Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

For many, democracy is an inconvenience. And the protesters at Montebello Quebec were peaceful and many were older, but that didn’t matter. There were women and timid children in the crowd, young people, book-clad students, and the usual rowdies who want to belong to something, who also scramble at the first sign of a threat.

But these people were still, apparently, too inconvenient; too messy for those in charge.

The recent North American leader’s summit at Montebello Quebec brought out the usual concerned crowd of conscientious objectors regarding the usual suspects: big business, jobs, globalization, “deep integration” with the U.S., the attenuation of the middle class, etc.

What was different was the approach of the political elite. They not only “infiltrated” the protestors with undercover Quebec cops, but they then sent undercover cops to pose as protestors.

On video, the undercover cops were seen trying to incite a riot by holding rocks, threatening to throw rocks, actually throwing rocks, and assaulting the protest organizer David Coles, President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union when he implored the three cops/thugs in question to put the rocks down. Finally, Coles called them out for what they were – phonies and worse: insidious, violent, and victimizing.

And who, exactly, were the phony protesters (undercover thugs) throwing rocks at? Why other cops of course! But those cops were in full riot gear just waiting to crack heads. A police riot would, of course, discredit the whole protest, which is exactly what the political masters wanted.

I say this as a result of the very reaction of the authorities when caught red-handed. First, there was the utter denial by the authorities regarding the existence of the undercover cops — lying, in other words; then the leading Police apologist, Inspector Marcel Savard, walked out in front of the cameras after other cameras on You Tube showed the fake protestors wore Police boots, and claimed, yes they were undercover cops after all, but all is well. “Everything is fine”, he said. Almost as if to say to the media, “Go home folks, there’s nothing here to look at, move along.”

According to him, the undercover cops were there to keep order and were just role playing –“keeping their cover”, he said. Rock throwing was just a part of it.

This farce of absurdist proportions reached its apogee when these same fake protesters/undercover cops actually got “arrested” during theMontebello demonstrations. Of course they were released when carted away from pubic view.

The whitewash did not end with the dismissive Quebec Inspector however, as the ironically titled Minister of Public Safety, Stockwell Day, resumed the apologist chorus saying “You can’t start getting politicians to make the calls, saying ‘it’s ok for you to use undercover agents in this drug operation over here, but you can’t use them in that over there”. Whatever the hell that means. Stockwell Day never was a very bright guy. I guess that works for him.

But Day’s deflection wasn’t the point. The undercover Quebec police actually broke the law: they assaulted Coles, and threw rocks; had they incited a riot successfully and women and children had been trampled, they would be responsible for causing deaths and injury.

What is far worse, morally, is that they were part of anti-democratic activities.

Any tin-pot dictatorship can sweep such Police tactics under the rug as the Tories have done.

The freedom of assembly and protest is absolutely fundamental.

Western Liberal Democratic standards in Canada are supposed to be higher – but they are not; neither is Police action in Montebello a small, nor an isolated incident I’m afraid. Don’t hold your breath for an inquiry either.

Your political overlords have spoken, now go away. Go away and finish the mission of bringing democracy to Afghanistan.