Nanaimo is moving ahead with a blanket ban on video and audio recording in council chambers to limit disruptions by members of the public during meetings.
Council voted 7-2 in favour of three readings for proposed changes to its respectful spaces bylaw to ban use of audio or video recording devices unless it’s expressly permitted, and to prohibit signage that would cause disturbances or block the view or operation of council meetings.
City deputy corporate officer Karen Robertson said the bylaw, which came into force last year, needs clarity around what exactly is “inappropriate behaviour,” given recent incidents at council.
She said the city needs to strike a balance between ensuring its employees can work free from harassment and intimidation and maintaining accessibility of government.
“There’s plenty of access to everyone without the need of the individual to make their own private recording,” she said.
Council meetings are recorded and televised and people can attend meetings in person, she said, adding that official records can also be easily found online.
But there are privacy implications when people take photos or video of council, staff and members of the public and publish them elsewhere without consent, she said.
Robertson said some of the rules Nanaimo is considering are already in place in other levels of government, such as the courts.
“They’re actually much stricter,” she said, adding electronic devices must be checked in advance, and can’t be brought into the room.
Robertson said people have tried to zoom in on her face with a recording device to catch a private conversation she was having with another staff member in previous council meetings.
The rules around recording could be relaxed during awards ceremonies and for those taking recordings for specific uses, such as for commemoration purposes or for working members of the media, Robertson said.
Relations between Nanaimo council and some members of the public have been frosty in recent years.
Last May, two people were arrested in Nanaimo council chambers after a man refused to leave the podium after his allotted speaking time. They were later released without charges.
Other council incidents included disruptive heckling and threats made to a Nanaimo councillor following a council meeting last February.
Unscheduled disruptions continued Monday while council was considering the changes.
Mayor Leonard Krog stopped the meeting to address a member of the public who had interjected her own comments during deliberations.
“Ma’am, this is a council meeting, this is not a circus. Please be quiet,” he said.
Councillors Hilary Eastmure and Sheryl Armstrong, who voted against the motion, objected to the electronic device ban, citing potential Charter rights violations.
Eastmure, a former journalist, raised concerns that the changes might infringe on a person’s freedom of expression. “You can’t be a nuisance, you can’t damage property, you can’t obstruct police and you can’t use that material to defame people, but you have a Charter right to take photos or record video,” she said.
Sara Dubinsky of Lidstone & Company Law Corp., who was retained by the city, told council the definition of public space is on a spectrum.
In a 1998 Supreme Court decision, judges set a legal precedent when they favoured the privacy of a student who had her photo taken while outdoors over that of the photographer’s right of expression, she said.
The photo of the 17-year-old sitting on the steps of a building on Ste‑Catherine Street in Montreal — which was published without her consent in an arts magazine that sold a total of 722 copies — led other students at her school to laugh at her, the 1998 ruling noted.
A judge ruled she was entitled to $2,000 in compensation for “the humiliation suffered as a result of the invasion of her privacy and injury to her reputation.”
Dubinsky said the ruling shows there are certain rights to privacy even in very public settings.
However, Armstrong argued that a more recent 2019 ruling from the Supreme Court indicates that there is “no expectation of privacy” in spaces where surveillance cameras or other recording devices are present, such as Nanaimo council chambers.
The 2019 ruling, which was around a voyeurism case in Ontario, said the “ubiquity of visual recording technology” has led individuals to expect they could be photographed or recorded in many situations, particularly in areas where cameras are already present.
Coun. Paul Manly noted that the House of Commons in Ottawa, the B.C. legislature and courtrooms all have restrictions around recording and photographs, despite being public spaces.
“We are completely in our right to do that here, [too],” he said. “It’s unfortunate that people have taken their constitutional rights and abused them in ways that are kind of abhorrent.”
Krog said he does not expect city staff to be subject to the same conditions as those who are in public office.
“I never expected to be treated kindly. I expect to be the subject of public abuse,” he said, adding it’s “abhorrent” to allow staff to be treated in the same way.
In introducing the bylaw update, Sheila Gurrie, the city’s corporate officer and director of legislative services, noted that report author Robertson is being singled out in online comments over the proposed change, even though the direction came from senior staff.
“I just want to be clear that this isn’t her own accord,” she said. “She’s just doing her job.”
Vancouver Island University professor Evan Hoffman, a de-escalation expert who has helped train staff at the Cowichan Valley Regional District and constituency offices across B.C., said people are becoming increasingly “politically engaged, sometimes misinformed, but very passionate and sometimes disruptive to the point of being threatening.”
Hoffman said banning the use of electronic devices might translate into more efficient meetings in the future.
“We just can’t do our job very well here and run these meetings very well if everyone’s kind of up in arms,” he said.
