Council votes to study a bubble zone bylaw for Ottawa, with reservations

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City councillors have given a cautious go ahead for staff to examine whether a so-called “bubble bylaw” is needed in Ottawa to protect schools, places of worship and other sensitive community sites from strident, possibly violent protests.

Council voted 23-3 in favour of the feasibility study on a possible “vulnerable social infrastructure bylaw,” which is to be delivered to council in the first quarter of 2025.

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Somerset Ward Coun. Ariel Troster expressed the concerns of many of those around the council table when she described how conflicted the idea of a bubble bylaw made her feel.

“It is rare that thinking about a motion keeps me up at night, but this one did,” Troster said.

She described a scene last year in Westboro, where she joined with other councillors and members of the public in a counter-demonstration against a group led by “Billboard Chris” Elston who was in Ottawa to protest the use of puberty blockers and what he called “gender ideology.”

“I stood arm in arm with Coun. Kavanagh, Coun. Johnson, Coun. Leiper and members of my community to physically protect children at Broadview Public School from angry anti-trans hate,” Troster said. “It was one of the most frightening days of my life. There were white guys in red hats, in paramilitary formations, marching in and targeting children in school.

“I’m also Jewish. I know what it’s like to go to high holiday services surrounded by security,” Troster said. “The uptick in anti-Semitism is extremely serious. People are scared.”

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But Troster also said she “grew up on a picket line” and had friends whose family members had been killed in Gaza and had been protesting Israel’s invasion of that territory for more than a year.

“And the majority of protests that achieved the rights that I have, to marry my wife, to have health-care access, to have both of us parent our daughter, they started when someone threw that first brick at Stonewall,” she said, referencing the 1969 New York City riots that sparked the early gay rights movement.

Orléans East Coun. Matthew Luloff said he was “about as close to a free speech absolutist as you can get,” yet he wanted the city to consider a bubble bylaw.

“My issue is when it’s not the intended recipient of the vitriol that suffers,” Luloff said, citing downtown residents’ experience during the 2022 convoy occupation and seniors in a long-term care home adjacent to a protest outside the Soloway Jewish Community Centre in September. “It’s when innocent people are used as pawns in an argument they are not a party to.”

Capital Ward Coun. Shawn Menard was one of just three to vote against the study, along with Knoxdale-Merivale Coun. Sean Devine and Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Jessica Bradley.

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Such a bylaw, Menard said, put at risk “a time-honoured tradition, respect for freedoms that have been hard fought for, like freedom of assembly. There’s a real risk that, if we allow this to expand, the civic spaces that everyone in Canada can use to speak up and dissent and express ideas, will slowly shrink,” he said.

The City of Vaughan, north of Toronto, enacted its own bubble bylaw earlier this year, but it has not been tested in court. It carries a maximum fine of $100.000 for violations.

“The question you have to ask yourself is, ‘Is protesting religious authorities or residential schools or long-standing abuses now a non-starter within 100 metres?’” Menard said. “What about students protesting their school administrations? Or what about protesting private long-term care owners whose negligence may have cost the lives of our elders?”

The study will only examine the feasibility of such a bylaw and council will have to decide next year whether it wants the City of Ottawa to move forward to write such a law of its own.

“It was a great discussion and I heard a lot of concerns raised that have been raised by members of the community and, frankly, are concerns that have crossed my own mind,” Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said after the meeting.

“Obviously, there are no easy answers to the challenges we’re facing here. I think we need to proceed cautiously and in a way that allows for a lot of public consultation. We’ll take some time to study the feasibility, and, when that report comes back, we’ll study our options at that time.”

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