Rule of Law According to Public Safety Minister Bill BlairOn February 23, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair spoke on CBC's radio program Cross Country Checkup about policing the Wet'suwet'en people, who are waging a determined struggle to affirm their sovereignty and rule of law on their traditional territory, with the support of the Canadian people from coast to coast to coast.
Minister Blair asserted that Chief Woos had got it all wrong and that the RCMP had decamped to nearby Houston but were continuing to patrol the area, completely ignoring the point that continuing to patrol the area means the RCMP have not left Wet'suwet'en territory. When pressed by the CBC program host that Houston was in fact in Wet'suwet'en territory and reminding him that Chief Woos had said: "Out means Out," Minister Blair asserted: "No. Let me be very clear. There is no place in Canada that can be deprived of the service and protection of the police. The police have a responsibility in every place in Canada to uphold the rule of law." In an arrogant fashion -- when asked by the program host: "... so how are the police supposed to minimize the use of force and act as peacekeepers in the situation they're now in?" -- Minister Blair replied, "... As you know, I was a police officer for 39 years and I have actually attended quite a number of these protests, and I know exactly what that framework for dealing with critical Aboriginal incidents says, and how the police have been trained to respond. They are absolutely committed to resolving this peaceably as have we, in all of our discussion....The prime minister's direction was not to the police, and we've been crystal clear on this. We are not giving direction to the police. That's not the law in this country."
At the 2010 G20 Summit, some 30,000 workers, youth and broad sections of the Canadian people came to protest the neo-liberal agenda and the policies of the G20 governments that represent the international financial oligarchy that are the source of war, poverty, environmental degradation and other social problems that humanity is facing. They came to raise high the banner for their rights. Toronto Police Chief Blair was in charge of policing the summit, working closely with the office of then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the RCMP, which was coordinating security with U.S. Homeland Security and U.S. intelligence. On the ground were 21,000 security personnel, including 6,200 Toronto officers, 5,000 RCMP, 3,000 Canadian Armed Forces, 3,000 Ontario Provincial Police and 740 Peel Region Police, along with reinforcements from Halton, York, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Niagara Falls, Peterborough, Durham, Sudbury, Waterloo, Barrie, Newfoundland and Labrador, Winnipeg, Montreal, Edmonton and Calgary. It is well known what happened at the G20. The police terrorized the protesters. Many Toronto police removed their badges so that they could not be identified. More than 1,140 people, including many bystanders, were arrested. Mounted police, along with others on foot, charged the demonstrators with batons and injured countless people. Hundreds of people were "kettled" and kept, without cause, for hours in the pouring rain to suppress the people's affirmation of their rights. In the end, the public outrage was so great that various inquiries were organized under the pretext of holding the police to account to diffuse the people's outrage at the widespread brutality and violations of people's civil and political rights. Several inquiries, including one by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, found that the police had acted unlawfully in many instances during the G20 Summit. Yet, when the dust settled, the people got no justice, even when they collectively and individually brought legal action against the police. A few "bad apples" in the police force were charged but Police Chief Blair refused to issue a public apology for the police violence and brutality. Blair did such a fine job for the Canadian state during the G20 that when, in 2015, the Toronto Police Services Board chose not to renew his contract, he was courted by all three main cartel parties to be their candidate in the federal election. He agreed to stand for the Liberal Party in the riding of Scarborough Southwest after Trudeau met with him personally.[1] At the time of the G20 and today, the question remains -- whose law do the police enforce and in whose interest? The Indigenous peoples, the Canadian people and the Quebec people are striving for a rule of law that upholds their rights, not those of a handful of parasites and profiteers of the international and Canadian financial oligarchy who hold dictate over the whole society through their governments, courts and police. Note1. One of the candidates who ran against Bill Blair in the 2015 federal election was Tommy Taylor, the Green Party candidate. He ran simply to oppose Blair and what he had done during the G20 Summit in Toronto. Mr. Taylor was one of the bystanders who was arrested, and he spent 24 hours in handcuffs. In the aftermath of the G20, he noted to the press at the time: "Everyone keeps passing the buck," and while Canada is "good at telling others about civil rights and how to treat protesters, when it comes to Canada, it is another story." "We get in other countries' faces about that," he said. "When it happens here, we're trying to sweep it under the carpet." (With files from the CBC, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star)
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On air, Minister
Blair contradicted Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chief Woos who had said
earlier on the same
program: "We will not talk with the government until the RCMP are
completely out of our territorial land. We're not going to talk
with a gun pointed at our heads. That's not the way to do it."
Chief Woos noted as well that, rather than de-escalating
the situation, the RCMP had increased surveillance and made
more arrests.
Minister Blair
should well know that the
Indigenous peoples of
Turtle Island and the Canadian people have a pretty good idea of
what the rule of law means when it comes to their rights. The
rule of law that Minister Blair is sworn to uphold is that of the
Canadian state of the rich. It was on full display at the G20 in
Toronto in the summer of 2010 when Blair was Chief of
the Toronto Police Services.