On Wednesday (April 22) at Council we passed a by-law which aims to ensure safe access to schools, daycares, places of worship, health care facilities and residential care centers (like long term care homes) in the context of protests.

Following direction provided to City staff by Council last year, staff presented a draft bylaw that:

• Allows the City to establish a 50M safe access zone (referred to as a “bubble”) around the access points of these places, if the operator applies to the City asking for this protection.
• No person can block or prevent access to a safe zone and within the zone people are not allowed to protest (they can march through).
• People are able to protest beyond the 50M limit.
• Where does it apply? It applies to points of access to the facility that are on city property (roads/sidewalks/City right of way).
• How long will the safe zone apply? it applies for one year and can be renewed.
• How will people know if they are in a safe access zone? Signs clarifying the limits of the zone will be put up.
• Does the bylaw apply to all of these places automatically? No. The administrator would need to apply (via an attestation and provide layouts of the building) to have a safe access zone put in place. This is one way of ensuring it’s not too wide in scope. The City has discretion to modify the zone if space is shared with government facilities.
• Does it last 24/7? Residential care facilities are 24/7, other facilities are activated daily from 1h before opening to 1h after closing. 
• Does it matter what you’re protesting about? The bylaw is designed to be content neutral. All protest is treated equally.
• Are there any exclusions? Government buildings (protest there is typical and part of a heathy democracy). There is also a carve out for labour strikes, so for example, if teachers walk out to strike at their school, they can be in the bubble.
• How will this be enforced? Practically, if police are called for a protest to a facility that has a safe zone in place, they will provide warnings and enforce all laws (as they do now), this new by-law would give them an additional “tool” be able to ticket protestors within the zone. Tickets could be $150-500 with court issued charges up to $5000.
• Will this bylaw be reviewed? Yes, staff were directed to review this in 2 years.
• When does it go into effect? immediately.
  
  My POV:
• I believe freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are fundamental to a healthy democracy.
• I supported this bylaw because I think it struck the right balance between people’s rights to protest and people’s rights to safely access their place of worship, education or to receive care.
• I think staff have done a good job to stay within our municipal lane by focusing on safe access and not wading into the waters of deciding which assembly/speech is allowed or not allowed – it is content neutral.
• Police already have tools via the Criminal Code to address violent behavior. This gives law enforcers different tools to manage protest situations and has the support of the Ottawa Police and faith leaders.
• It was important to me that it be easy to apply for a safe access zone and easy to follow the rules if you’re a protester, and the processes proposed seem to achieve that.
  
  The full bylaw is available here to review:

 https://pub-ottawa.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=310100