Acquittals quashed in Natural Resources office protest
A Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge has overturned the acquittal of two protesters who were ticketed after they refused to leave the Halifax office of Natural Resources in late 2000.
Justice Denise Boudreau handed down her decision Wednesday in Halifax.
Eleanor Kure and Kevin Smith, members of the group Extinction Rebellion, were removed from the office by police on Nov. 24, 2020, while protesting clearcutting of habitat of the endangered mainland moose near New France, Digby County.
They had delivered letters to the office for then-minister Derek Mombourquette, and refused to leave until a meeting was scheduled between a spokesperson for the group and the minister. That’s when the deputy minister called police to remove them.
An official request for a meeting had been sent from the protesters in Digby County some time before as required but the request was ignored, the group said.
They fought the summary offence tickets – which carry a $237 fine under the Protection of Property Act – and won last November when justice of the peace Debbie Bowes ruled the act “specifically states that there is to be no prosecution for peaceful demonstrations in the vicinity to which the public normally has access.”
Bowes also said if the legislation was meant to exclude government offices from protest, it should have clearly stated so.
But HRM appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, saying Bowes had made an error in law in her decision. That decision has not been released.
‘DISAPPOINTING’ DECISION
Kure and Smith’s lawyer, Jamie Simpson, said Thursday he was disappointed with the outcome of the appeal.
“It’s disappointing for Eleanor and Kevin, and it’s disappointing for anyone who might want to be peacefully demonstrating on a particular issue,” he said. “There is a history of sit-ins in public areas of ministers’ offices, so it’s unfortunate that Justice Boudreau came down on that side of the issue.”
He said it’s up to his clients whether they want to take Boudreau’s decision to the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal.
Kure said they have been chatting about it “but it’s hard to get the personal energy to keep fighting, I have to admit.”
She said it feels sometimes like the deck is stacked against them.
“The whole fact that we have to even protest in the first place, it feels like it’s simply because government doesn’t listen.”
She said security told them when they refused to leave the office that it wasn’t the way to get a meeting, that they had to write an official letter. They said they had, but it didn’t change the outcome.
“Scientists all over the world have said we’re in a biodiversity and climate crisis, and the fact that we still have to have citizens fighting to get the government to stop allowing major cuts to forests, which is our one obvious thing that can help with carbon sequestering and creating more oxygen instead of carbon, it seems crazy that we have to be fighting at this point just to stop cutting trees.”