Free Speech? No! We're Canadians!
ottawacitizen.com
RCMP admits grounding union-hired plane flying anti-Harper banner (with video)
By Matthew Pearson, Ottawa CitizenSeptember 3, 2012 8:00 PM
OTTAWA — A pilot hired by the Public Service Alliance of Canada to fly over Ottawa and Gatineau with a political banner was ordered to land his plane, the RCMP admitted Monday, even though the aircraft had not entered restricted airspace.
The union says it paid for a plane to fly over the capital region for three hours on Saturday with a trailing banner that read, in French, “StephenHarperNousDéteste.ca” (Stephen Harper hates us), to coincide with the popular Hot Air Balloon Festival in Gatineau.
But things didn’t go according to plan.
“When the plane took off from Rockcliffe (airport), it was flying for about an hour-and-a-half and the pilot received a message that he must land his plane immediately and that the RCMP wanted to question him,” said PSAC’s Larry Rousseau.
It remains unclear why the plane was ordered out of the sky as the RCMP and the Quebec-based pilot offered conflicting stories.
RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Lucy Shorey said officers on the ground spotted the plane and felt it was flying within restricted airspace over Parliament Hill, so they ordered the pilot to return to the Rockcliffe airport for questioning.
Shorey said the RCMP had confirmed the plane had not entered restricted airspace, but she offered little reason for why it was nonetheless ordered out of the sky. “The plane appeared to be flying at a low level and that’s why the RCMP requested (it) to land,” she said. “There was no issue once we spoke to the pilot.”
But the plane’s pilot, Jean-Pierre Ciambella, explained in an email sent to the union — which it shared with the Citizen — that he repeatedly checked with air traffic control to ensure that he was outside Ottawa’s restricted zones, and that at no time was he informed by air traffic control that he had penetrated the restricted area above Parliament Hill.
Ciambella says that upon returning to the airport the RCMP who met him said they appreciated his cooperation in bringing his flight to an early end, but they told him that the message on the banner could be construed as hate speech — hence their request for him to return to the airport for questioning.
In the email, which was written in French, Ciambella says that he denied to the RCMP that merely promoting a client’s website could be considered hate speech towards the prime minister. He added that he had been flying promotions for the site in Quebec since August 19th, and told them “don’t shoot the messenger.”
In response, he says that the RCMP told him that he was in the national capital, they were responsible for the prime minister’s security, and therefore were obligated to intercept him.
Ciambella has not yet been reached for comment.
A Quebec pilot named Jean-Pierre Ciambella, who also goes by the name Gian Piero Ciambella, made headlines in 2006 when he made an emergency Sunday afternoon landing on Montreal’s downtown Park Avenue. It was later determined that Ciambella had taken off with a broken fuel gauge, for which he was fined $750.
The RCMP, which oversees security on the Hill, says it was worried about a possible security threat, not the banner’s political message.
“This was not about any type of message. This was about the security of Parliament Hill, which is something the RCMP takes very seriously,” she said.
Union leaders and experts scoffed at the suggestion the banner could be seen as hate speech.
“We don’t see criticism of the prime minister as being hate speech, we see it as being freedom of speech,” Rousseau said.
“I’ve never, ever heard of anything like this for any previous prime minister. It has become so absurd to see that anything that is critical of the prime minister is immediately met with fear and trepidation.”
“What kind of country of are we coming to if we cannot openly criticize the prime minister without the security forces taking someone aside for interrogations?”
Errol Mendes, a University of Ottawa law professor, said the criminal code provisions around hate speech focus on the “wilful promotion of hatred directed at an identifiable group.”
“It’s beyond ridiculous,” he said. “It should not even be contemplated unless of course Stephen Harper is an identifiable group.”
“Something like this is so far removed from hate speech that it’s almost laughable,” Mendes said.
When the story first broke Monday, the RCMP directed all media inquiries to Nav Canada, the private company that provides air traffic control services in Canada.
It confirmed the plane never breached a restricted fly zone in Ottawa and said its air traffic controllers never instructed the plane to land.
“We did not communicate that to the pilot,” said Nav Canada spokesman Ron Singer.
While the RCMP confirmed that its officers requested the plane to land, it remains unclear who exactly communicated that message to the pilot.
“Well, how does the pilot know he had to land?,” asked PSAC’s Rousseau. “Who could communicate with the pilot? The RCMP have a direct line to the radio? It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Rousseau said PSAC may try to bring the plane back to Ottawa in the future. They paid the pilot $1,000 per hour, he said.
The StephenHarperNousDéteste.ca website, launched by PSAC’s Quebec region, is part of the union’s national campaign, which is designed to draw attention to how all Canadians are affected by cuts to the federal public service. Some public servants have also been wearing T-shirts and buttons that say, “Stephen Harper hates me.”
“It may be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it’s a remark that says, ‘What has he got against us personally?’” Rousseau said.
The union has hired a plane to take similar flights over Montreal and other Quebec communities over the past few weeks.
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