Friday a Quebec judge made a ruling that subverts the public’s right to petition state officials. In finding me guilty of three charges related to emailing the Montreal police, Karine Giguere established a terrible precedent. I’ll appeal.
Judge Giguere found me guilty of obstruction of police work, harassment of a police officer and indecent communication. The three charges were related to my promoting an Action Network email campaign in February calling on supporters to petition the police to drop a release condition and charges. I spent five days in jail to defeat the release condition muzzling me and the charges were dropped in July.
I promoted the Action Network email petition to the police after an investigator with the Montreal police’s hate crimes unit said she was charging me for “harassing” anti-Palestinian media personality Dahlia Kurtz. (I never met Kurtz, messaged her or threatened her in any way. All I ever did was respond to Kurtz on X and the supposedly aggrieved Kurtz never even blocked me on that platform. After the criminal charges were dropped Kurtz sued me for defamation in civil court. That matter is ongoing.) After I wrote about the charges and asked people to email the police to abandon them, the police charged me with harassing the police and interfering with their work.
Friday’s ruling is a blow for everyone who might disagree with a decision by the government or its representatives. The email campaign was not unlike petitions sent to all levels of government, reporters or corporate officials, which are generally lawful.
Central to the ruling was the court’s acceptance of the prosecution’s argument that I was responsible for the actions of thousands of individuals who autonomously emailed the Montreal police. The judgment placed the legal responsibility squarely on the organizer of the Action Network alert campaign, concluding that the volume of email interfered with police operations and thus became criminal conduct.
The judge acknowledged that the Crown failed to cite any previous case law in which someone was convicted for encouraging people to send emails to a public official as part of a political campaign. Regardless, she proceeded to convict me for “harassment” even though the email was polite in tone — beginning with “dear” and ending with “sincerely”.
The verdict also drew a distinction between email campaigns directed at police and those aimed at other public figures. It effectively creates a special category of protection for police officers, insulating them from coordinated public pressure.The ruling grants police broad discretion to define criticism of their actions as criminal interference and to define communication/pressure as “obstructing” justice.
The judge failed to weigh the constitutional implications of criminalizing collective political advocacy or whether the convictions unjustifiably limit protected political speech. The ruling treated the case primarily as an issue of police inconvenience, ignoring the freedom-of-expression impacts.
I have 30 days to appeal. If successful, the appeal could clarify the limits of criminal law in relation to email petitions and political advocacy without risking criminal sanction. Conversely,
if the verdict stands, it curtails our right to petition state officials and undercuts democratic participation.
Alex Tyrrell assisted with this article.
If you can assist with the legal appeal: yvesengler.com/donate/
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