Chris Wattie and Jordana Huber, Canwest News Service Published: Friday, July 18, 2008
Colin O'Conner for National Post
TORONTO -- Newly released court documents show the head of the Ontario Provincial Police pleading, cajoling and threatening the leader of a native protest that closed down a stretch of the busiest highway in Canada during last summer's aboriginal day of action.
The documents include transcripts of wiretapped telephone conversations between OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino and Shawn Brant, the leader of a Mohawk protest in eastern Ontario that prompted the closure of Highway 401. They were released late Friday after being freed from a publication ban.
"Why don't we just call it quits and you, you can't get anymore exposure than what you've got," Commissioner Fantino says in one call to Mr. Brant's cellular phone. "You've put these issues across. You've done a great job of the sound bites and ... you gotta believe that your day has come, you know? Enough now: let's all go home. Come on."
"Are you going to let me do my job?" Mr. Brant replies.
"Yeah, hurry up though," the commissioner says.
Mr. Brant is charged with nine counts, including mischief, stemming from the First Nations blockades on Highway 401, Highway 2 and a CN Rail line near the eastern Ontario town of Deseronto on June 29, 2007, which prompted provincial police to close the highway and CN to suspend all rail service on the Montreal-Toronto corridor.
Commissioner Fantino went to Napanee at the time of the standoff and negotiated personally with Mr. Brant in an attempt to end the blockades.
In the early morning phone calls, the head of the OPP appears to grow increasingly frustrated with the protest leader, who was vague about when he would move to end the blockades, raised the possibility of immunity from prosecution for himself and claimed to have limited control over the protesters.
"Enough is enough now. You've worn our patience down. The tolerance of the public is saturated: there's no more charity and no more putting up with this," the commissioner says at the end of the three calls, which spanned four hours. "I'm now warning you to pull the plug on this because, at the end of the day,
you're gonna be the big loser."
"I certainly appreciate ... your concerns and I share them as well and we'll have an answer back and a solution to the issue, I'm confident, in a very short length of time," Mr. Brant responds. "We're simply about to start burning tobacco and that'll allow us ... to have some clarity on the issue."
"Shawn, we're not negotiating anymore," Commissioner Fantino says. "We've done it all night. I'm now telling you for the sake of all that's decent and holy and the things you're trying to achieve and to ensure that the reputation and the credibility of First Nations people which I think is being very severely damaged, I'm now telling you to pull the plug or you will suffer grave consequences."
"Okay," says Mr. Brant.
"Okay," replies Commissioner Fantino and ends the call.
The police ultimately did not raid the blockades and protesters removed them later in the day. But the closures snarled traffic and brought commercial rail traffic to a standstill for several hours on a day that otherwise featured peaceful protests across the country.
Also among the documents released Friday were transcripts from Commissioner Fantino's testimony in August 2007 at Mr. Brant's preliminary hearing in a Napanee court.
In those transcripts, Peter Rosenthal, Mr. Brant's defence lawyer, raised a provincial police document entitled "A Framework for Police Preparedness for Aboriginal Critical Incidents," which was created after the Ipperwash affair which calls for a "trusting relationship" with "mutual respect" between natives and police.
He suggested that Commissioner Fantino's at-times heated comments flew in the face of the force's own conduct guidelines.
"Doesn't, though, that document and many other documents speak to the way you should do that in situations involving aboriginal protesters?" Mr. Rosenthal asked.
"There's nothing in the spirit, the intent, or the written word in this document that justifies criminal conduct or that exonerates people from accountability from criminal conduct, or that it absents me as a law enforcement officer from exercising discretion or using the authority bestowed upon me to effect a lawful purpose," the commissioner answered.
"These are guidelines and they're principles, they're not a firm and fixed mandated way of doing business."
Mr. Rosenthal has called on the province to launch a review of the statements and actions of Commissioner Fantino.
But Dalton McGuinty, the Ontario Premier, said he had every confidence in the head of the OPP. "I'm not familiar with the intimate circumstances. I'm not prepared to get involved in second-guessing what Commissioner Fantino did," the Premier said.
"I've always had a lot of confidence in Commissioner Fantino. That confidence remains. He has performed heroically, arguably under some of the most difficult circumstances when it comes to our province's relationship with our aboriginal communities."