While some universities have chosen the path of dialogue, also struggling on their campus with solidarity camps for Palestine, the McGill administration has for its part preferred the avenue of judicialization. In vain, because the Superior Court has just refused, for a second time in as many weeks, to force the departure of the demonstrators. The University, thus denying the freedoms which should nevertheless prevail in our university complexes, nevertheless intervened in the rules of law. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Prime Minister François Legault, who perniciously deviated from this by directly summoning the police service to get involved.
Like his colleague, Judge Chantal Masse, who rejected the request for an injunction from two McGill students at the beginning of the month, Superior Court magistrate Marc St-Pierre was also not convinced, the University itself this time, of the urgency of dispersing the installations of the demonstrators camped by the dozens on its grounds. Judge St-Pierre emphasizes that he “does not issue an injunction order as a preventative measure in the event that something purely hypothetical occurs in the future.”
A single sign displaying a discriminatory or racist slogan is one too many. The stories of Jewish university students, who came to denounce to a parliamentary committee in Ottawa that they fear for their safety on their campus and that some even feel the need to hide their identity by hiding their kippah under a cap, are disturbing and cannot be ignored.
Judge St-Pierre, however, was not presented with evidence at McGill of a “serious or violent incident.” Even a counter-demonstration did not disrupt the pacifism of the camp.
Coming to serve as a wise call to order to everyone, the Montreal Police Service (SPVM) emphasized, before the court, that the police “are not the armed wing of anyone”. And what’s more, the police “act on what they see.” Not only did McGill University need to hear it, but obviously François Legault did too. It is unacceptable for a Prime Minister to seek to dictate, as he did, the operations of a police force.
His calls for SPVM police officers to “demolish these camps”, repeated more than once during two separate press briefings, were therefore not accidental. Mr. Legault thus sinisterly distinguished himself as the only one, among his Canadian colleagues, to have so cavalierly evaded the fundamental respect for the independence of the police forces, as well as the equally essential respect for freedom of expression and assembly. peaceful. His ministers, at least, had the decorum not to outbid.
In Ontario, Prime Minister Doug Ford insisted on instructing universities to ensure that demonstrators were moved. In Toronto as in Ottawa, the institutions favored dialogue and negotiation.
In Alberta, Danielle Smith refrained from getting involved until the University of Calgary itself called the police for reinforcements, who came to dislodge the encampment by force, tear gas and stun grenades. The Alberta Prime Minister then took the liberty of admitting she was “happy” with the decision of the University of Calgary and to invite that of Alberta, in Edmonton, to “learn lessons” from it. This was done, the police of the provincial capital using batons and kicks to disperse the demonstrators sitting on the grass. M’s messageme Smith was barely more coded than that of Mr. Legault (a call for dismantling, not for it to be violent), but she was at least careful not to exceed the limits of her political mandate.
In the shadow of stormy springs past, the SPVM favors patience and vigilance rather than confrontation. The lessons of the Ménard report on the repression of the 2012 student demonstrations – advising against mass arrests and condemning the tools brandished by the Alberta police last weekend – fortunately seem to have percolated.
Judge Masse was the first to remind McGill University that this seat of academic and social debate recognizes in its own policies the importance of freedom of expression and demonstration within it. The SPVM, for its part, judiciously reaffirmed, in recent days, its role “to ensure peace, good order, the safety of people, while respecting rights and freedoms”.
François Legault would do well to listen to them, as well as to reread the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms which is so dear to him on other issues. Just above the existential right for the Quebec nation to live in French are these two freedoms that it has obviously (but, let us hope, momentarily) forgotten.