Laws

I’ve been thinking about breaking the law a fair bit lately.

No, I’m not planning a bank heist, I seldom drive over the speed limit and I’ve been wearing my mask at all the right times and places.

But watching recent events in Ottawa and other jurisdictions how can one not help but think about law breaking?

The gang in Ottawa mislabelled as the Trucker’s Convoy aren’t truckers. Based on their demands they are, at worst insurrectionists; at best, failed civic students.  And convoys move.  These guys are parked and in some cases have taken their wheels off.  They are honking their horns. And they are breaking the law.

Alan Borovoy thought seriously about law breaking.  For many years Borovoy was general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.  Borovoy spent a lifetime fighting for justice. He passed away in 2015. In his book Uncivil Obedience – The Tactics and Tales of A Democratic Agitator he argues that there is no justification in a democratic society for breaking the law to get justice.   Borovoy’s strong belief was that there are enough legal tools at the disposal of activists to fight injustice without resorting to breaking the law. 

“We should obey the law but stick it to the government anyway,” he wrote.

Back in the day (before I read Borovoy’s book) I was involved in anti-junk mail advocacy.  Our main target was Canada Post.  And to us environmentalists, privacy advocates and curmudgeons the issue was a simple one.  Shouldn’t you have the right to stop unwanted materials from coming to your door?  One form of protest we undertook was stuffing a Canada Post mailbox with unwanted, unsolicited junk mail.  

That was against the law.  (See Sections 48 and 49 of the Canada Post Corporation Act.)  Not a hanging crime, pretty minor stuff really.  

But applying Borovoy’s reasoning one has to ask what gave us self-appointed anti-junk mail crusaders the right, no matter how good our cause, to break the law.   

Borovoy’s recommended uncivil but obedient tactics included:

• Exerting enough pressure to make authorities negotiate but not so much they will lose. Doing this will get the fence sitters on your side. 

• Speaking over the heads of those attending your events.  While only the converted may attend a rally or demonstration, the message must go over the heads of those present to be effective. 

• Using the strength of your opponent.  Borovoy recognizes that publicizing the extreme positions of opponents was often the key to success.  Pull your adversaries’ tails and they will squeal obligingly.

Contrast how the Ottawa insurrectionists are being treated by authorities to what has happened to others. 

Case in point is the treatment of supporters of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in their opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline.  Protestors have been handled aggressively by the RCMP.  Journalists, merely doing their jobs, have been arrested.

Those supporters object to a pipeline that would transport liquefied natural gas from northeast British Columbia to a terminal on the coast near the town of Kitimat. It would cross 22,000 square kilometers of unceeded Wet’suwet’en land. The hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en Nation have come out against the project.

I’m trying to imagine what the indigenous perspective would be on Borovoy’s ideas.  What strikes me is that being uncivil but obedient doesn’t seem to be doing much good.

Perhaps Mahatma Gandhi’s challenges to authority can provide food for thought.  

Gandhi broke the law and was jailed many times.  At one trial he said, “In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” 

His Salt March is instructive. Salt was an important part of the Indian diet.  However Indians could only buy it from the British and there was a significant sales tax on top of it. 

On March 12, 1930 Gandhi began a march of 388 kilometres (241 miles) from Sabermanti to the ocean.  When he arrived at Dandi on the Arabian Sea he broke the law making salt from seawater. This act clearly violated Britain’s Salt Acts that prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt.  Sixty thousand people across India were arrested as a result of the civil disobedience that followed.   Gandhi himself was arrested about a month later.

Making salt, stuffing mailboxes, honking your horn all can be classified as law breaking activities.  

Calling for the unconstitutional overthrow of the government seems to me to be law breaking of a different order.