As far as breaches of the peace go, Dominic Cardy’s effort last week looked pretty tame. The former New Brunswick cabinet minister and current independent MLA was in Toronto with his wife when he noticed the ruckus from hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters thronging the city’s Yonge and Dundas intersection.
Mr. Cardy said in an interview that he then decided to exercise his own right to free expression by launching a one-man counterprotest, striding into the crowd and shouting “Free Palestine, from Hamas.”
And for that, he was arrested for breach of the peace by police, handcuffed, jailed for two hours and then released.
In a statement, the Toronto Police Service said Mr. Cardy “was engaging in confrontational behaviour towards other demonstrators and failing to comply with police directives.” What was that behaviour? It was “behaving in a manner that officers would believe would exacerbate an already volatile situation if left unchecked.”
All of that sounds quite ominous, if somewhat vague. In fact, Mr. Cardy was doing nothing more than voicing his opinion, one that the 250 or so people temporarily occupying Yonge and Dundas didn’t fancy. Video on social media makes that clear. As for ignoring police directives – well, he was disregarding a directive from police that he stop exercising his right to free expression. (Memo to Toronto police: Charter rights do not have asterisks that allow them to be extinguished by arbitrary directives.)
Asked if he would promise to leave the protest and not come back, Mr. Cardy declined. Then the handcuffs came out.
At some point, Toronto police presumably realized that they had arrested a sitting politician with some public profile. (Mr. Cardy, a former leader of the New Brunswick NDP, had jumped to the Progressive Conservatives in 2017 but was expelled from that caucus after resigning from cabinet in 2022.) Mr. Cardy said that he’d left his Toronto hotel room without ID. His release after two hours in jail came without charges or conditions, but also without any apology.
Now, there’s no doubt that Mr. Cardy was being a provocateur and no doubt that he was being disruptive. Such is the inconvenient nature of protest – a fact to which the Toronto drivers who were forced to detour around the latest pro-Palestinian protest could perhaps attest.
The crowd was clearly unhappy to hear Mr. Cardy’s message, drowning him out with chants. That’s a messy situation, but that’s democracy for you. They should not be able to veto his speech, however, any more than those unhappy with the pro-Palestinian protest should be able to shut it down.
Clearly, police have a tough job to do in balancing public security with free expression. Last week’s protest in Toronto did not have a permit, a breach of the law. But police, quite rightly, let it proceed.
Mr. Cardy does not begrudge anyone their right to lawful protest, however much he disagrees with the message. He just wants to exercise that same right. And Mr. Cardy says he bears no ill will toward the officers who arrested him. He says they were just carrying out a flawed policing philosophy that places a high priority on not provoking protesters.
One can admire his generosity of spirit without agreeing with his conclusion. The officers on the scene had a choice. They could have made sure that Mr. Cardy could speak unaccosted. Instead, they decided to bundle him off to jail.
On one hand, the lighter-touch approach to policing looks appealing when compared with, say, the aggressive kettling of protesters during the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto, when hundreds of people – including bystanders – were penned in for hours. Such a gross violation of civil rights should never have happened and certainly should never be repeated.
And there are times at which it is necessary for police to avoid confrontation: Arresting a non-violent lawbreaker after a protest has wound down, as was the case in a December, 2023 demonstration inside Toronto’s Eaton Centre when a man allegedly uttered threats but was arrested weeks later.
The pendulum has swung too far now. Mr. Cardy recounted how he saw police in New Brunswick disperse a small group staging a counterprotest against a larger group protesting vaccine mandates. The larger group got to make its case in public. The smaller group did not.
But the Charter right of free expression is not a numbers game. The point of constitutional rights, after all, is to protect minorities – even a minority of one.