Following the viral success of Lapdance for Prince Charles, the artists hoping to save Cafe Cleopatre and the lower Main from destruction have released another video, this time in both French and English.

Rather than an appeal, it’s a parody infomercial for a new product called Demolition in a Box, that can “destroy any landmark, city, part of town” in one easy and incredibly corrupt step.

The French version is available here and the English version is below:

The following is a video plea and open letter to Prince Charles on the occasion of his visit to Montreal.  After having exhausted all other means of stopping the destruction of their performance space in the heart of Montreal’s historic Red Light district, burlesque dance troupe the Dead Dolls have turned to the Prince, a man who cares about heritage, with a simple request:  Save the Red Light District and Save the Main:

To HRH Prince Charles,

We are writing to you today from Montreal with one simple request. As someone who has demonstrated his love for the preservation of history, we are asking for your majesty’s assistance in saving the historic Red Light District on Montreal’s Main from destruction when you visit us on Tuesday.

St-Laurent Boulevard, commonly known as the Main, was the first street to leave the fortifications of what was then the city of Montreal. Over the next few centuries, it welcomed immigrants from all over the world to become the thriving multicultural hub that it is today.  It has even been declared a national heritage site.

Behind its historic facade, numerous independent artists including burlesque dancers, fetish performers and others call the vaudeville thrust stage of the legendary Café Cleopatre home and have done so for several years.

The lower Main, the gateway to the old port is living history and a vibrant artistic community, but it is under threat. A developer wants to evict the artists and residents, demolish the buildings and replace them with a twelve-story office tower under the guise of a Quartier des spectacles (entertainment district).

Despite objections from historians, academics, residents and artists and a ruling against the project from the Montreal public consultation office, the developer and the city plan to go ahead with the project, dubbed the Quadrilatere St-Laurent.

With nowhere else to turn, we are requesting that your majesty bring the issue up with Mayor Gerald Tremblay and any other officials you may encounter on your trip to Montreal or at very least make a public statement in support of the artists and residents and in support of our history.

UPDATE: TRYING TO MEET THE PRINCE

Tuesday night, the riot squad prevented us from delivering our message to Prince Charles in person:

Velma Candyass of the Dead Dolls and riot cops (photo by Domenic Castelli)

You can read media reports of what happened here:

“Prince Chuck misses out on lapdance” by Jamie O’ Meara, Up to the Hour (Hour Magazine)

“Royal welcome” photo by Kate Hutchinson, Montreal Mirror

“Montréal : œufs, tomates et strip-tease pour le Prince Charles” par Yannick Vely, Paris Match

“If the mayor won’t listen, maybe the prince will” by Jason C. McLean, Forget The Box

“please, charlie boy, save montreal’s red-light district” by Andy Riga, Montreal Gazette

“Une foule bigarrée accueille le prince” par Judith Lachapelle, La Presse

We never got to deliver our message to the Prince Charles in person and still haven’t received a response to our letter or video.  He’s in Ottawa until tomorrow.  Hopefully he’ll hear our message before returning to England.

** If you want to help spread the word, please forward, re-post, Facebook, Digg, etc. this post and/or this video to all your friends and lists, especially to people in England.

****You can also contact Prince Charles through his Regeneration Trust:

info@princes-regeneration.org

From May 28th – 31st the Société de Développement du Boulevard Saint-Laurent (SDBSL) hosted a four day party known as the Mainfest. Despite bad weather reports, the sun shone radiantly throughout most of the festival. This was wonderful for local merchants, musicians, performers, and pedestrians who converged at the Mainfest to participate in a multitude of activities. This was also fantastic for the Schering-Plough Corporation because their brand Coppertone set up a promotional stand at the festival to distribute sunscreen and inform pedestrians about Coppertone products as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign. An entire weekend of rain would have put a damper on Coppertone’s sunscreen publicity.

Under the bright sun, Coppertone promoters gave pedestrians free samples of sunscreen while warning them about the problems caused by the sun’s ultra violet rays. They also invited people to have a free evaluation of their facial skin to test for existing sun damage. The test was administered by a man in a white laboratory coat in the shade beneath a Coppertone branded umbrella. He performed his test with a “diagnostic camera” which took one picture, developed it in two different ways laid out side by side. On the left, the picture appeared overexposed and hid any skin blemish and on the right, the picture was underexposed revealing every wrinkle and spot on one’s face. The diagnosis was performed by comparing the two pictures. The man pointed out skin abnormalities from the underexposed picture. If he found skin problems participants were told that they could prevent further harm by using Coppertone products. If he found no damage, people were told to use Coppertone to prevent future skin problems.

Instead of thanking Coppertone for caring so much about my well being, I approached the Coppertone display to ask some very important questions. Why was Coppertone so concerned about my skin? Do they truly care or is this another marketing ploy to brand the Coppertone name? Is their diagnosis real or is it a sales tactic? How qualified is the man giving the diagnosis? I know that sun exposure can cause skin damage, but can Coppertone really protect me? Does Coppertone contain any ingredients which cause skin damage? These questions induced a little panic in the Coppertone promotion team. I guess the presence of my camera man didn’t help. Though, I didn’t get to the bottom of all these questions, I did discover some awful truths about their campaign.

Since the promoters didn’t work for Coppertone it was hard to find out anything about their products. Coppertone paid actors and event organizers from New Ad, a marketing company who delivers young people to corporations, and a nurse from Quality Health Services LTD. The nurse alleged that he could not make any formal diagnoses because he was not a doctor. In fact, none of the promotional staff could not answer any questions about how the product worked, how it was made, what ingredients were in the sunscreen or if any ingredients used in the sunscreen were harmful.

Like the glare of the sun, light shed on the true intentions of Coppertone’s promotional spectacle. Coppertone’s campaign was not designed to help people but to scare them.  If someone is told that they may develop skin cancer because they are not well protected from the sun, they should be more likely to take advice from the street promoters and apply Coppertone sunscreen. Furthermore, if people are told they have skin problems from someone that resembles a doctor, they may be scared enough to use Coppertone more frequently so the ‘damage’ doesn’t escalate, especially if the Coppertone name is associated with cancer prevention. If Coppertone was really concerned about people’s skin, they would have hired real doctors to make real medical assessments instead of contracting a nurse from Quality Health Services LTD who can only provide an unprofessional opinion. He only told me he was a nurse and that he was not making an actual diagnosis after I inquired. Those who didn’t ask may have assumed he was a doctor giving valid evaluations, prescribing Coppertone to prevent skin cancer.

If Coppertone sunscreen really prevented skin cancer, my argument could be moot. Maybe a little scare for something healthy wouldn’t be so bad after all. These tactics are commonly used in anti-smoking and anti-drinking and driving commercials. The main problem is that Coppertone sunscreen does not do very well in research conducted by independent sources.

In 2008, the Environmental Working Group conducted an investigation of nearly 1 000 brand name sunscreens. This report concluded that none of Coppertone’s 41 sunscreens met the Environmental Working Group’s criteria for safety and effectiveness. Coppertone was accused of using dangerous ingredients including Oxybenzone, which is reported to be a possible cancer causing agent (for a comprehensive list of harmful ingredients used by Coppertone, follow this link).

The other sources of research on Coppertone products are conducted and/ or  sponsored by Coppertone themselves. The Coppertone Solar Research Center is responsible for testing Coppertone’s sunscreen for safety and effectiveness. This center was opened in 1971 and is described by Coppertone as the world’s largest state of the art facility for testing the quality of their sun-care products. In addition, the Coppertone Research Fund was established to provide financial support for dermatology research in Canada. Research on Coppertone sunscreen is mainly conducted by their research center through their charity fund, a blatant conflict of interest. In addition, they hire promoters, like those at the Mainfest, who cannot answer basic questions regarding the safety or effectiveness of their sunscreen.

Coppertone’s Mainfest masquerade came to an end when members of the Optative Theatrical Laboratories drew attention to the hypocrisy of associating Coppertone sunscreen to cancer prevention, especially by promoters who know nothing about the product. Since Coppertone paid actors to promote their sunscreen at the Mainfest, we intervened by sending in actors of our own. Because of the insincerity of their campaign, they were culture jammed. Here is what transpired:

It looks like ripping up the ground to create open pit mines in places like Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala just isn’t enough for some Canadian mining companies: RoyalOr has gone local!  The Johannesburg, South Africa-registered organization has plans to turn Mount Royal into an open-pit mine.

“People always talk about buying local food and local produce,” argued RoyalOr CEO and director Alonse Barbe to people on the mountain yesterday, “so why are we taking our gold all the way from Mexico when we could be taking it here from Mount Royal?”

anticipated pit scope for the Mount Royal project

Barbe cited the activities of his firm and other Canadian mining companies in communities around the world and the lack of reaction in Canada as an example of Canadians’ acceptance of the practice of open-pit mining.  He also hopes that protests against and opposition to RoyalOr’s plans can be quashed in a similar manner to how dissent is dealt with in the developing world: through bribery of officials and silence in the media.

The RoyalOr plan involves digging up an area which goes from around Dawson College to St-Urbain Street on the Plateau.  This would gut most of the mountain and also prompt the forced relocation of residents, many of them currently living in Upper Westmount.  Barbe hopes that the company’s generous offer of moving everyone affected to places like Longueil and Laval for free will help to offset potentially litigious opposition.

There is also oppositon brewing against the project by community organization and citizens in general.  It has also started generating buzz in the media, with articles appearing in the Montreal Mirror and Rue Frontenac.

It was with this in mind that Barbe and a team of surveyors, geologists and marketers went to the weekly Tam Tams celebration on the mountain yesterday to explain their project to members of the community.  They were met with some skepticism, but support as well.  Here is a video of some of what happened:

Representatives of RoyalOr will make their claim official today as they hammer in the last stake as part of a press conference.  You are invited to join them at 1:30pm by the gazebo.

The Reverend Kevin Annett knows what it’s like to be under the microscope.

He was kicked out of the United Church for speaking out against what happened to native people in Canada’s residential school system. When it became apparent that he wouldn’t be silent and do what he was told, they made things very difficult for him. Despite the breakup of his marriage and being denied a degree among other things, he persisted, bringing survivors of the schools all the way to the United Nations.

The movie Unrepentant juxtaposes Annett’s story with that of residential schools and the genocide native people endured through this system.   He now hosts a weekly radio show called Hidden From History which first went on the air in 2001 and runs a website with the same name that spreads the word about the struggle for acknowledgment of what happened in the past as well as what is going on right now.

Some of those posts have caught the attention of the RCMP, not only for exposing the force’s complicity in past wrongs such as removing native children from their families on gunboats and taking them to the residential schools where many died but more importantly for allegations of RCMP involvement in the disappearance of indigenous women from Vancouver’s downtown east side.

In 2006, he published six eyewitness statements claiming government, police and church involvement with pedophile rings, child pornography and snuff films. Annett sent copies of the statements to various police and government agencies and received no response until last week.

Reverend Kevin Annett in a scene from Unrepentant

He got an e-mail from RCMP Corporal Sabrina Mill who wants to meet with him and discuss the allegations and other postings. Annett wants to make this meeting a public one.

He has invited Cpl. Mill to take part in “an open forum on the issue of police and RCMP complicity in the disappearance and death of aboriginal people, including in the Indian residential school system.”

She has not responded yet, so Annett has started an online petition asking her to take part in a public meeting, you can sign it here.  Here is a trailer for Unrepentant:

While many films, along with entertainment in general, have been known to desensitize people to violence, the Bloc Quebecois hope to use the medium to sensitize Members of Parliament from all parties to the magnitude of tragedies like the massacre of 14 women by Marc Lepine at Ėcole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989.

This event, now known as the Montreal Massacre, was what got the ball rolling on talk of stricter gun restrictions in Canada which eventually led to the creation of the Federal Gun Registry.  The Conservative government wants to eliminate the registry and currently have two bills under review that would see it scrapped completely.  They are hoping that some Liberal and NDP MPs will side with them.

In order to turn the tide and stress the importance of gun control, the Bloc Quebecois will screen Denis Villeneuve’s film Polytechnique on Parliament Hill tomorrow night.  They have invited MPs from all parties to attend.  The movie is a fictional account of the massacre told through the eyes of two students who survived.  In it, Lepine is never referred to by name and actor Maxim Gaudette is listed as playing simply “The Killer” in the credits.

The film did cause controversy when it was released in February with some arguing it shouldn’t be made at all, others claiming that it was not done the right way or for the right reasons and some seeing it as a necessary movie and a force for social change.  Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe clearly sees it the third way and is giving it a chance to be just that with the screening.

NDP leader Jack Layton will attend the screening, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has a “prior engagement” and won’t be there and Stephen Harper’s office won’t say whether he will be there or not, claiming that revealing the Prime Minister’s schedule would be a “security risk.”

One person who will be in attendance is Suzanne Laplante-Edward.  She lost her daughter Anne-Marie Edward in the rampage and was quite vocal pushing for gun regulation.  She will speak to MPs before the film at the invitation of Gilles Duceppe.  She will not, however, watch the movie.

If you thought that the City of Montreal postponing the vote on its controversial anti-mask bylaw would silence the amendment’s opponents, you’d only have to look to the streets Monday night to know how wrong you were.

Protesters clad in masks met at Berri Square and after a speech took to the streets, literally. This Reclaim the Streets action known as Manifesuprise and organized by Le gros bon sens blocked traffic as it made its way down the snowy streets of south central Montreal, through Chinatown and into Old Montreal.

The marchers chanted out questions about just who masks, hoods and the streets themselves belonged to, then answered those questions by saying in unison that they belonged “to us.”

Police cars finally caught up with the march as it headed down St-Laurent Boulevard and ended up blocking traffic themselves as the group finally stopped in front of City Hall where a truck was waiting.  Once the group arrived, the truck opened to reveal a sound system, DJ console and two sofas which were quickly brought to the street.  As music pumped out of the speakers people began to dance (video coming soon)

Inside a city council meeting was in full swing.  This is where the ban on all types of masks at public demonstrations was supposed to be voted into law.  With mounting opposition, the Tremblay administration had pulled the controversial measure from the agenda three days prior, claiming it had to be re-evaluated.

The doors of City Hall were locked, most likely due to what happened when protestors tried to enter and speak as part of the Bal Masqué during the previous council meeting.  Members of the Gros bon sens took to the steps instead and addressed the crowd:

While the protest had clearly turned festive, the celebration was both bold in the way it reclaimed public space and cautious in how it accepted the victory of the bylaw vote being postponed.  The city hadn’t buried the law but rather sent it to be discussed and re-written. If they successfully greenwash the language so it doesn’t sound as glaringly big brother and ridiculous, the amendment might pass without the broad public disgust that the earlier version wrought. Despite that, the core problem with the law, the fact that it is a clear violation of our charter right to free expression as well as our right to anonymity, would still be there. This inspired the protest/party’s theatrical portion (courtesy of OTL/infringement) where a “riot cop” with a helmet and shield announced to the crowd that it was good they were celebrating because it wasn’t the law that was being buried that evening, but their rights instead:

After the performance the party continued and before everyone left, the Gros bon sens issued a warning and an invitation that this fight wasn’t over and as long as the city keeps the proposition on the table, it is only just beginning.

Despite the presence of an RDI camera, media coverage on this event has been minimal.  It seems like the media have taken the city’s lead and buried the story, which is why now more than ever it is important to keep the protest alive and try and get the mask ban buried for good.

On Monday night over 50 masked protesters descended on City Hall for a Masquerade Ball protest – the Bal Masqué. Organized by an ad hoc collective known as Le Gros Bon Sens, the masked demonstration aimed to challenge the anti-mask bylaw the City of Montreal is attempting to pass as part of its larger “Public Security” portfolio, which now also includes a new bylaw against “insulting a police officer”.

Masked activists at the Bal Masqué

The Bal Masqué was playful, highly theatrical and extremely peaceful, as masked activists mingled, cavorted and danced at the entrance of City Hall. Before long, a dramatic performance, courtesy of the infringement festival, unfolded on the steps of City Hall. The scene began when two actors playing satirical masked “police officers”, one wearing a gas mask and the other a riot helmet, arrived to survey the protest and attempt to intimidate activists wearing masks at the Bal Masqué.

Masked “Riot cop” protests Drama Masks

“Gas mask cop” against Charter Section 2B

The “riot cop” soon announced the arrival of the Mayor of Montreal – M. Le Maire Gerald Tremblay. Ducking insults (and snowballs!), an actor with a large Tremblay mask appeared and delivered a mock “press conference” about the dangers of masks.

“Mayor Tremblay”: masks are dangerous

The “Mayor” then claimed that “all masks are now illegal”, and his security detail of masked “police officers” blew whistles and warned the masked protesters to unmask or face “arrest”.

Following the carnivalesque performance, dozens of masked protesters entered City Hall where real police officers told them to unmask, then go sit in a room to watch the proceedings on a Television. While many of the protesters left at this point – what could be more disempowering than having to watch the end of our Charter right to Freedom of Expression in a separate room on a TV? – some of them did stay on. According to La Presse, five of the protesters were forcibly evicted by police. What happened inside the meeting is the subject of much speculation, although a copy of the bylaw has now been released, revealling that mask-wearing will soon be punishable with a $100 – $300 fine for the first offence.

Here is a video of what happened, courtesy of Guerilla Video Productions:

Unfortunately, most corporate media decided to focus on the police, the riots they faced in 2008, and the mayor’s latest cabinet shuffle – instead of the theatre activists, their Masquerade Ball, and critical message that our civil liberties are under threat. Overall, quite a lot of the corporate media used images from past conflicts, such as burning police cars or the aftermath of riots, instead of employing images from the Masquerade Ball.

CTV News used old “riot damage” image

The Montreal Gazette, despite trumpeting the cause over the last week in Opinion columns, letters to the editor, and an editorial, only ran a tiny article on the protest (“Group unmasked”, Tuesday, January 27, 2009, A3) that ignored the masquerade-theatre, and focused instead on the police’s authority. Paraphrasing Chief Inspector Paul Chablo, The Gazette reported: “the regulation would be applied only at the kind of protests that have a history of turning violent, including spontaneous street gatherings following Canadiens playoff victories, an annual May Day protest and an annual protest against police brutality.” No explanations were offered about who would decide which masks and demonstrations would be under scrutiny, nor whether officers could apply the bylaw indiscriminately.

The next meeting at City Hall is in one month, presumably on February 23rd. It is quite likely that the City will try and pass the bylaw, although there is bound to be strong opposition.

Organizers of the Bal Masqué, Le Gros Bon Sens, promise more dramatic resistance. Porte-parole Jules Merveille made a pointed critique against the proposed bylaw in Le Devoir:

«Cette mesure est anticonstitutionnelle étant donné que tout individu a la liberté fondamentale de se cacher dans un regroupement et de ne pas dévoiler son identité, sauf en cas d’arrestation bien sûr. Nous trouvons cette mesure absurde»

Le Gros Bon Sens have declared that the fight isn’t over yet on their facebook page: “Le combat n’est pas terminé !”

On the more “official” political front, Projet Montreal leader Richard Bergeron announced his party’s total disapproval of the bylaw in 24 Heures newspaper:

« les manifestants qui contreviennent à la loi, qu’ils soient masqués ou non, devraient être arrêtés sur le champ. Mais compromettre la liberté d’expression en donnant le droit à la police d’arrêter les gens uniquement sur la base de la façon dont ils sont habillés ne peut que détériorer les relations entre la police et le grand public ».

From a legal perspective, perhaps the best hope for protecting Charter rights, civil liberties lawyer Julius Grey suggested on CTV News: “The bylaw clearly would violate Freedom of Expression because you can’t dissociate the freedom of expression from the way in which it is expressed.” In the Toronto Star Grey elaborated:

“There is nothing more perilous than giving discretion to the police… To decide which protest is acceptable and which is not is as unseemly as police deciding which newspaper is acceptable, and which one is not…They are there to carry out the law, not to determine its content…They shouldn’t be given discretion to violate freedom of expression.”

If you want to protect your Constitutional right to Freedom of Expression, stay tuned to the OTL Blog and keep updated as this story unfolds. If you want to participate in the next round of theatre activism at the February City Hall Meeting, or help organize, please contact otl@optative.net

Historically-speaking, Quebec City has always been somewhat of a military town. When “founded” by Samuel de Champlain in 1608 on the remains of the First Nations settlement of Stadacona, Quebec was actually designed as a military-style fortification. The site of numerous wars and battles that pitted the French against various First Nations, and later Britain, the city has witnessed oppressive brutality over the years, culminating with its near-destruction and surrender to British imperialists in 1759. The infamous battle on the Plains of Abraham is drilled ad nauseum into the minds of students in Quebec and Canada, helping shape divisive nationalist discourses that pit French-speakers versus English-speakers, Quebec versus Canada, and sovereignty versus federalism.

This being 2009, the 250th anniversary of the battle, a controversy is brewing about whether or not to commemorate the event by re-enacting the military conflict, as the National Battlefields Commission plans to do.  While federal Heritage Minister Josée Verner will be in attendance, premier Jean Charest refuses to attend and Bernard Drainville of the Parti Québécois feels that the battle shouldn’t be celebrated at all.  Many francophones, especially soverignists like Drainville, feel that re-enacting the colonial battle that signified their ancestors’ military defeat is highly insulting.

This issue is playing out like a typical separatist versus federalist conflict: it is a French versus English debate with Quebec Premier Jean Charest sitting on the sidelines.  Rarely mentioned in the “military re-enactment” discourse is it’s unabashedly Eurocentric and pro-war nature, leaving one to wonder if perhaps the entire debate needs to be reframed. Why celebrate the deaths of various soldiers and civilians from both sides of the conflict and the near-destruction of a city?

Quebec City has often been described as a “military town” and has historically been very welcoming of military pageantry – stringent parades, battlefield re-enactments, and even the symbolic handing over of the keys to the city to the Canadian army this past July as part of the celebrations for the 400e anniversaire de Quebec.  This act and the ensuing military parade met with criticism and a theatrical counter-parade courtesy of anti-war activists:

The goal of this theatrical action was reappropriate the parade march and use it to oppose militarism and colonialism.  Unlike most traditional military parades, the activist version did not favour one ethnic, national, or linguistic group over another, nor did it present war as natural or worthwhile of celebrating through re-enactment. By repositioning the re-enactment issue between pro-war and anti-war camps, a more harmonious consensus might be reached amongst Quebecers.

Various controversies have hit Quebec City recently, largely due to the Eurocentric 400e “celebrations” and how the various spectacles, events, and discourses were interpreted. While most of the controversy was fluffy and Eurocentric, as in the Celine vs. Paul McCartney debacle, some activists delved deeper and challenged issues such as militarism and Quebec’s participation in the war in Afghanistan, and colonialism and Quebec’s ongoing mistreatment of the various First Nations residing in these ancient lands. Despite being shunned by corporate media, the theatre activists carried out a series of culture-jams against the officially sanctioned “celebrations”, “commemorations”, and “re-enactments.” In the following video a theatre activist manages to disrupt a ceremony where the government of Quebec City handed over the keys of the city to the Canadian military, and reperform it from an anti-war 21st Century perspective:

The upcoming plans to re-enact the battle on the Plains of Abraham smack of Eurocentricity, and the very idea of re-performing war as a commemoration or celebration needs to be re-evaluated in the present era. Why should taxpayers’ dollars be wasted on this type of brutal performance, when it mostly appeals only to history buffs and pro-war supporters? The present re-enactment plan, a four day spectacle of re-created death and destruction, will only exacerbate Eurocentric conflicts of language, history, and identity in present-day Quebec. It should be cancelled as soon as possible. Quebecers seeking social harmony and solidarity might find that developing an anti-war consensus against the Plains battle re-enactment could prove appealing, and be more in tune with Quebec values.

After it was announced here and other places that the city of Montreal was seeking to ban masks at protests, people opposed have not been silent and it seems that this issue will not go away. And why should it?

This incursion on our rights to free expression has even garnered opponents in more conservative media spaces such as the Montreal Gazette, first in an article by Henry Aubin then in a letter to the editor and now in an editorial piece.

If even the corporate media can see through the ill-conceived argument that this is just an attack on people who throw Molotov Cocktails and not an affront to everyone including theatre artists, then what hope is there for this ban to pass? Unfortunately plenty. The Tremblay administration has demonstrated its willingness to proceed with legislation, even unpopular legislation (remember Griffintown), until the proposed law reaches a renaming Parc-level of public disgust.

In hopes of sending their message loud and clear to Mayor Tremblay and bolstered by support from other activists in cities around the world who have gone through similar Orwellian laws, a group of masked protesters took to the airwaves last night on infringement TV and demanded this law be stopped. They claim they will come out in force this coming Monday and the following one as well. They invited others to do the same, wearing masks of course.

Here’s the video:

On Monday night the city’s bureaucrats will table an “avis de motion”, which means that the anti-mask bylaw motion will be officially tabled.  Section 41.05, the suspected anti-mask bylaw, is listed as such:

“Avis de motion – Règlement modifiant le Règlement sur la prévention des troubles de la paix, de la sécurité et de l’ordre publics, et sur l’utilisation du domaine public (R.R.V.M. chapitre P-6)”

Apparently it is extremely difficult to get the actual wording for a bylaw before it is tabled, and the usual procedure is to pass the law the following week. Citizens are allowed to attend the meeting, but must follow stringent rules that are designed to limit the number (and types) of questions that can be asked in order to stifle citizen involvement in municipal politics.

If you want to go to the meeting at City Hall, it will be Monday, January 26. If you want to ask questions, you must arrive by 5 pm at the entrance on the Place Vauquelin on the west side of the building to get a number. At 6:30 pm you will be inscribed on a list of questioners. You need to be a Montreal resident and have photo ID, and they’ll want to know who you are, what your questions are, and to whom they are addressed. Note that the “President of the Council” has the power to expel you from the question period if he or she feels that your presence is disrupting the rules (“order”) of the meeting.

If you want to get involved in this action, please contact otl@optative.net