North Vancouver district grows impatient as RCMP fails to remove ‘hateful’ overpass protesters

A councillor for the District of North Vancouver says residents are “frustrated” with a persistent group of weekly protesters on the Mountain Highway overpass who have not yet been removed, despite a court injunction.

The protesters, whose signs include anti-vaccine and anti-transgender messaging, have been there every Thursday for months on end, a “torment” to the community with “messages of hate,” according to Coun. Jordan Back.

“These messages are an obvious distraction as people are coming under these overpasses, which are on a busy highway, and they are also offensive,” Back told Global News on Thursday.

“I think we’re hearing from a number of people in the community, who quite frankly, have had enough of it.”

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The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure obtained an injunction on May 11 that bars the group from congregating on the overpass and its ramps, hanging signs from overpass infrastructure, or intentionally disrupting or distracting vehicle traffic. It states that the RCMP or any other policing authority “may arrest and remove any person who has knowledge of this order,” and who police have “reasonable grounds to believe is contravening” it.

North Vancouver RCMP said officers have been at the overpass site for weeks, informing protesters of the injunction, but have not removed anyone because they need more information first. Const. Mansoor Sahak did not specify what details were lacking.

“There’s some clarifications on the injunction that we need further explained. Once we have that clarification we’ll be able to go out and enforce the injunction,” Sahak said in an interview.

“We have to protect the integrity of the judicial system and make sure we don’t infringe on anybody’s rights. We have to take a cautious approach and it requires a lot of resources and a lot of planning.”

Sahak noted that some of the protesters have been seen at the Fern Street overpass as well. The injunction however, only covers the Mountain Highway overpass.

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Some of the signs carried by protesters have referenced “COVID fraud” and associated conspiracy theories, called mainstream media “the virus,” and suggested children can’t be born into the wrong bodies. Another sign reads, “This is not hate speech.”

Rob Webb said he has protested every Thursday for 10 months and filed a motion in B.C.’s Supreme Court to have the injunction tossed out. He said he has no problem with the LGTQ2S+ community, but is concerned with SOGI 123, a resource package for schools designed to help teachers and school administrators reduce discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

“We try to raise awareness for the harms that are going on in the world, including SOGI. That seems to be the one that’s triggering everyone,” he said Thursday. “Leave the children alone, that’s our message. Let them be children, let them be kids.”

Webb said he doesn’t believe the protests pose a risk to traffic, and at times, protesters have left when they feel it has.

“We’ve been doing this every Thursday without incident. Not one accident, nothing,” he explained.

“The reason we come here is because people are travelling three or four kilometres per hour. They’re going very slow. When it starts going too fast then we leave.”

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In an emailed statement, the Ministry of Transportation disagreed. It said the banners on the overpass are “are hateful and raise a serious safety issue.”

“The ministry continues to monitor the situation and will need to review further actions,” it wrote. “Enforcement of the court order is the responsibility of the police.

“We continue to ask police to act on the injunction to provide for the safety of the travelling public.”

At an unrelated press conference Thursday, Premier David Eby said he’s aware of at least one instance in which a sign was dropped from the overpass, putting motorists below at risk, which prompted the ministry to seek the injunction.

“The second issue, which is the content of the protest, obviously, is quite hateful,” Eby said. “It’s really, in my opinion, seeking to divide British Columbians and to cement division and hatred in our province. I find it reprehensible.

“While I recognize free speech rights of people to be able to demonstrate … I wish those people would certainly go home.”

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Back said he wants the RCMP to act on the injunction, which he believes ought to be extended to all bridges and overpasses in the city.

“I would like to see the community respond with love and push back in a way that shows support for people who could be affected negatively by the messages that they’re seeing,” he added.

Stephanie Wilson, a North Vancouver activist, said she’s “very upset” that “far-right disinformation” has been allowed to propagate in the city, while the RCMP improperly decides whether a “court order is constitutional or not.”

“If there are constitutional questions regarding rights … that’s a matter for the courts to decide, for lawyers to decide, not the RCMP,” she said.

“What’s very concerning for me, bigger than an individual rally, is that these individuals have really embedded themselves into this location and this community and now they believe that they deserve an opportunity to spread this far-right hate.”

Margot Young, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, said it’s “puzzling” that police have not acted on the injunction from a legal perspective, when they claim to have met a requirement to inform protesters of the injunction.

Mounties have cited protection of the right to peaceful, lawful and safe demonstration as a concern, but Young said free expression “can be justifiably limited.” The injunction also shows restraint in the limitation of that right, restricting the ban to a single overpass while protesters are free to move elsewhere, she added.

“In these circumstances, given the safety issue, the limited application of the limitation of that right, it seems a clear case where the government is very justified in limiting the expression rights at issue here,” Young said.

“I do think it’s clear and important to understand that the charter issues are fairly straightforward.”

Global News asked the North Vancouver RCMP to explain what it did not understand about the injunction order but received no response by publication time.