Nathalie Des Rosiers is the General Counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a national watchdog for the protection of human rights and civil liberties in Canada. Nathalie has been the CCLA's General Counsel since July 1, 2009. Her previous positions include Dean of the Faculty of Law – Civil Law Section of the University of Ottawa and President of the Law Commission of Canada. Nathalie obtained her LL.B from Université de Montréal and her LL.M from Harvard University. In 2011, the magazine Canadian Lawyer named her one of the top 25 influential lawyers in Canada.

Workshop Format

Are there rules for protest? Who sets them? When does a legal assembly become illegal? When does a public action shift from protected speech to civil disobedience? What happens then? Are there limits on what police officers can do to interrupt, disperse or redirect a protest? Is anonymity or wearing a mask a constitutional right? These are some of the questions that will be discussed during the workshop. The objectives are to gain an understanding about the principles at play in assessing the limits of the constitutionally protected right to protest. There is much uncertainty in the law. Therefore, the workshop is not really a “Know Your Rights as a Protester”, but rather an occasion to debate and explore the range of arguments from different points of view as well as the constitutional theories that support them. We will look at recent legal cases as well as case studies, Canadian and international, to reflect on the role of law in supporting, enhancing or curtailing and limiting political speech.

The workshop will discuss four topics :

A. Regulation of Public Space: By-Laws, Uses and Abuses

B. Speech in Public Space: What Are Reasonable Limits?

C. Policing Protests: dos and don’ts

D. Accountability Framework

Suggested Readings

Criminal Code , sections 63 and 64:

63. (1) An unlawful assembly is an assembly of three or more persons who, with intent to carry out any common purpose, assemble in such a manner or so conduct themselves when they are assembled as to cause persons in the neighbourhood of the assembly to fear, on reasonable grounds, that they

• (a) will disturb the peace tumultuously; or

• (b) will by that assembly needlessly and without reasonable cause provoke other persons to disturb the peace tumultuously.

(2) Persons who are lawfully assembled may become an unlawful assembly if they conduct themselves with a common purpose in a manner that would have made the assembly unlawful if they had assembled in that manner for that purpose.

(3) Persons are not unlawfully assembled by reason only that they are assembled to protect the dwelling-house of any one of them against persons who are threatening to break and enter it for the purpose of committing an indictable offence therein.

64. A riot is an unlawful assembly that has begun to disturb the peace tumultuously.

Supreme Court of Canada decisions: Great Vancouver Transportation Authority v. Canadian Federation of Students http://scc.lexum.org/en/2009/2009scc31/2009scc31.html

R. v. Guignard, [2002] 1 S.C.R. 472, 2002 SCC , http://scc.lexum.org/en/2002/2002scc14/2002scc14.html

Justice Brown’s decision in the Occupy Toronto : Batty v. City of Toronto: http://www.canlii.org/eliisa/highlight.do?text=occupy+brown+toronto&language=en&searchTitle=Search+all+CanLII+Databases&path=/en/on/onsc/doc/2011/2011onsc6862/2011onsc6862.html

CCLA Breach of the Peace Report on the Policing of the G20 in Toronto: http://ccla.org/2011/02/28/take-action-g-20/

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