Panel on Policing Protests

Law Union of Ontario 50^th Anniversary Conference

October 19, 2024

Remarks by Alok Mukherjee

I believe it is important to examine the question of policing of protests in a broader context rather than as an issue of local policing only. Having monitored accounts of state use of law enforcement to deal with protests in Canada and beyond for some years now, I have come to believe that policing of protests is a form of political policing which is quite different from community safety policing. I will make the following observations:

1. In western liberal democracies, as large segments of the public have become disenchanted with the mainstream political process, finding it to be unrepresentative of the public at large and unresponsive to the needs and expectations of those with the least power and privilege, protest has become a key form of political expression and assertion.

2. Dissent itself is not a new phenomenon.  It is not, however, just a local phenomenon resulting from local grievances. In the same way that political power and economic power are global, coordinating their interests and strategies across states, dissent, too, is both local and global. The protests in Toronto in solidarity with the people of Palestine and against the Israeli genocide supported and enabled by the collective west is the most current example of this reality. So are protests related to the climate emergency and the monumental failure of states to take meaningful action, poverty and homelessness caused by the profit-driven multinational economic interests, the supply of increasingly lethal instruments of death to support the conduct of vicious wars that kill and maim countless ordinary, innocent people, and the infringement and denial of Indigenous rights and claims to benefit the mining companies operating all over the world. These are just some examples, and earlier today we heard eloquent presentations on the pushback by people living in encampments and tenants attempted to be pushed out by landlords aided by state instruments.

3. We cannot talk about regulating the policing of protests without recognizing this broader context. Our governments are instrumental in creating the conditions that concerned people, having no other recourse, use dissent to oppose and object to. As Gabor Maté, the eloquent and passionate Canadian, said in a conversation a few days ago, one must feel not guilt but rage. And protest is how we give voice to that rage.

4. For the state, this is, no doubt, a problem. Since the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York, states across the liberal west have enacted increasingly coercive laws to deal with protests, often demonizing and criminalizing legitimate expressions of dissent, even treating it as potentially treasonous, and suppressing rights to freedom of assembly and expression of dissent.

5. As contradictions of liberal capitalism have led to unprecedented inequality, deprivation, exploitation of natural resources, and repression, and consequent challenges to its militaristic efforts to maintain hegemony have grown, the pace and scope of such oppressive law-making has picked up as well. One only needs to see the developments in the US, the UK, France, Germany and, yes, Canada for proof.

6. Putting down of protests by coercive means has replaced political dialogue and negotiation. It does not matter what the political stripe of these governments is, the approach is the same.

7. Use of local police forces to put down protests needs to be viewed within this framework. As we know well from the current situation with respect to police response to pro-Palestine protests, be they on our streets or our campuses or a bookstore owned by a prominent and influential member of the community, police behaviour channels the view prevailing in the government and in dominant discourse.

8. In Canada, where local policing is paid for by the municipality and supposedly governed by a local governing body, the police services board, this has obvious implications. First, it means that the residents of the community are subsidising the political agendas of other orders of government. Second, the local police force, supposedly community-based, is providing cover for the state by turning political disagreements and demands into matters of law and order. And third, the governing body’s ability to provide effective governance and oversight on behalf of the community is superseded by directions and decisions by entities who have no direct accountability and who escape political responsibility by this process.

9. This process has implications for other areas of community safety policing. Policing of protests is militaristic, involving surveillance, profiling, use of highly sophisticated technology, over policing and arbitrary coercive treatment of those engaging in expressions of dissent, and is less attentive to the public interest as opposed to the interest of the state. Local police are now connected to national security and intelligence systems and structures. I would suggest that this method of policing inevitably affects policing generally, particularly in our system of policing where the same police personnel, technologies and tactics are used to provide all of policing. It inevitably divides communities into those who must be protected and those from whom they have to be protected.

10. As we know from what happened 14 years ago during the policing of G20 Summit protests in Toronto, all of these developments have been features of policing for some time now.

11. We know very well that policymaking related to delivery of policing services by police boards is generally deficient. The many reasons for this include the method for selecting board members, their training, their knowledge of, confidence in and willingness to exercise their authority, their connectedness to the community, their competence and capacity in making strong policies, their reliance on and often subservience to the police brass, and their reluctance to hold their chiefs accountable for providing full and honest information, properly manage the conduct of their service members, and uphold the overarching laws of the land, namely the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as the provincial human rights laws.

12. With respect to policymaking related to policing of protests, governance is further complicated by the direct role of the federal and provincial governments. There are areas of policing in which oversight by the governance body is superseded by state authority and the local police become, in effect, cops for hire.

13. I believe strongly that there must be a separation between political policing and community safety policing. Let our political masters take responsibility for dealing with public reaction to their decisions and actions and take local policing off the responsibility to be the first responders in these matters, as is the case now. Let local police deal with only those aspects of protests that are directly concerned with local community safety, under the governance of their oversight boards. Political policing and community safety policing must be separated.

To conclude, policing of dissent and protests is a political issue and not only a legal or governance issue and, therefore, our response to it also needs to be multi-level. Efforts to achieve changes or improvements to local policing cannot be confined to advocacy with the local governance bodies alone.  

Thank you.