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| July 2008 | |||
| BCCLA and Pivot Announce Police Complaints Boycott | BCCLA's New Position Opposing |
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The BCCLA and Pivot Legal Society announced that they have joined forces to boycott the province-wide police complaints system. BCCLA and Pivot, along with the Coalition of People with Disabilities, Justice for Girls, VANDU and other non-profit organizations who deal with policing issues, are withdrawing their active assistance to complainants until the provincial government makes urgently needed changes to the Police Act to reform the police complaints process.
The organizations are calling for immediate legislative reform, and effective immediately will boycott the ‘public trust’ police complaint process, which deals with complaints of misconduct by specific officers, including allegations of the use of excessive force. They are encouraging people to use the civil litigation process instead. Micheal Vonn, Policy Director of the BCCLA stressed that both organizations are committed to seeing the police complaints system work: “We want the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner to have the tools it needs to make this process work. In the interim, we need to focus our efforts on helping people find some means of redress.” |
The opposition to Bill C-61 has focused on technological protection measures for copyright such as digital locks that are intended to allow rights holders to control how their work is copied and distributed and to limit infringing use of these works. TPMs are also known as digital rights management or DRM. However, TPMs prevent a myriad of legitimate uses, such as time and format shifting, or copies for personal use, educational purposes, review purposes, research, and parody. C-61 prohibits the removal of TPMs except under very limited circumstances, along with the creation and distribution of software or hardware tools that removes TPMs. Historically, Canada has recognized limited exemptions to copyright for certain purposes. For instance, educational exceptions allowed the copying of excerpts from books, while sound or video could be sampled for review purposes. While C-61 allows many of these uses in the absence of TPMs, materials protected by TPMs may only be used at the grace of the rights holder. If rights are not granted, breaking the TPM to make use of the materials is prohibited. Among the many creative groups to suffer chilling effects would be documentary filmmakers, who often rely on footage from copyrighted sources2, and “appropriation artist” who create new works by remixing and reinterpreting existing materials. |
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| BCCLA Files Police Complaints Over Policy of Search and Seizure on Canada Day | Secret Police Act Consultations |
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 The BCCLA filed complaints with the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP and the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner regarding the policy of mandatory search for and seizure of alcohol before Canada Day celebrations in Victoria, BC. |
The BCCLA is calling on the Premier to throw out a controversial confidentiality agreement parties are made to sign to participate in the consultation process about proposed amendments to the Police Act. The government invited the BCCLA and others to participate in consultations, but then demanded that participants keep secret everything said and done both before and after the introduction of any bill in the Legislative Assembly. In addition, parties involved in this would be under an obligation of confidentiality regarding the mere existence of the consultations. News release >> |
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| Litigation Update: BCCLA Granted Leave to Intervene in Freedom of Information Case | |||
The BCCLA has been granted leave to intervene to the Supreme Court of Canada in Criminal Lawyers’ Association v. Ontario, a case which involves the scope of freedom of expression and access to information. At issue in the case is whether portions of the Ontario Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act infringe the Charter right to freedom of expression. Ontario’s privacy legislation gives the government an absolute right to withhold information by saying its release would compromise law enforcement activities. |
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| Show your Pride for BCCLA | |||
The Pride Parade is an opportunity to celebrate diversity and express your thoughts on equality, freedom, gender, politics, laws, censorship, religion, culture and much more. To join the BCCLA in the Pride Parade, please contact Sarah Sandusky or her superhero alter ego: “Due Process Woman”, at sarah@bccla.org or 604-630-9750 (w) to register your spot! We are also still in need of volunteers for our Pride festival info tent, so please let us know if you’re available. Thank you! |
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| Civil Liberties Update is a summary of some of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association's recent work. The Association publishes a newsletter, The Democratic Commitment, an annual report and posts its positions, submissions, legal arguments and news releases at www.bccla.org. | |||
To unsubscribe to the Update please contact us by e-mail. |
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This Sunday, August 3, 2008, the BCCLA will be participating in the 30th annual Vancouver Pride Parade. We are inviting members to join us in representing the BCCLA by marching in the parade. Naturally, there is a catch...our Pride marching group theme is Superheroes of Liberty, so we are asking participants to get creative and create a costume and/or cape that supports a right or freedom or civil liberty tenet that you hold most dear – and wear it proudly in true superhero fashion! Not creative but want to participate? We have a BCCLA hat you can wear instead.