Illegally arrested Montreal protesters demand more sincere, accessible apology

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante and her police chief Fady Dagher need to publicly and vocally apologize for infringing the rights of protesters who were illegally arrested during demonstrations between 2011 and 2015, advocates say.

Representatives of the thousands of protesters who recently won their case against Montreal and its police force (SPVM) say the apology the city agreed to is virtually impossible to find on its website.

They met with the media on Tuesday to demand a public apology from Plante and Dagher and a more prominent posting on the city's website rather than what they call a "cheap apology."

"I am bitter," said Sophie Vallée-Desbiens, who was illegally arrested during a demonstration on May 1, 2013. "These apologies are extremely difficult to find on the city's website, which I think does not respect the spirit of the judgment."

"I feel that even my five-year-old son is capable of apologizing more sincerely than the city administration and the police department have done so far. When you make a real apology, you do it in the light of day, not on the sly."

RIGHTS VIOLATED

Vallée-Desbiens, a nurse and nursing instructor, was ambushed by police officers beating their shields with batons and then arrested alongside other protestors at the site.

The group was detained, crammed into a city bus without water, food or even the possibility of going to the bathroom, and prohibited from calling their lawyers.

They were finally "deported," as the applicant put it, to a part of the city without access to public transportation.

The entire intervention was marked by various infringements of the protesters' fundamental rights.

A PDF APOLOGY

The out-of-court settlement approved by judge Martin Sheehan last February included a $6 million payment to the protesters who were wrongfully arrested by Montreal police and the publication of an apology by the city.

The apology has indeed been published on the website, in a PDF link on the legal services page. But the PDF is inaccessible directly from the home page and requires multiple clicks that aren't necessarily intuitive to a user who doesn't know how to get there.

For Sandrine Ricci, illegally arrested on March 15, 2013, this is Mayor Plante's opportunity to live up to her political pretensions.

"It is completely inconceivable that a mayor who calls herself progressive does not publicly acknowledge the wrongs that were done," Ricci said. "One would expect a more obvious and sincere acknowledgement than what we got."

PLANTE RESPONDS

The mayor was quick to respond to complaints on Tuesday; short of a public outing, Valerie Plante took to Twitter, writing, "the right to protest is fundamental and we will always defend it."

"That is why I reiterate the apologies of the City of Montreal to those who protested in 2012 and whose rights were violated by the former bylaw P6, which has since been repealed by our administration."

Plante added that "The agreement reached with the victims of the former municipal bylaw P6 is a testament to our commitment to defend their fundamental rights."

The mayor is scheduled to meet with the media on Wednesday.

OVER 3,000 APPLICANTS

The agreement, reached after nearly a decade of legal proceedings, involved 16 class action lawsuits against the city and the SPVM. The suits represented over 3,000 claimants who were among the protesters targeted for mass arrest under the P-6 bylaw adopted by the Gérald Tremblay administration during the 2012 Maple Spring student protests.

Approximately 25 per cent of the damages will go towards legal fees and the protesters will receive $1500 each.

The articles of P-6 that prohibited wearing masks and required protestors hand their itinerary to police before demonstrating were invalidated in 2016, and the Plante administration scrapped the bylaw altogether in 2019.

The SPVM has not made mass arrests since 2015.

EXPECTED CHANGES

What comes next is also of great concern to the protestors.

Sophie Vallée-Desbiens says she is still afraid to demonstrate, and the same is true for Isabel Matton, an early childhood educator arrested on May 20, 2012.

"That night, I feared for my safety. I was blinded by pepper spray; I breathed in tear gas for the first time; I heard a stun bomb explode right next to me. I was scared," she said.

For Marcel Sévigny, apprehended on June 7, 2012, police must take note of the court's rebuke of their abusive practices.

"Beyond our demand for an apology, we expect and would like the City of Montreal, the mayor and the police department to tell us how they are going to act now to put into practice Justice Sheehan's recommendations that the police modify their behaviour at the level of demonstrations."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on March 15, 2023.