Despite a city council vote to draft a new bylaw on Wednesday, Toronto police said implementing “bubble zones” — areas where people cannot protest — would make little difference to the city’s policing.
City council voted this week to ask staff to draft a proposed bylaw that would "address impacts of demonstrations on the public and on access to publicly accessible spaces."
The concept may look similar to a Vaughan bylaw that bans "demonstrations that intimidate, or incite hatred, violence or intolerance" within 100 metres of "vulnerable social infrastructure," including places of worship, schools and hospitals.
Ontario already has a bubble zone law related to abortion clinics, which bars people from protesting within 50 metres of the facilities.
But a new Toronto bylaw would give police little in the way of extra tools they don't already have, Toronto police staff superintendent Frank Barredo told councillors.
"It would be disingenuous to suggest that a bylaw would change the dynamics significantly on the ground," he said.
"If I’m perfectly honest with you, we have created de facto bubble zones already,” Barredo argued. "Mount Sinai Hospital was impacted by one protest, and since that moment we decided that there would be no further protest activity along University Avenue along Hospital Row. We didn't need a bylaw to do that. We just simply set up rows of police officers and said you will not come down this way."
A report about the feasibility of creating bubble zones will come back to council in the first quarter of 2025.
The motion carried on a vote of 17 to 5, with four members absent.
"Bubble zones keep protests a safe distance from vulnerable institutions, such as places of worship," Coun. James Pasternak argued in a motion.
The Criminal Code already prohibits disturbing or interrupting "an assemblage of persons met for religious worship or for a moral, social or benevolent purpose." The Supreme Court upheld the provision as consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1985.
Still, Pasternak has argued bubble zones are necessary.
"Since October 7, 2023, the cost of policing anti-Israel protests is around $20 million,” Pasternak wrote in the motion. “The anarchy has resulted in the doubling of 911 response times and have hurt businesses due to illegal street blocking and calls for discriminatory boycotts. These protests have damaged Toronto’s international reputation as a safe place to live and invest."
Pro-Palestine activists take a different stance. The Toronto-based activist group Jews Say No to Genocide said a bubble zones bylaw "could allow synagogues and other spaces actively enabling Israeli settlement expansion to shield themselves from scrutiny.”
"Toronto residents must retain the Charter-protected right to peaceably assemble when houses of worship in this very city proudly double as real estate offices for illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land, and platform politicians who openly call for criminalizing dissent," the group said.
The statement appears to refer to a controversial event at a synagogue in Thornhill, Ont. in March. Protesters, who demonstrated outside the synagogue, said the religious institution was selling real estate in the occupied West Bank. Event organizers at the synagogue said West Bank properties were not being marketed.
In a public comment, the Toronto and York Region Labour Council also opposed the proposal for a bubble zones bylaw.
"Loosely defined terms like ‘nuisance,’ as employed by the City of Vaughan, will create an ambiguous environment where rights enshrined in the Charter are subject to quick, arbitrary judgments, as opposed to the high standard of regard they require," the union federation said.
Ottawa’s mayor is also toying with the idea of enacting protest bubble zones in that city.
