VANCOUVER – British Columbia judges have ordered the Occupy encampments in Victoria and Vancouver to end, while protesters and civic officials in Toronto are waiting until Monday to find out if that city will have similar clout to clear its camp.
B.C. Supreme Court judge Anne MacKenzie agreed Friday with city lawyers who argued the protesters tenting on the lawn of the downtown Vancouver Art Gallery are trespassing on city land.
The associate chief justice concluded all tents and structures must be down by 2 p.m. on Monday. Police were granted the power to enforce the order.
“I am persuaded by the city’s submissions,” MacKenzie said, as a small number of protesters in the courtroom uttered words of indignation.
“I find the city has established a clear breach of its bylaws. . . I find the city would have irrevocable harm if they were refused.”
The city says protests can continue, but protesters cannot continue to live on the site.
Lawyers for the protesters had argued the encampment should be allowed to stay on the grounds the tents were integral to free speech and assembly, an argument MacKenzie said fell outside the scope of her hearing.
Outside court, Michael McCubbin, lawyer for one of the protesters, said the judge ruled according to existing case law.
“We were asking her to fit us into a very, very narrow exception,” he said. “She gave some indication that she was open-minded to a different order and ultimately she decided not to rule in our favour.”
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Protesters said they would take the ruling back to the general assembly to decide the camp’s response.
Mathew Kagis, a defendant in the case who has spent the past month as a volunteer medic on the site, said he expected the group to be sad and very upset.
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“She had the opportunity to be part of a change and she chose to maintain an unsustainable status quo,” said the 43-year-old.
Hours earlier, a court in Victoria ordered campers parked in Centennial Square to pack up by 7 a.m. Saturday.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Terence Schultes said freedom-of-speech arguments simply weren’t strong enough to trump the city’s enforcement of its bylaws.
Mayor Dean Fortin said he was pleased with the ruling, saying the tone of the protest has shifted from its original purpose.
“A criminal element (has) come in that it’s really almost hijacked,” he said. “Those rising concerns of safety and public health really created a situation where it’s not compatible for other community events.”
Victoria must return to court for an enforcement order if protesters don’t pack up.
The camps were all erected on Oct. 15 as part of the global Occupy movement, which aims to highlight the concentration of the world’s wealth in the hands of very few. It started at Manhattan’s Wall Street two months ago.
Lawyers for Occupy Toronto made similar free-speech arguments in Ontario Superior Court on Friday, with lawyer Susan Ursel calling the encampment “an exercise of conscience.”
“(It’s a) manifestation of what they’re trying to create in the world,” Ursel told Justice David Brown.
Like Vancouver and Victoria, the City of Toronto says the protesters are trespassing. It argues they are violating bylaws and infringing the rights of other park users.
Brown, who will issue his ruling Monday morning, took issue with the protesters’ use of the term “eviction,” noting the city is only trying to enforce its bylaws. He said the park was still available for political expression, but that could be accomplished without tents and during the day.
After Ursel suggested the city should work with demonstrators to share the park, the judge said the protesters showed little willingness to compromise.
“You can talk, but their bottom line is: ‘Ain’t going anywhere’,” Brown said.
Five protesters fronted the legal challenge after officials went tent-to-tent to deliver bylaw notices after Mayor Rob Ford said he’d had complaints from area businesses.
The argument that the tents are a fundamental part of the protest doesn’t wash, said Rachel Young, who owns a business across from the park.
“As soon as you fall asleep in a tent, you’re camping, you’re no longer protesting.”
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which is intervening the Toronto case, is arguing the protesters should be allowed to stay.
Association lawyer Jill Copeland told the court the camp posed no threat to public safety, and inconvenience or added cost wasn’t enough to justify removing the protesters.
The protesters took over St. James Park a few blocks east of Bay Street. Some protesters have said they would defy any order to leave.
Others, as several did in Victoria, said they didn’t want to risk a confrontation with police and have left voluntarily.
In Quebec City on Friday, about 40 police officers went to the Occupy camp to help dismantle a wood-and-metal shelter used by protesters to serve food. A handful of people initially tried to block police from getting to the shelter but were unsuccessful in stopping the officers.
City officials said the shelter had to go because it was too much like a permanent structure.
On Friday, two remaining Occupy Whitehorse participants were also given 48 hours to clear out from outside the Yukon government’s main administration building. Temperatures are expected to dip to -30 C over the weekend.
– With files from Colin Perkel and Paola Loriggio in Toronto
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