Police officers face a crowd of protesters on Saturday, June 26. Photo by poyanp from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

On G20 weekend, Toronto found itself in the middle of two opposing forces. Thugs smashed windows and burned police cars, while the police response seems to have alternated, on occasion, between absent and heavy-handed.
It’s relatively easy to figure out the legal implications of thuggery. Possible crimes include unlawful assembly, rioting, disguising oneself to commit a serious offence, mischief, arson, and attempting, counselling, or conspiring to do the above, among other charges that may be filed. Those found guilty should be appropriately punished.
Harder is figuring out the legal implications of the police actions.

Most officers served with dignity and deserve our gratitude, but some reports allege that actions occasionally fell below this standard.
Addressing police actions is perilous, typically because it attracts criticism for being disrespectful to the police. Yet we have precisely the opposite motivation: anyone who respects the central role of the police in the state’s monopoly on the use of force has a duty to ensure that they wield that force appropriately—quis custodiet ipsos custodes and all that.
What follows is intended to be an overview of some of the legal issues (and as such shouldn’t be relied on as legal advice).

1. Failure to stop Saturday’s riot
Under federal law, it’s a crime for police officers to fail to take all reasonable steps to suppress a known riot, unless they have a reasonable excuse. While seemingly anachronistic—especially when read with the instructions for dispersing riots, reminiscent of musket-bearing militia versus pitchfork-wielding rabble—the duty to act was cited in court last month [PDF] to justify equipping the police with sound cannons, and after the Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver.
That said, a charge, let alone a conviction, seems unlikely. Accused officers (likely senior rather than junior: the rank-and-file apparently wanted to jump in but were held back) need only to persuade a single juror that they had a reasonable excuse not to act. Statutory excuses might include a fear that intervening would threaten the safety of bystanders, a belief that the scale of the riot wasn’t severe enough to warrant a takedown by force, or a need not to divert resources from protecting the conference. Another excuse, which may or may not be reasonable in the circumstances, might be miscommunication between front-line officers and those behind the scenes, including at the Integrated Security Unit in Barrie.
With hindsight, it’s tempting to say that none of these excuses are reasonable, and indeed these excuses vanished when it came time to clear Queen and Spadina. But it’s trickier to say what seemed reasonable to the police in the heat of the moment.
A less serious allegation could arise under provincial law. Police officers have a duty to preserve the peace, prevent offences, and help and encourage others to prevent them, and a breach of this duty constitutes misconduct, barring a lawful excuse. This offence may be simpler to prove and the range of excuses may be narrower, although it’s plausible that the police could still cite one of the above excuses to avoid liability.
To argue that the police committed misconduct by not intervening, a person affected by the riot has six months to complain to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), a new civilian agency that determines whether an investigation is warranted and, if so, who should investigate: OIPRD, the Toronto Police, or another police force.

2. Misleading people about the fence
Provincial law grants special powers to guards of “public works,” defined as provincial or municipal public buildings, pieces of public infrastructure (e.g. railways, canals, highways, bridges, power works, gas works, water works, public utilities), and anywhere else designated by the provincial cabinet. These powers include asking people entering or trying to enter a public work (or any approach to it) to provide their name and address, to identify themselves, and to explain their reason for entry. They also include searching people entering or trying to enter it (though not any approach to it) without a warrant, and blocking people from entering it.
At present, cabinet hasn’t designated any public works. From June 21 to 28, though, it designated the following: (a) all public works, including sidewalks, within the security fence (the black line in our map), as well as some public works outside the fence but within the traffic zone (the blue line) to the south and west of the Rogers Centre; (b) areas outside the fence but inside the zone which roughly correspond to the parking lot to the south, and the piazza to the west, of the Rogers Centre; and (c) the unloved, below-grade lane between Union Station’s TTC and intercity entrances.
Contrary to the message given out, people weren’t prohibited from coming within five metres of the security fence, except in the areas in (b) and (c) above, although if approaching the fence they might have been questioned. The confusion arose because the areas under (b) were legally defined as being within five meters of an imaginary line approximating the outer border of each area. It wasn’t a blanket rule, and it didn’t expand the rights of police officers to search people outside the fence, within five meters or not, except in the areas in (b) and (c) above. But Blair, as he himself acknowledged, was happy for the public to have a false impression about what the law said.
Under provincial law, a police officer commits misconduct if he or she “wilfully or negligently makes a false, misleading or inaccurate statement pertaining to official duties.” If the required facts were established, a finding of misconduct could arise after a complaint to the OIPRD. Any investigation would likely assess whether Blair acted willfully or negligently, his exact role in perpetrating the inaccuracy, whether remarks in a news conference pertain to his official duties, and whether he has any defence available (e.g. “trying to keep the criminals out”).
On top of this, Ontario’s ombudsman André Marin announced today an investigation, by the Special Ombudsman Response Team (SORT), into the origin and subsequent communication of the issue.

3. Actions toward individuals
All government laws and actions—including actions by public officials, such as police officers—must be consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Assessing consistency is a two-step process.
First, a person affected by police action needs to show that her or his rights were violated. In the G20 context, these would be primarily legal rights, including:

• To be secure against unreasonable search or seizure, not to be subject to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment, and generally not to be deprived of liberty or security of the person except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice;
• If detained or arrested, for this not to be done arbitrarily, to be told promptly of the reason, to have access to a lawyer without delay (and to be informed of this right), and to have a court determine whether the detention is lawful (and to be released if not);
• If charged, to be informed of the charge, to be tried in a reasonable time, and, if reasonable, to be released on bail until the trial.

In situations where peaceful protests were disrupted, there might also be a claim that the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly were violated.
Second, the police can try to justify a rights violation as being a reasonable limit that is prescribed by law and demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. Broadly, this means that police actions must derive from a legal authority that is reasonably precise or explicit about what the police can do [PDF], that the police had a “pressing and substantial” objective in acting the way they did, and that their actions were proportional to achieving this objective.
A comprehensive Charter analysis of police actions could proceed only on the basis of the facts of each case. Allegations, so far unproven, include a torn-off artificial limb, a thirty-six-hour detention of a uniformed public servant, and a crackdown on a peaceful rally at Queen’s Park.
Courts and administrative tribunals can be unpredictable when adjudicating Charter rights, and may apply a sliding scale based on the circumstances (e.g. acceptable treatment to someone in an airport security queue might differ from someone walking innocently down the street). It’s possible that they might exhibit significant deference to the police in light of the unique nature of the G20 summit, although one presumes that such deference is not unlimited, particularly for any egregious rights violations that are proven.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has promised a lawsuit against the police for alleged rights infringements of the 1,105 people detained during the G20 weekend, about three-quarters of whom have had all charges dropped against them or were never charged in the first place. It’ll be interesting to see what facts they gather and what analysis they can put together, and equally interesting to see how the police respond.
Robin Rix is a lawyer and former Torontoist staff member.

Photo by SandroGianella from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Want to pack it all in and move to the islands? Someone’s written about that already. Want to pack it all in and move to the Toronto Islands? We can write about that. All you need is luck, patience, and money.
Thanks to a 1993 provincial statute that ended a bitter and lengthy land dispute, strict rules overseen by the Toronto Islands Residential Community Trust govern transfers of the 262 residential properties on Ward’s Island and Algonquin Island in the eastern end of the archipelago.
When a property becomes available, it can’t be put on the free market. Rather, it’s offered for a fixed price to the first hundred people on a five-hundred-person waiting list. The list is ranked, so if there are multiple interested buyers, the property goes to the person closest to the top of the list. If none of the first hundred people are interested, the property is offered to people further down on the list, but this is rare. Forty-seven properties have been sold since the system began in 1994.
(Technical aside: you can’t buy land on the Islands. Rather, you assume a long-term lease to a plot of land and buy the building sitting on it. For our purposes, though, we’ll stick with the non-technical shorthand of “buying” and “selling” property.)

Photo by gabrioladude from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Your first task is to join the list. As the list is capped at five hundred, you have to wait for existing people to drop off. About three people get properties each year, and about fifteen to twenty leave for other reasons. After a critical mass of vacancies accumulates, a call for applications is announced, and vacancies are filled by a lottery run by the Trust’s auditors.
The last call occurred in November 2007, with 375 applicants for forty-seven spots. The next call, for thirty spots, occurs in November 2009. Keep an eye on the website, apply at the appropriate time, and cross your fingers.
If you get on the list, you’ll have to wait. And wait. For how long? As the Trust declines to make predictions, Torontoist will engage in a bout of speculation.
You’ll start at the back of the queue (#471 to #500). Under a best-case scenario in which twenty people ahead of you drop out each and every year, you’re looking at around twenty years before cracking the top 100 and up to five more years before getting to the front of the list.
However, not every single vacancy will arise ahead of you. The Trust hasn’t yet compiled data about the ranks of the people who drop out, but it seems reasonable to assume that, as the years go by, a growing percentage of vacancies will arise behind you. And these vacancies don’t help: if you’re #300, you don’t move up if #400 drops out. Plus, the further you advance, the more hardcore the people on the list become, such that—other than actually getting a house—death or infirmity might be the only reasons for them to drop off.
Let’s assume a deceleration of your pace over time:

• In the first decade, nearly all of the vacancies are ahead of you (eighteen to twenty per year);
• In the second decade, about two-thirds of the vacancies are ahead of you (twelve to fourteen per year);
• In the third decade, about half of the vacancies are ahead of you (nine to eleven per year).

After thirty years, you may climb about 420 spots, meaning a rank of #51 to #80. Possibly good enough, but only if a property comes up that no one ahead of you wants. If you wait five more years, you may be looking at a number in the #20s or #30s, which should be good for something if you aren’t too fussy. Wait another five years, and you may crack the top ten.
Torontoist’s best guess of an average wait for people joining the list in 2009 to buy on the Islands? Thirty-five years. Hey, it could be worse—you could be waiting for a Stanley Cup.

Photo by pixel_monkie from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

As for money, it costs $110 to apply to join the list, though you get $100 back if you don’t get a spot. Once on the list, you pay an annual fee of $35 to keep your place. The properties themselves range anywhere from $75,000 to $450,000.
If this all seems too much, there are unconventional ways to move to the Islands. As sales to spouses or children are exempt from the above rules, consider honing your gold-digging skills or wide-eyed orphan look (or both). Proposals have been made to increase the number of properties—the Toronto Island Housing Initiative is pushing for co-operative housing, and one author has mused about converting the airport lands into housing—so you can support them or start your own effort. There are also rumblings of a land claim by the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, which could theoretically lead to an entirely new property regime.
If you’re not looking at a permanent move, there are other options for long stays. You can rent from an existing owner (tenancies are legal for up to three years), sublet a place like this studio for the winter, help the Shaw House project to increase the availability of seniors’ housing, befriend the right people and land a housesitting gig, or become an artist or writer and get chosen to stay at Artscape Lodge. Good luck!
Hat tip to reader Lee Chapman, who got us thinking about this issue.

Photo by Somewhere in Toronto from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

May is a good month to follow European football soccer, not so good to follow the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Back in the old country, each domestic league reaches its climax, with teams at the top vying for the title and teams at the bottom battling to avoid demotion to a lower league. Each domestic cup—a knockout tournament running parallel to the league season—gets awarded. And the biggest club competition of them all, the Champions League, wraps up. This year’s showpiece, held today in Rome, features reigning champions Manchester United against Spanish giants Barcelona.
Contrast that to being a Leafs fan. After a lifeless season we got eliminated from playoff contention two months ago, though only the most deluded didn’t see it coming.
European soccer ain’t all bunnies and cuddles. Hooliganism remains a disgusting blight, though it’s unclear whether the sport causes the violence or is merely an excuse for it. And successful teams can become entrenched at the top—though falls from grace can be spectacular.
Nevertheless, the NHL could learn a few things from European soccer.

The San Jose Sharks against the Colorado Avalanche (top) and Phoenix Coyotes (bottom). Photos by pointnshoot.

1. Rationalize the league schedule

In most European league seasons, each team plays each other twice: once at home and once away. As every team meets the same opponents the same number of times, the final standings generally reflect their relative strengths.
In the NHL, a team plays six games against each divisional opponent, four games against each remaining conference opponent, and either one or two games against each cross-conference opponent. Teams in tough divisions or conferences play more games against better teams, and vice versa, and they match up against inter-conference opponents with varying frequencies. The NHL deserves better than this arbitrary system, particularly when playoff qualifications and seedings are often determined by a point or two.
There’s an easy solution. Each team should play each other twice, once at home and once away. In a league of thirty teams, that’s a tidy fifty-eight games.
As for the two main objections—it diminishes regional rivalries, and twenty-four games get removed from the schedule—the European experience is instructive. Regional rivalries remain healthy despite infrequent encounters in the league, and missing games can be compensated for in other ways (see #3 below).
What it means for the Leafs: Fewer league games against Montreal, but they’ll be more meaningful. And ACC fans will see every other team, unlike this year when we missed Colorado, Detroit, L.A., Minnesota, Phoenix, and San Jose.

Photos by -sina- from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

2. Make the league matter

While a first-place league finish is the greatest domestic honour for a European team, NHL league standings are pretty meaningless. Although the top-placed team wins the President’s Trophy, few fans get excited about it, and only in North America could the winner (San Jose, in case you forgot) say that it had a disappointing season.
Borrow a page from Europe: celebrate the league champion (and the runner-up). Create an international club competition and allow the top teams to represent the NHL. It’s an achievement to grind out results in Edmonton in November and Phoenix in March, and players deserve greater recognition for it.
At the bottom end, the European concept of relegation sees the worst-performing teams of a senior league exchange places with the best-performing teams of a junior league. In our fantasy world, the Colorado Avalanche, Tampa Bay Lightning, Atlanta Thrashers, and New York Islanders would play AHL hockey next year, replaced by the Milwaukee Admirals, Manitoba Moose, Bridgeport Sound Tigers, and Hershey Bears.
Relegation may be frightening for the NHL, but something like it might prompt bottom-feeders to address, say, forty-two years of futility, discourage tanking (which one Torontoist commenter correctly called “disgusting“), and give lowly teams something to play for as the season concludes.
What it means for the Leafs: We’re as far away from winning the President’s Trophy as the Stanley Cup. Still, the threat of relegation might get us going.

Photos of Manchester United playing (and scoring) against Chelsea by Gordon Blood.

3. Hold a parallel cup competition (or two)

Europeans hold one or more domestic cup competitions running parallel to the league season. They progress on a knockout basis: teams are randomly paired up, they play one game against each other, and the winner progresses to the next round.
Without touching the current format of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the NHL could stage one or two new cup competitions during the year, particularly as a shorter league schedule would open up space in the calendar.
This is where the NHL could promote regional rivalries, grouping teams (perhaps along current divisional lines) in a round-robin competition to determine which one or two will represent them in a series of knockout rounds with the rest of the league. A cup in the fall and a cup in the winter might whip up a bit of mid-season enthusiasm.
What it means for the Leafs: More games against Boston, Buffalo, Montreal, and Ottawa, without compromising the integrity of the league schedule. And more chances to win silverware in our lifetimes.

Panel from I’m Crazy, a graphic novel by Adam Bourret.

Can a commercial printer invoke religion in order to refuse services?
Local author Adam Bourret recently wrote a 126-page graphic novel, I’m Crazy. It’s autobiographical and, to quote his website, deals with “histories, secrets, obsessive compulsive disorder, drugs, gay romance, hallucinations and insanity.”
Though Bourret—the boyfriend of a Torontoist staff member—is serializing the novel online, he wanted to make a few hundred print copies. He approached Harmony Printing for an estimate, but it balked after looking at his sample pages:

Unfortunately due to the content I am going to have to respectfully decline. The reason is we have a lot of long standing clients who are religious organizations. They are in our facilities all of the time and cannot risk having this content out in the open during production. Please understand that this is not a slight against your artwork or the message that you are trying to convey to your audience. I wish you all the best and I hope you can understand our position.

Bourret noted that the company’s website does not mention such a practice, and that it seemed unusual to allow some clients to see print jobs being run for other clients. Harmony’s email also left it unclear why its religious clients might object to Bourret’s work, leading him to be curious about whether his sexual orientation might have been a factor.
We got in touch with Harmony, which clarified to us that its refusal was unrelated to the sexual orientation of the author or the material, noting that it recently printed a story about two married men raising a daughter as part of a magazine celebrating the diversity of families in Toronto.
Instead, it said that it refused to serve Bourret because its employees and other clients, including religious organizations, might be discomforted by images of people having sex [NSFW?], and that its clients frequently visit its facilities for press checks and meetings.
Was Harmony’s action legal?

Panel from I’m Crazy.

A good place to start any discussion about the legality of refusing services is the Ontario Human Rights Code, which guarantees the right to equal treatment with respect to services, goods, and facilities without discrimination because of certain characteristics. After much struggle, sexual orientation was added as a characteristic in 1986.
The flip side, however, is that equal treatment isn’t guaranteed if the characteristic isn’t listed. (Exception: a court may choose to “read in” a new characteristic that has been unconstitutionally omitted, but this is rare.) So a magazine can refuse to print ads for escort services, and a club can have a style code, because the Code doesn’t prohibit discrimination in the provision of services against prostitutes or the unstylish.
If you accept Harmony’s defence—that it feared a backlash from religious clients who would object to images of people having sex—then Harmony is probably in the clear. The characteristic of “having sex” is not listed in the Code, and it is (highly) unlikely to be read in. You may think that the printer is being unduly sensitive, and Bourret suggests that it “comes as a sting that anyone would find images from my own life that offensive,” but Harmony is most likely acting legally.
Alternatively, if you don’t accept Harmony’s defence—finding instead that it feared a backlash from religious clients who would object to images of two men, as opposed to a man and a woman, having sex, and that it also shared an objection to such images on account of a sincerely held religious belief—things get murky. Despite the Code’s guarantee of equal treatment, Ontario case law seems inconclusive on whether a private-sector service provider may, in certain narrow circumstances, cite religious beliefs as a justification for discriminating against gays and lesbians.

Panel from I’m Crazy.

Consider a different case involving a Toronto printer who refused to print letterhead, envelopes, and business cards for a customer from the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. After the customer filed a complaint, the printer defended his actions by saying that he found homosexuality “detestable” on religious grounds, and that his refusal to print the materials was constitutionally protected.
The human rights tribunal hearing the matter sided with the customer. Although it acknowledged that providing the services would infringe the printer’s freedom of religion, it found that the infringement was justified: the Code had a legitimate objective in promoting equality of treatment, and any impairment to the printer’s religious beliefs was minimal.
The printer—with the support of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association—appealed to the Ontario Divisional Court. Although the court upheld the original decision, it speculated about a possible distinction between routine services (like printing business cards) and services contravening “core elements” of religious belief (like printing materials promoting gay marriage). The court opined that a printer had to provide the former, but not the latter.
You might ask whether this distinction makes sense, whichever side you’re on. You might also think that the distinction—made at the lowest level of the court system—is vulnerable to being refined or even overturned by a higher court in the future. That said, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal cited and applied it in a 2005 decision, so acceptance of it may be growing, at least at the bottom rungs of the human rights system. And the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled, in a case involving slightly different issues, that freedom of religion coexists with the right to be free of discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Panel from I’m Crazy.

Let’s assume that this distinction holds up, and let’s apply it to Bourret’s work. Do images of two men in bed contravene “core elements” of religious belief?
If they don’t, a printer would be on shaky ground in invoking religion in refusing to serve him. If they do, a printer could try to invoke religion as a reason for refusing service, though it’s by no means clear that it would succeed.
Bourret seems unlikely to pursue this particular matter further, having found another printer who’s happy to serve him. And absent smoking-gun evidence that Harmony has no qualms about printing images of straight people having sex, it’s unlikely that this matter will go anywhere.
Still, the encounter raises some interesting questions about religion and the refusal of service. We might just have to wait a bit longer for the test case that will develop the law a bit further.
All images courtesy of Adam Bourret. Hat tip to Karen Whaley.

Strategic Media’s third-party fascia sign at 340 Adelaide Street West at Peter Street. Photo by Rami Tabello from Illegal Signs.

Last week, further to news reported on Illegal Signs, we briefly noted the Ontario Superior Court’s refusal to grant Strategic Media a temporary exemption from certain provisions of the City of Toronto’s sign bylaw. If granted, Strategic Media (and most likely all other advertisers) would have been allowed to suspend compliance with these provisions until a court resolved the ongoing claim [PDF] over whether these provisions are valid.
The provisions in question relate to third-party fascia signs, “third-party” meaning a sign advertising a business, product, or service unrelated to the property on which it is situated, and “fascia” meaning a wall-mounted sign that projects no more than forty-five cm from the wall.
Special rules exist for this type of sign. You can’t erect one without a permit, and your permit will restrict its size, location, and distance from other signs. If you dislike the restrictions, you can seek a variance—or, if you’re Strategic Media, you can erect your signs anyway and see what happens.
Here’s what we think about the court decision.

1. The court came to the right decision…

The breezy three thousand–word decision—worth reading if you have even a passing interest in the subject—applied the three-stage test for granting an “interlocutory injunction,” which is court-speak for a temporary remedy that lasts until an underlying case is resolved. A publication ban pending resolution of a criminal trial is perhaps a good analogy.
The first stage, almost a formality, was whether there was a “serious issue” to be considered. Almost everything qualifies under this heading, and the court agreed that Strategic Media’s claim did so.
The second stage was whether Strategic Media would suffer “irreparable harm” if it failed to get an injunction. In this context, “irreparable” means that the harm would be unquantifiable in monetary terms or would be impossible to correct afterward.
The court held that Strategic Media would not suffer irreparable harm if it failed to get an injunction, rejecting both arguments that it advanced:
(a) Economic harm. The company’s co-founder suggested in an affidavit that the company might go bankrupt if it lost, but later changed position on the stand—not usually a wise strategy—to say that the company would at most be “truncated.” The court responded that short-term economic pain does not generally qualify as “irreparable harm.”
(b) Harm to private third parties. The company suggested that other private parties, like building owners who leased space to it for the signs, might lose money if the injunction were refused. The court responded that economic harm to private third parties was not generally a relevant factor in deciding whether to grant such injunctions.

Ontario Superior Court ruling on Strategic Media’s application for an interlocutory injunction.

The third stage was whether the “balance of convenience” favoured Strategic Media or the City in granting or refusing the injunction. Relevant factors include which party would suffer greater harm, the public interest, and the type of law under dispute.
While the court acknowledged that Strategic Media might suffer some economic and reputational damage if it lost, it held that other more weightier factors favoured the City. In particular, the court noted that the bylaw reflected the City’s attempt to promote the public interest, that the public interest was generally served by complying with existing laws until they were judicially resolved to be invalid, and that suspending the provisions on third-party fascia signs might encourage non-compliance with the rest of the sign bylaw.
Of particular interest was the court’s citation of a leading sign case, Vann Media Group v Oakville, which held that the issue of sign regulation was so important that the appropriate remedy for invalid provisions was time to allow redrafting of the provisions, rather than throwing them out entirely. Such an observation suggests that, even if Strategic Media wins its larger case, the most that it could hope for is a diluted bylaw rather than a signage free-for-all.

2. … but this is only the first round.

The court’s decision does not answer—or even consider— the overarching issue of whether the restrictions on third-party fascia signs are constitutionally and administratively valid.
The constitutional argument, which we previously considered, is that these restrictions may unreasonably impair advertisers’ freedom of expression, particularly as identical restrictions do not exist for fascia signs erected by property-owners or tenants on their own buildings, or for signs painted directly onto buildings.
The administrative argument is that the City might not have had the authority to enact the bylaw or, in the alternative, might have violated certain principles when enacting the bylaw so as to render it invalid.
The recent court decision doesn’t address these arguments. It states only that Strategic Media is not entitled to an exemption from the bylaw while its main case is progressing. We’re still at a very preliminary stage, and no one should get too excited yet.

3. And what about those pesky kids?!

The case represents a turnaround of fortunes for Illegal Signs, a group whose self-described mission is to destroy illegal billboards through the rule of law.
Last year, the City didn’t appreciate the group very much, going so far as to argue (unsuccessfully) that its requests for information were frivolous and vexatious. No more. This year, it took the opposite position, noting that being “inundated with complaints” suggested evidence of “actual public interest” in the issue, and arguing that this should influence the court when deciding whether the balance of convenience favoured Strategic Media or the City.
We’re not sure which is more surprising—that the City cited the activities of Illegal Signs as evidence that the public interest would be harmed if compliance with the bylaw was suspended, or that the court took these complaints as seriously as it did. But it suggests that beating your head against a wall can, after a few years and a whole lot of criticism, occasionally get results.
With thanks to Rami Tabello. You can see some examples of allegedly illegal billboards by Strategic Media here.

Anne Wagner at a community meeting at the Rumrol internally displaced persons camp, Sudan. Photo by Justin Brake courtesy of Stand Canada.

The conflict in Darfur, soon to be entering its seventh year, remains as catastrophic as ever. A few young Torontonians are fighting the good fight against apathy toward it, and we had the good fortune to catch up with one of them.
Anne Wagner, a 24-year-old graduate student in psychology at Ryerson University, is the principal director of Stand Canada, an organization dedicated to raising awareness about—and advocating an end to—the conflict. She returned last month from a weeklong trip to the South Sudan/Darfur border region.

On the way to the Gokmachar internally displaced persons camp, Sudan, with the assistance of the IOM. Photo by Justin Brake courtesy of Stand Canada.

Where in Darfur were you stationed, and what did you do while there?
We were based out of Gordhim, South Sudan, and travelled to the Gokmachar and Rumrol internally displaced persons [IDP] camps.
While there, we interviewed IDPs, tribal chiefs, and administrators in the camps. We also helped provide an assessment of needs to the International Organization of Migration [IOM]. The reason that we interview these individuals is to bring their stories back to Canada to provide a personal perspective of the crisis.
You visited the Rumrol camp last year as well. What differences did you see between 2008 and 2009?
The camp has more than doubled in size (from approximately 2,200 to over 5,700), and the inhabitants are getting frustrated—frustrated that the international community has made promises but has not followed through, frustrated that they still have to be there, frustrated that they have had to endure a flood and a cholera outbreak in one year, frustrated because they want to live in peace.
What were your living and travel arrangements?
Our team (advocacy director Jackie Bonisteel, member Justin Brake, documentarian Jonathan Watton, and I) flew to Nairobi, where we met up with our hosts from the Canadian Aid for Southern Sudan [CASS], an organization run by Liberal MP Glen Pearson and his wife, Jane Roy. We travelled via prop plane from Nairobi to southern Sudan, and then had a quick car ride to Gordhim. We stayed at the Catholic Mission in Gordhim in tukals [one-room mud and straw huts] and basic brick structures, and then we camped at the IDP camps. We were taken to the IDP camps by the kind people at the IOM.

Documentarian Jonathan Watton and young people in Gordhim, Sudan. Photo by Anne Wagner courtesy of Stand Canada.

How does your visit to Darfur help in any way to end the conflict?
Travelling to Sudan gives Stand’s advocacy far greater weight. We are able to report on what we saw on the ground, and provide real stories and accounts, which strengthens our message when we communicate with decision-makers.
Most people will never have the chance to visit Darfur. How can they contribute to ending the conflict in Darfur?
They can join Stand’s efforts—educate themselves, talk to their friends and neighbours, talk to their politicians, and stand up for someone who has died in the conflict. Joining our latest campaign, Stand for the Dead is one way of doing so.
We’ve existed since 2005. We have organized events, rallies, and press conferences, and we have held meetings with parliamentarians and decision-makers at both the chapter and national levels. We train young leaders to be effective advocates, and have briefed high-level officials and members of parliament about the conflict and potential courses of action. We also ran an effective campaign during the latest federal election which informed every candidate about the crisis.

Women at a community meeting at the Rumrol internally displaced persons camp, Sudan. Photo by Anne Wagner courtesy of Stand Canada.

Your literature refers to “advocacy” toward Canadian politicians. What exactly are you advocating them to do?
The Canadian government needs to lead the world in response to genocide, and particularly Darfur. Canadians wrote the Responsibility to Protect [R2P] doctrine, which posits that the international community needs to help protect the citizens of a country from persecution if their government does not, and we need to uphold this. We need to pressure the United Nations [UN] to fully deploy peacekeepers, to help facilitate peace talks with tribal leaders, and to divest Canadian institutions from holdings in the worst offender companies doing business in Sudan.
So would your support for foreign intervention in Darfur extend to support for military intervention? Can the genocide be stopped without military intervention? By whom?
We want to see the UN mission be effective—and for this to happen, the full deployment of peacekeepers needs to occur, and we cannot kowtow to the desires of the Sudanese government.
Would you like to commend or criticize any particular Canadian politicians and/or political parties with respect to Darfur?
Darfur is a cross-party issue. In our campaign “Speak the Name,” which we ran during the last federal election, we offered to any candidate that if they spoke about Darfur, that we would speak about them. We had ninety-two supporters, of which fifty-one were elected. We need to see that support turn into action. In particular, I travelled to Sudan with [Liberal MPs] Carolyn Bennett and Glen Pearson, who are phenomenal advocates for Darfur; [Liberal MP] Irwin Cotler and [NDP MP] Paul Dewar are other particularly strong allies.
Any closing thoughts?
We need to create a community of advocates for Darfur—a critical mass who will provide the impetus for the Canadian government to act on their good intentions. It is easy to become overwhelmed with the enormity of the situation or its bleakness, but at Stand, we make it easy to act against genocide by providing our members with the tools to take action and the support to have an impact.

Community meeting at the Rumrol internally displaced persons camp, Sudan. Photo by Anne Wagner courtesy of Stand Canada.

All photos are courtesy of Stand Canada. With thanks to Greta Palmason at Stand for her logistical assistance.

Photo by Miles Storey from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

While the conflict in Gaza cools down—at least for now—the war of words in Toronto continues to boil.
You’ll recall that, when the conflict was at its height, supporters of both sides staged rallies across Canada. You’ll also recall that the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) labelled, not without controversy, the pro-Palestinian rallies as being “pro-Hamas” and suggested that certain acts—like white power skinheads giving Nazi salutes (sixth photo), or a sign depicting an Israeli soldier with blood dripping from his teeth (eighth photo)—were hate crimes.
Now, the Near East Cultural and Education Foundation of Canada (NECEF) has stepped in. While condemning antisemitism and the actions of those who engage in hateful actions, it has written an open letter to the CJC alleging that its labelling of the rallies as “pro-Hamas” may also be a hate crime.
So, who’s right?

Photo by Miles Storey from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Hate crimes (namely, advocating genocide, publicly inciting hatred, or wilfully promoting hatred) are a bit of a legal minefield. We considered the subject last year in light of the protests by Anonymous against Scientology, where—on the basis of the facts known to us—we concluded that Anonymous’s protests probably didn’t qualify as hate crimes.
Applying that same test here, we disagree with NECEF’s suggestion that the CJC committed a hate crime, partly because the phrase “pro-Hamas” does not target an “identifiable group” (i.e. any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation—one could query whether this should be broadened), and partly because it does not sink to the level of “hatred,” defined in the leading case of R v Keegstra as “the most severe and deeply-felt form of opprobrium” and “a most extreme emotion that belies reason; an emotion that, if exercised against members of an identifiable group, implies that those individuals are to be despised, scorned, denied respect and made subject to ill-treatment on the basis of group affiliation.” This doesn’t absolve the CJC of all blame: the phrase is potentially inaccurate, since the majority of rally participants probably don’t support the terrorist group, and we’d be curious to see how a defamation claim would unfold, but it’s exceedingly unlikely to be a hate crime.
On the other hand, the CJC is likely correct to suggest that hate crimes were committed by certain people whom the rally attracted, such as Nazi salutes and chants: these were expressions of hatred against an identifiable group (namely, Jews), were made publicly, and could have been reasonably foreseen to lead to harm. One hopes that the perpetrators will be caught and punished. That said, other actions that the CJC criticizes are unlikely to be hate crimes. Equating the situation in Gaza with apartheid or genocide may be disagreeable to some, but these aren’t hate crimes so much as statements on a matter of public interest that are believed by the speakers, correctly or not, to be genuine.

Photo by Toronto Paul from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Speaking as a disinterested observer, we can only say that neither group of Canadians comes out looking good from all of this.
Pro-Palestinian rally organizers deserve blame for exercising insufficient care to prevent antisemitism. Arguing that they couldn’t control everyone who showed up is a dodge: any reasonable person could foresee that a protest against Israeli actions would attract some nasty characters, and more should have been done to disavow and eject them. Framing the issue as empathy with Palestinians rather than anger toward Israel—like the Jewish women who staged a sit-in at the Israeli consulate—coupled with a clear condemnation of the actions of Hamas, might have been a wiser approach.
Meanwhile, the CJC overplayed its hand by calling the rallies “pro-Hamas.” Surely it must recognize that reasonable people can criticize Israel’s military actions without supporting the ideology of a terrorist group dedicated to the country’s destruction. Equally, its failure to express compassion for Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza—in contrast to NECEF’s sympathy for the no less tragic deaths of Israeli citizens killed by Hamas rockets—suggests a belief that all Palestinians are tacit Hamas supporters who deserved what they got, which betrays a disturbing insensitivity that the CJC ought to disavow.