimum sentences, rewriting the prostitution law, enacting recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission — those are just the things the Liberals promised to do and haven’t.
Apparently believing this was some kind of slacktivism contest, Justice Minister David Lametti got in on the act on Sunday night with a tweet lamenting recent “disturbing stories about the brutal treatment of Indigenous peoples by law enforcement officers,” and declaring himself “committed to working to eliminate systemic racism in our justice system.”
The “disturbing stories” presumably included that of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam, who was allegedly beaten bloody during an arrest in March by the RCMP, which, last anyone checked, is a federally controlled police force that has been called “horribly broken.”
Lametti offered no specific ideas, and nor has Trudeau, despite being asked over and over again at his daily news conferences to offer anything beyond content-free platitudes.
It’s tough to know what’s more astonishing: that someone in the prime minister’s or justice minister’s office would expect anyone to be impressed by a de-facto majority government in its fifth year in office sombrely pledging unspecified action against racism, having already abandoned several measures it used to claim would combat racism or its effects; or that some people actually did seem to be impressed.
Encouragingly, however, more people seemed to be righteously annoyed — by a lot of things. Trudeau’s appearance at the protest only strengthened one of the weekend’s main avenues of complaint on social media: “If anti- racism protesters are allowed to march in their thousands, social distancing rules be damned, why can’t I open my business or go out to dinner or get a damn haircut?”
It’s a good question, but there is no need to frame it antagonistically.
It is entirely right, indeed essential, that people should be marching in the streets right now. It is at least conceivable that American policing, and thereby American civil rights, are at a historic turning point. An ABC News/ Ipsos poll, conducted June 5, found 74 per cent of Americans think the on- camera killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer is “a sign of broader problems in the treatment of African Americans by police.” That’s up from just 43 per cent six years earlier, when Americans had recently seen an NYPD officer choke out Eric Garner under very similar circumstances, and amid the protests following the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Most remarkably, 55 per cent of Republicans agreed with the “broader problems” proposition, up from 19 per cent in 2014.
On Sunday, a majority of Minneapolis city councillors said they would support disbanding the city’s police department entirely and starting over from scratch.
Canada’s problems with policing and criminal justice are not exactly the same as the United States’. But if this really is the moment where American policing demilitarizes and stops killing insane numbers of people, this country would not be able to avoid coming along for the ride — and the knock-on benefits could be tremendous. It’s far more important that people take to the streets to demand these changes, to ensure this moment doesn’t go to waste, than it is that a few people might get COVID-19 in the offing.
But you know what else is important? Seeing our family and friends. Our children’s education. Our financial well- being. Our mental health. Our most basic civil liberties.
Canadians have been extraordinarily patient with their governments during this pandemic, understanding the necessity of locking down and trusting that their elected officials and public health boffins would use that time sacrifice to get a handle on COVID-19. Most Canadian jurisdictions have vindicated that trust.
Unfortunately, the two most populous provinces have not. And Toronto and Montreal, the two most populous jurisdictions within them, have fared especially badly. Meanwhile, even as the prime minister quite rightly makes a show of wearing a mask, his public- health officials clearly still do not believe in them. The official public health advice isn’t to “wear a mask,” but rather to wear “a homemade non- medical mask/facial covering … for periods of time when it is not possible to consistently maintain a two- metre physical distance from others.” Why make it conditional? And that advice isn’t even featured on the federal government’s COVID-19 home page; rather it asks, “Choosing to wear a non- medical mask?” and offers tips for proper usage.
It’s not that we should be allowed out and trusted to follow common- sense preventive measures for the foreseeable future because protesters were allowed to march against racism. We should be allowed out and trusted to follow common-sense preventive measures for the foreseeable future because Quebec, Ontario and the federal government are out of time to demonstrate that they know any better. We cannot go on like this. And if civil disobedience is what it takes to drive the point home, by all means let’s take to the streets — with masks on, please.