Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal

Perhaps no other advocacy story we have run — from Itzhayek to Marchildon, to the victims of slumlords to the plight of community kitchens — has engendered so much empathetic and visceral reaction as our defense of Erna Dietrich in her finally successful battle with the Public Curator. As one of our letter writers stated (please see special section in op-ed), we may have become “the great equalizer”. That is one of the responsibilities, in our view, of community journalism.
$">
$">At the end of my July 16th story, Dietrich Freed, I invited all of you — our readers — to let me know if you have been the victims of government abuse and we would go to bat for you. Well you certainly let me know.
$">
$">One of the toughest things about advocacy journalism, is to make sure that the stories we spotlight have a universal import. That what happens to one can happen to all. As I waded through the calls and correspondence, there was one story that screamed for attention. The story of an elderly retired couple being pressured by municipal bureaucrats to do something “for their own good”. It’s a story all of you need to read so that you understand the abusive power of government. Not just the nanny-state powers of the federal and provincial levels about which we have written so much. But the intrusive regulatory power of municipal government. You need to know that your home is not your castle, and anyone can complain about what you do inside it and you won’t even be given the name of your accuser.
$">
$">I have chosen not to reveal the names of the victims, nor the bureaucrats, in this story because I have been assured that a written agreement is to be signed in the next few days putting an end to their nightmare. I do not want to do anything to jeopardize that. Despite the anonymity, the importance of the facts are compelling enough and I have made both sides aware of the manner in which I am reporting this.
$">
$">Citizen “M” is a retired man in his seventies who lives with his wife in a small duplex in the west end of Montreal. They do not have a tenant and occupy the whole building. Citizen M’s wife suffers from several serious illnesses. They are both Holocaust survivors and have had more than their share of tragedies in their lives. Citizen M said to me that “…they can beat me all they want. I’ve lived through beatings. I’m physically tough. But bad words and threats destroy me.” They’ve had more than their share of the latter over the past eight months.
$">
$">Last December, building inspectors from the city began arriving at his home. They said they were acting on a private complaint that the home of Citizen M and his wife was not up to city standards. Not that it was a public safety hazard. Merely that it wasn’t clean and neat enough, inside, for the city’s regulations. Specifically, Citizen M was told that the state of the interior of his home was in violation of the Ville de Montréal’s règlement 03-096. A regulation governing the “… salubrité et l’entretien des logements…” The “violations” the inspectors were concerned about came out of chapter four of that municipal regulation under the title of “salubrité”.
$">
$">The word “salubrious” is defined as favourable to or promoting health. We can understand that public authorities busy themselves with questions of public health. But this is a case where the state is concerning itself with your private environment and how it may affect your health. In other words, the state can act against you for your lifestyle if you are not neat and clean enough. This despite the protection seemingly affording by the four word Sec.7 of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “La demeure est inviolable” it states.
$">
$">The regulation on “salubrité” is one of those badly drafted pieces of law that mixes good with bad. It has the obvious in it. You can’t keep the bodies of dead animals inside a dwelling or block means of evacuation. You have to control pests and vermin. But it is the general and subjective wording of other parts of the chapter that is so frighteningly Orwellian. Sec. 25 states that “a dwelling shall not pose a health danger to its residents due to the state that it is in.” Pretty broad wording that. And who determines “danger”?
$">
$">Sec.25.1 goes on to state that the “malpropreté” of a dwelling, not just a building, is prohibited. But the word “malpropreté” is so broad that it encompasses everything from structural defects to, as in the case of Citizen M, extreme messiness. No danger to the public is needed for this violation. But don’t we all have a right to be messy, even in the extreme? Or dirty? As long as we don’t hurt anyone. Since when did we abdicate our lifestyle to the state to determine?
$">
$">Sec. 25.3 of the “salubrité” chapter states that the storing or use of products emitting a “nauseous” odour, as opposed to a toxic one which is dealt with separately, is also prohibited. Does that mean that if I don’t like someone’s chicken soup smells or garlic cooking I can complain and they have to stop? Sec.25.7 prohibits the presence of ice or condensation on an interior surface other than a window. Now how do you think they enforce that?
$">
$">Citizen M is the first to admit that his house was crowded with “stuff”. He claimed that he and his wife had accumulated many things from her late parents, and their sons who had moved away. But as the inspectors themselves confirmed to me when I confronted them, this was not a question of public safety. It was not a situation where there was vermin or where exits were blocked. This was a case of “for their own good” they said. Among the items pack ratted that were found objectionable were 5 bicycles, 8 vintage portable television sets and dozens of boxes of biscuits. As Ronald Reagan once quipped, the most frightening words in any language are “we’re from the government and we’re here to help.”
$">
$">Citizen M was visited many times by inspectors after December. In March of this year he finally signed an agreement with the city that he would clean the inside of the duplex by spring. He started the task but then his wife became sick and he could not meet the deadline. The visits and calls intensified. One time he said he would not let anyone in anymore. He was told that the city had the right to “break your locks.” Citizen M and his wife panicked, recalling other threats of fines and eviction. They had visions of what they had lived through with state authority in Europe.
$">
$">The inspector I talked with admitted that M had done a good job on the first part of the clean-up. I asked him then why not treat this couple gently and accommodate their time frame. He said it was out of his hands since they had broken a written agreement. I asked if he did not have the power to enforce regulations with compassionate authority and common sense. He just shrugged.
$">
$">I then tried to reason with him that the enforcement of regulations governing strictly private behavior was way out of the purview of government authority. And that he had to consider Sec.7 of the Quebec Charter. He told me he didn’t disagree, but that I should talk to the elected officials and get them to change the regulation or its application. Well, I decided to do just that.
$">
$">Though I have decided not to name any of those involved so that there will be no jeopardy to the signing of the agreement, I must mention that in my round robbin of calls to elected officials Darren Becker of Mayor Tremblay’s office was most understanding and helpful. Officials he called, and whom he encouraged to talk with me, were instrumental in reaching the compromise agreement that is to be signed this week.
$">
$">Please see our editorial, ‘Denonciations anonymes’, that discusses another troubling aspect of this case.
$">
$">If you have a story of government abuse, we want to know about it. We will act on it and report it in a weekly column. We will be your equalizer. Please e-mail me at editor@thesuburban.com.

'Dénonciations anonymes'

Time to bring the snitch society to an end

“Legislating niceness is not very nice.” — Julius H. Grey
$">
$">There is another issue of broad public interest in the Citizen M case that will not be settled this week. That is the right of every citizen to face an accuser. It has been a cornerstone of justice since Habeaus Corpus. But apparently not in Quebec.
$">
$">M tried to convince city officials to tell him who had brought the original complaint. He suspected it was someone who had been hounding him for years trying to get his duplex on the cheap. The person M suspected was a well-connected former city functionary who had been a neighbor. No one would tell M who his accuser was.
$">
$">M tried getting information from the Acces to Information Commission. But at a hearing this past January the Commission determined that M had no right to know. Our editor, Beryl Wajsman, called the Commission and he was called back by a spokesperson. She argued that people should not know the names of their accusers because there would be a danger of “reglement des comptes” – settling of accounts. Wajsman was astounded at this statement and asked if she realized that not only did she sound like a Stalinist functionary, but that this attitude perverted the whole concept of presumption of innocence.
$">
$">Unfortunately, the responses at the city bureaucratic level mirrored Quebec. The attitude was that secrecy was necessary to protect people from themselves since if names of complainants were revealed the authorities couldn`t catch anyone. Incredible, but true! It’s almost as if bureaucrats think everyone is guilty of something and just needs to get caught.
$">
$">This sad commentary on Quebec`s snitch society runs through our entire system. The “denonciation anonyme” – anonymous denunciation – has been a tool of tyrants and tyranny throughout history. One would have thought that after the struggles for civil liberties, we would have done away with this here at home. It is troubling that it is still so deeply rooted in Quebec. Whether it is the language office, SAAQ or Revenue, too many are demonized without due process. Indeed, how can there be due process when a fundamental tenet of justice is dispensed with and the presumption of innocence is thereby prejudiced.
$">
$">All civilized systems of law confer upon people, as against their Governments, the right to be let alone. It is the most comprehensive of rights and the one most valued by civilized societies. We need to learn that in Quebec.
$">
$">In a province where little works - a health system in chaos; pension plans raped and pillaged; groaning economic disparity; infrastructure in disarray — our governments have become demonizing social engineers. They deflect from their dysfunctionality by negating the essence of a free society - the freedom to choose. To choose our own lifestyles, no matter how repugnant as long as we don’t harm anyone else. The freedom to choose, so foundational in a democracy, was the basis for Irwin Cotler’s arguments in Parliament when he was Justice Minister for the decriminalization of assisted suicide..
$">
$">We can no longer afford to tolerate demands of statocratic fiat that limit our basic right to live. Our right to conduct our private morality in our private domains as we choose. The Citizen M affair bespeaks an Alice-in-Wonderland culture. Black is white. White is black. "Sentence first, trial after," said the Mad Hatter. In this dangerously silly place we can well understand Camus’ statement that there will come a time when, "…merely being human is already being heroic…" As silly as it is, we are the champ-de-mars of a new North American civil rights struggle. The struggle to free the individual from the yoke of statist collectivist rule. In that, this city and this province are important as message and metaphor.
$">
$">Law and legislation, rule and regulation, have become very much a two-edged sword of craft and oppression. A people that trades permanent liberty for perceived security shall have neither liberty nor security. We are all Citizen Ms when facing the “salubrious” power of the state.
$">
$">We need to keep in mind the warning of famed constitutional attorney Julius Grey that “Legislating niceness is not very nice.”


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