Regg Cohn | Anti-Israel protests expose the lack of leadership at city hall and Queen’s Park

Indeed, sad example of passing the buck back and forth:

…The minister who oversees law enforcement says more needs to be done. The mayor says she’d like to see more arrests and has spoken to the chief about it.

The chief would like to clarify. Speaking the next day on Moore’s radio show, Demkiw said it wasn’t so simple.

“Listen, I do not know where she’s getting that narrative,” he countered. “The Crown attorneys guide us on the prospect of conviction.”

If these three community leaders are still talking past each other, it’s hardly surprising that protesters are still shouting and chanting at other residents of Toronto who have nothing to do with the issue at hand.

The Toronto Police Association issued its own statement after Kerzner’s missives appealing for “clear and consistent direction to our members and the public about what is lawful and unlawful when it comes to protest activity.”

Clarity amid ambiguity isn’t easy. But that doesn’t mean the crown prosecutors who are paid and educated to make these decisions shouldn’t be rising to the occasion — and pursuing test cases as needed.

For two years, protesters have been showing up outside the homes of Canadian Jews to loiter and litigate a conflict a world away — and a country away. That transgresses the universal value that a person’s private home is a private sanctuary — akin to a castle, not a consulate (the Israeli consulate is fully 15 kilometres away from that neighbourhood).

For two years, protesters have been free to hold their own demonstrations on the streets and squares of Toronto, where the right to assembly and peaceful protest is protected by the Charter of Rights. But the right to free speech is hardly unlimited, and freedom of assembly does not confer a right to trespass on private property — let alone empower people to wade in with megaphones to disrupt, drown out or trample on other people’s holiday celebrations in shopping malls (just as unionized workers, even in a lawful strike, cannot picket in a shopping centre).

To be sure, the policing of protests is always a balancing act. But trespass isn’t especially ambiguous on private property; and there’s a difference between peaceful protest (protected under the Charter) versus disruptions that escalate to harassment and hatefulness.

Interestingly, Jason Kenney, a former federal minister of multiculturalism (and ex-premier of Alberta) waded into the debate after the Boxing Day disruptions at Eaton Centre, asking why the authorities (notably his fellow Tories) couldn’t get their act together. Good question.

Kenney suggested they could invoke Ontario laws against trespass. Or apply criminal code laws on mischief; mischief “motivated by bias, prejudice or hate;” causing a disturbance; and unlawful assembly.

A better question is why, if the solicitor general is so vexed by the lack of action, he doesn’t send a letter to his cabinet colleague, Attorney General Doug Downey, suggesting that his ministry provide clearer guidance to Crown attorneys about how to proceed.

The only certainty is that we have a solicitor general who is publicly wagging his finger, a chief who says his hands are tied, a mayor who is washing her hands of the situation, a police union that is throwing up its hands, and an attorney general who may be sitting on his hands.

And no one pointing the way forward.

Source: Opinion | Anti-Israel protests expose the lack of leadership at city hall and Queen’s Park