G20 arrestee Alex Hundert had to make sure that only members of the media were at his press conference, held in his lawyer’s office on Monday.
It explicitly had to be a “private event,” otherwise the presser might be misconstrued as a “public demonstration” and Hundert would be right back where he was in October after he was re-arrested for participating in a speaker’s panel at Ryerson University.
Hundert was released on bail January 24 after spending three consecutive months in jail for a total of five since being picked up the morning of June 26 on G20-related conspiracy charges.
Those original charges still remain, along with one for “intimidating a justice participant,” which stems from an incident that took place sometime shortly after the Ryerson panel.
His release came after he signed a plea bargain with the Crown admitting he was guilty of being in breach of his “no protest condition” for being present during a portion of a Ryerson University speakers’ panel. The plea did not establish that speaking on a panel was equivalent to a public demonstration, but merely that one of the many presentations that evening may have qualified as such due to “the use of props and multiple speakers in a single presentation.” This, he says, consisted of three indigenous women who presented together and used plastic zip-ties to make a point.
In exchange for the plea, a similar charge for attending a Wilfrid Laurier event and two breach of probation charges stemming from an older incident were dropped.
In explaining why he consented to a plea, he explained: “As we got closer to the [breach of bail] trial date, they offered a deal with very different bail conditions.” He is once again allowed to post to the internet and talk to the press. He can also now leave his home, and even travel throughout the province, so long as he is accompanied by a designate.
“It made more sense to me to get back into the community,” he says of his decision. He is still restricted by a number of bail conditions, including the now-infamous non-demonstration clause, as well as house arrest and not being able to associate with his 18 co-accused.
Still, he insists there is a lot that can be done, even with his constraints, beyond “flashy protests.” He will focus for now on fundraising, he says, although he’s unclear about for what just yet.
The Crown, he says, “generally uses the court system to keep people in jail until they plea.” While taking the Crown’s deal means he can’t challenge in court the dubious nature of what a “public demonstration” entails, or that such a civil rights violation can even be imposed in the first place, Hundert says he is confident that Jaggi Singh’s constitutional challenge on his own similar bail condition will address that.
Nathalie Des Rosiers of the CCLA also spoke on Monday, decrying the “vague terms of bail conditions” levied against a group that presented “no threat to the public safety.”
Hundert was in court Monday morning where a date was set for a preliminary enquiry starting September 12 for all 18 of the remaining G20 accused.
