If they are satisfied with the six million dollars obtained from the City of Montreal in compensation, the victims of mass arrests during demonstrations held between 2011 and 2015 consider the excuses expressed by the City to be quite insufficient. On Tuesday, they asked Mayor Valérie Plante and the director of the Service de police de Montréal (SPVM), Fady Dagher, to publicly acknowledge the wrongs caused to the demonstrators.
Last October, an amicable agreement was reached between the City of Montreal and the lawyers associated with the 16 class actions brought by the demonstrators. The latter obtained an amount of six million dollars, although they claimed 53.5 million, as well as a commitment from the City to publish a text of apology for 90 days on its website.
However, the short text of three paragraphs is almost invisible since it only appears in the form of a hyperlink on the page of the Legal Department of the City of Montreal and it is difficult to find, deplored the representatives of the class actions during of a press conference on Tuesday.
According to them, these “cheap excuses” are not acceptable. “I have the impression that even my 5-year-old son is able to apologize with more sincerity than the municipal administration and the police department,” said Sophie Vallée-Desbiens, who represents those arrested during the the manifestation of the 1er may 2013.
According to the plaintiffs, the apologies published too discreetly do not respect the spirit of the agreement and of the judgment handed down on February 22 by Superior Court Judge Martin Sheehan, when approving the October agreement. They are therefore asking that Mayor Plante and Chief of Police Fady Dagher speak publicly to apologize and recognize the harm caused, as former Mayor Denis Coderre did in 2017 to the community. LGBTQ, discriminated against between the 1960s and 1990s.
And the recommendations?
“But beyond our request for an apology, we would like the mayor and the police department to tell us how they will put into practice the recommendations that Judge Sheehan made for the police to change their behavior during the demonstrations”, explained Marcel Sévigny, who represents another group of protesters arrested in 2012.
It should be noted that the lawsuits filed concerned demonstrations held between 2011 and 2015 to denounce police brutality and the City’s P-6 by-law. This regulation was amended in 2016, then repealed in 2019. The demonstrators opposed, among other things, the ban on wearing a mask during a demonstration and the obligation to provide a route to the forces of the order before a spontaneous demonstration.
The settlement of the 16 class actions affects approximately 3,200 people and protesters’ representatives expect each person to receive between $1,500 and $2,000. At this time, it is unknown how many people have made a claim.
Tuesday noon, Mayor Plante published a message on his Twitter account. “The right to protest is fundamental and we will always defend it. This is why I reiterate the apologies of the City of Montreal to the people who demonstrated in 2012 and whose rights were violated by the old P-6 by-law, repealed by our administration,” she wrote. “The agreement that was reached with the victims of the former P-6 settlement demonstrates our commitment to defending their fundamental rights. »
The right to protest is fundamental and we will always defend it.
This is why I reiterate the apologies of the City of Montreal to the people who demonstrated in 2012 and whose rights were violated by the old P6 by-law, repealed by our administrator.#polmtl
— Valerie Plante (@Val_Plante) March 14, 2023
Further details will follow.