Vancouver man hurt in confrontation with anti-gay street preachers supports noise bylaw change — with caveat

Vancouver council is looking at changing their noise bylaws after complaints last year of street preachers spewing anti-LGBTQ+ speech through megaphones. Kier Junos reports on concerns that those changes could stifle future protests.

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — The man who was assaulted after confronting anti-LGBTQ+ street preachers in Vancouver’s West End welcomes a bylaw change that could turn down the volume on their rhetoric, as long as it isn’t used to crack down on protests.

Justin Morissette, who is with our sister station Sportsnet 650, needed several surgeries and was in the hospital for weeks after having his leg broken last August. One man has been charged with aggravated assault, but the case has not yet been tried in court. Morisette said he was assaulted after grabbing the microphone from one of the preachers who refused to turn down the volume on the speakers blaring his message, and that the person who harmed him was part of a group that had been blaring bigoted, hateful, and homophobic rhetoric over loudspeakers in the neighbourhood all summer long.

In response to this, City of Vancouver staff is proposing a $250 fine “for use of an amplification device on a street.” The proposal also suggests police and bylaw officers have the ability to seize amplification devices.

Morissette welcomes the steeper fine, and the ability to confiscate equipment.

“I think is a step in the right direction and I’m hopeful that these will be, you know, tools that officers can use in situations like mine should they arise again to kind of properly defuse these things,” Morissette says.

“There’s also the problem though of a paralysis where whether it’s a bylaw officer or a police officer coming across a situation where there is a street preacher espousing hate speech, where they’re filming all of these confrontations, and they want to have the appearance of being persecuted for their beliefs. That puts the officers in a difficult situation of not wanting to appear to be cracking down against religious expression. I know that that’s not proper religious expression that this is hate speech that is shrouding itself under the cloak of religion. I think this new measure is a step to avoid that entire argument. If you can just take their equipment away, that is kind of the only way to handle these people.”

RELATED: Vancouver looks to turn down volume on hate speech from street preachers

But he does worry about how it could be used to target, for example, musicians who are busking on the city’s streets without a permit.

“I would hate for the legal legacy of my assaults to be a bunch of impounded guitars,” he says. “I guess it remains to be seen how this will look in practice versus on paper.”

Beyond musicians, Morissette notes that protests often use amplifiers.

“I would not want to be these rules get put to use to crackdown on freedom of expression when that expression is valuable. I don’t see a value in hate speech personally. I know that a lot of people do not, certainly in this neighbourhood ,do not want that kind of thing being broadcast through our windows,” he says.

“It could be too broad to the point where you are seeing this used against real valuable demonstration like Black Lives Matter That is a fear for sure but at the same time, I am heartened to see that the city is at least trying to be proactive and deal with these things.”

Concern about this bylaw being used to stifle protest is shared by Harsha Walia, the executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association.

She has drafted a letter to city council opposing the move.

“These amendments propose a complete ban on voice and noise amplification devices in public space without permission and on the ill-defined grounds of the noise being ‘objectionable’ or where it ‘disturbs public comfort or convenience.’ A person is not allowed to even place, let alone use, an amplification device on a street without permission,” the letter reads.

“Even if the intent is not to enforce the bylaws against most political protests, the overbroad scope of the amendments will create a chilling effect where people — especially those already targeted by state violence — will hesitate to plan gatherings out of fear of being fined or having their amplification devices seized by the city.”

Council will review the bylaw changes Wednesday.

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