The officers pulled over the school bus and one of the officers boarded the bus and scolded the young boy for giving him the middle finger, according to a public complaint filed by Anne Levesque, a human-rights lawyer and professor at the University of Ottawa law faculty, who was standing at the bus stop with her daughters at the corner of Daly Avenue and Charlotte Street.
[…]
Flipping someone the bird is not a crime in Canada.
A Quebec judge ruled earlier this year that giving someone the middle finger was, in fact, a Charter-protected right.
Justice Dennis Galiatsatos ruled: “Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, Charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian. It may not be civil, it may not be polite, it may not be gentlemanly. Nevertheless, it does not trigger criminal liability.”
Michael Spratt, an Ottawa criminal law specialist, says the police need to educate themselves about the law instead of complaining about hurt feelings.
“Giving the police the middle finger, which they often deserve, is a Charter-protected right. Free speech does not end at a cop’s hurt feelings. And the fact that police are so thin-skinned is another step in the troubling trend of police entitlement and authoritarianism,” Spratt said.
Read Gary Dimmock full story: Ottawa Citizen
