Freedom Convoy: The tool that best reduced business risk

Clear geographic boundaries in a statutory injunction gave police much-needed power to enforce bylaws during 2022’s Freedom Convey protests in Ontario, a lawyer told the recent RIMS Canada Conference in Vancouver.

“Whether or not the police have the authority to create an exclusion zone or geographic limits around protest is something that’s still in debate in the law,” said Jennifer King, a partner at Gowling WLG.

“Evidence from the police was that it was useful in the injunction to have very clear geographic boundaries so that they don’t have to question whether or not they can enforce a bylaw in a particular way.”

King was responding to a question from moderator Robin McCleave, BFL Canada’s national practice leader for the public sector, about what legal tools are available to municipalities in response to a disruptive protest. She was specifically asked about the City of Windsor’s use of a statutory injunction during protests in 2022 on the Ambassador Bridge that connects Windsor and Detroit.

King acted as lead counsel for the City of Windsor on the injunction related to Ambassador Bridge blockades in February 2022. Protestors obstructed the bridge beginning Feb. 7, 2022 and by Feb. 9, King said, lawyers reached out for a court date.

“We were in court less than 24 hours after we were retained,” King said during the panel, Applying Recent Court Rulings While Responding to Demonstrative Social Activism. “It was very fast, and it was the chief justice in Ontario…”

Lawyers applied for and received the statutory injunction under Ontario’s Municipal Act, King reported.

“For a municipality that wants to bring these injunctions, you have to show [a] bylaw’s being breached and then, essentially, it’s exceptional for a court to not grant that injunction,” she said, adding that it remains in place as a permanent statutory injunction.

Related: Are Freedom Convoy truckers covered?

Legal tools to respond to disruptive protests will likely involve police, King noted.

Provincial traffic statutes are also available, and provinces are increasingly passing laws like the Keeping Ontario Open for Business Act. This law was passed following the convoy protests to protect critical infrastructure and can provide the “ability to create geographic limits around a protest,” King said.

“What was important about the [Ambassador] bridge is that a lot of the municipalities that have border crossings saw what was happening in Ottawa, and they saw that the Freedom Convoy of Ottawa got entrenched quickly.”

Around the same time as the Ambassador Bridge protests, there were demonstrations at the Peace Bridge border crossing in Fort Erie, Ont., said another panellist, Donna Pasto, risk management program manager for the Regional Municipality of Niagara.

Police forces on both sides of the border collaborated and considered some of the lessons from other demonstrations, Pasto said.

“Steps were taken to redirect traffic so that the vehicles and the trucks that were on their way…didn’t get to the Peace Bridge,” she said. “They were still allowed to come into the Fort Erie area, but they were redirected to an area.

“And what actually ended up happening [was] they would park their vehicles and then come on foot onto the bridge, which was manageable through police presence.”

That also maintained the traffic flow of essential vehicles without halting the movement of goods in and out of Canada.

“So, what could have been a critical situation, we were able to divert it,” Pasto said. “Doesn’t mean it’ll always happen that way, but we got lucky this time, just because we had that opportunity to plan in advance.”

 

Feature image: Police walk the line to remove truckers and supporters after a court injunction gave police the power to enforce the law after protesters blocked the access leading from the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ont., Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022. The federal government is giving Windsor up to $6.9 million in compensation for dealing with “Freedom Convoy” protests that blocked the Ambassador Bridge in the southwest Ontario city earlier this year. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette