Activist Jaggi Singh exited the courthouse at Old City Hall this morning to the sound of cheers from his supporters, having just been given a sentence of no jail time for calling for the G20 security fence to be torn down.
“Thank you to everybody for your support,” he said. “I went into this hearing today not feeling isolated, not feeling isolated personally, and not feeling isolated politically. My only regret is that we didn’t succeed in tearing down that fence.”
Back in April Singh, a Montreal-based activist and member of the group No One Is Illegal, pleaded guilty to counseling to commit mischief of over $5,000, a charge stemming from a speech he gave in front of the security fence on June 24, 2010.
At that time, he told a group of reporters “I think the fence deserves to be taken down, and I hope people do organize to do so.” Prosecutors argued that he was aware attempting to tear down the fence would have resulted in violence, and so the speech was a criminal act.
As part of Singh’s plea deal, three conspiracy charges against him were dropped, but prosecutor Jason Miller asked the judge to throw the book at him and sentence Singh to six months in prison in order set an example to other like-minded activists. Instead, Bigelow gave him 60 to 90 days. Taking into account six days spent in pre-trial custody and additional time spent under house arrest, the judge suspended the sentence, effectively allowing Singh to go free.
He also ordered Singh to do 75 hours of community service, and barred him from associating with G20 activists whose cases are still before the courts. Singh is again permitted to participate in public protests, a right denied to him under his bail conditions.
Bigelow made clear that the 276 letters of support Singh’s lawyer Peter Rosenthal submitted to the court had little impact on the sentence, but stressed that Singh could not be held responsible for the violence that took place during the summit.
One of the reasons the Crown was seeking jail time for Singh was that he refused to show remorse for the crime he pleaded guilty to. True to form, within minutes of leaving the sentencing hearing Singh said he wished someone had succeeded in dismantling the security fence at the G20, and declared he wasn’t troubled by the property damage rioters committed at the summit. With an activism-related criminal record stretching back to 1998, it’s likely he hasn’t seen the inside of a courtroom for the last time.
“I stand by what I said at the fence,” he said. “It wasn’t a call to violence at all. The G20 is profoundly violent, austerity measures, cutbacks to social programs, that’s extraordinarily violent. Spending a billion dollars on a security operation that created fear and traumatized people in Toronto, that is profoundly violent.”
“Mr. Singh shows no remorse because he’s going to continue doing what he’s done,” Rosenthal said. “He’s a known quantity. Every once and a while, he’ll get arrested for something in the future, for yelling at Stephen Harper and disrupting something, and so on. We, in my view, have to tolerate that from Mr. Singh, recognizing that most of the causes that he is on about are causes that people should be very agitated about.”
Singh’s sentencing comes as activists prepare to mark the one-year anniversary of the G20 summit with a rally at Queen’s Park on Saturday.
