Pipeline foes could use a lesson in civility
Protests are all about making a point, but that doesn’t mean they should be a free-for-all, trampling on the rights of others and flouting the law. If there were no expectations of civil behaviour, after all, there would be anarchy, with any hothead with an axe to grind given free rein to cause chaos.
Some of the protesters on Burnaby Mountain have done just that, spitting on police officers while ignoring a court injunction that allowed Kinder Morgan to carry out studies for its expanded Trans Mountain pipeline. Const. Jim Ingram was one of the police officers who were spat on and had garbage thrown at them.
“The reality is we’re human too and it’s a frustration that we have to control,” he said. “I don’t like having garbage thrown over me, I don’t like somebody spitting at me. To some degree I have to protect myself.”
Officers arrested more than 100 protesters for crossing the perimeter set up by police, but civil contempt charges were tossed out on Nov. 27 because Kinder Morgan admitted the GPS co-ordinates it provided to the Supreme Court to gain the injunction didn’t correspond to where crews were conducting their work.
“The concern is that people have been arrested and subjected to restraints on their liberty,” said Judge Austin Cullen in his decision, although a small number of protesters still face criminal charges for assault or obstruction of justice.
Earlier in the day, protesters locked themselves to the front doors of the courthouse in an effort to deny Kinder Morgan access to the building. The demonstrators revealed a glaring lack of principle: hooligans disobey police and are called to answer for their behaviour, but rather than peacefully address the matter, they try to bar Kinder Morgan’s lawyers and the public from the courthouse in a nasty perversion of justice.
There’s certainly been a willingness to break the law over the proposed pipeline expansion. Elevenyear-old Kate Fink-Jensen was taken to the Burnaby Mountain protest and was allowed to cross the police line — along with her friend — on Nov. 23 by her parents.
“They’re 11 years old, for heaven’s sakes,” B.C. Premier Christy Clark told The Province. “Teaching your kids that it’s OK for them to break the law when they’re 11 years old isn’t OK. I don’t think it’s OK for parents to support that for their own children.”
Clark is right, of course. Professor Robert Huish teaches a course at Halifax’s Dalhousie University that requires students to organize a protest as part of their course work.
“Universities have been very central in organizing protest and dissent for hundreds of years. From Martin Luther to Martin Luther King Jr., university-educated individuals have always had a role in that,” he told the National Post.
I asked Huish if it was acceptable for parents to take their 11-year-old children to protests, and he noted that peaceful, legal assemblies can be positive experiences.
“But allowing and encouraging children to engage in illegal acts, even misdemeanours, brings up a real ethical challenge,” Huish, a professor in the department of international development studies, said in an email.
“In civil disobedience tactics, the idea is that breaking the law makes your message stronger, but encouraging minors to be at risk of arrest or in violation of the law is a far departure from the original message, and one that the protesting parent no longer has control of. It’s hardly acceptable to put minors at risk in this way.” And spitting at police officers? “Non-violent protest does not involve any sort of aggression against law enforcement, so when protesters take to spitting and chucking garbage at police, their core message of protest gets trounced by the act of aggression, and with it, public support tends to wane. Even if it was one rogue demonstrator, it challenges the entire message of the group.”
It’s obvious the Burnaby Mountain protesters could use a lesson in civility. It’s too bad Huish is at the opposite side of the country.
David Marsden is a member of the Calgary Herald editorial board.