Bob Mackin
A delay in sentencing two environmental protesters for their campaign of blockades on Vancouver Island.
Howard Breen (Save Old Growth/Instagram)
Extinction Rebellion Vancouver Island co-founder Howard Breen, 70, and Melanie Murray, 48, both failed in their bid to convince a judge that their criminal mischief was “morally involuntary.”
Provincial Court Judge Ronald Lamperson was scheduled to hear a joint submission from the prosecutor and Breen and Murray’s defence lawyer on July 19 in Nanaimo.
The sentencing hearing was postponed because Crown lawyer Neal Bennet had a medical appointment impacted by the Crowdstrike/Microsoft internet outage. A new hearing date is to be determined.
Bennet and defence lawyer Joey Doyle revealed in court that negotiations for a joint sentencing proposal fell through. Bennet indicated he would be asking the judge to sentence Breen to jail time of under two years less a day.
On May 3, Lamperson dismissed Breen and Murray’s application under the defence of necessity. They unsuccessfully argued that their crimes were excusable under Canadian criminal law because climate change “presents an imminent peril to all humanity.”
“They do not take any issue with the facts underlying the charges, and acknowledge and admit that they intended to commit the acts giving rise to each charge,” said Lamperson’s verdict.
Lamperson ruled against their application, because the defendants made choices to commit mischief.
“They decided on which days and at which times they would engage in civil disobedience. They also decided what form their protest activity would take on particular days. All of their protests involved advance planning,” Lamperson decided.
Breen chose to cause more interference on some days than others, such as gluing his hand to the roadway one day and using a bike lock to fasten his legs to another protester on another. One day, he simply sat on a roadway holding a banner.
“Ms. Murray also freely made choices with respect to her protest activity, including whether she would put herself in an ‘arrestable position.’ The evidence demonstrates that on some days she did and on other days did not,” Lamperson wrote.
Murray was charged with four offences, two for mischief by interfering with a public roadway and two for causing a disturbance.
Breen was charged with 11 Criminal Code offences and another another contrary to the Aeronautics Act. He also describes himself as a member of the Just Stop Oil and Last Generation protest groups.
Lamperson’s May 3 judgment said Breen worked in the 1970s for the Liberal Party, but switched later that decade to the NDP and remained until 2015. He has also worked with environmental organizations Smart Change CA, Friends of the Earth, Wilderness Committee and Greenpeace.
In early 2020, Breen was part of an anti-pipeline protest outside then-NDP premier John Horgan’s house in Langford. Breen and two others saw their mischief charges stayed when they agreed to avoid Horgan’s neighbourhood for two years.
In 2019, Breen was arrested for attempting a citizens’ arrest on federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna during the Liberal’s photo op in Oak Bay.
The July 19 hearing came, coincidentally, the day after Extinction Rebellion’s global co-founder Roger Hallam was jailed in the U.K. for five years for conspiring to organize 2022 protests that blocked the M25 freeway. Four others were sentenced to four years each.
Extinction Rebellion and its affiliates benefit from grants made by the California-based Climate Emergency Fund (CEF), which reported it disbursed $3.74 million to 34 organizations last year.
In January 2022, Pakistani foreign student Muhammad Zain Ul-Haq and four others incorporated Eco-Mobilization Canada, a federal not-for-profit behind the B.C. Extinction Rebellion splinter group Save Old Growth.
Ul-Haq boasted in August 2022 in a New York Times story that Save Old Growth received US$170,000 in grants from CEF. In July 2023, a judge sentenced him to jail for seven days for multiple criminal mischief counts and ordered 30 days of house arrest and 31 days of curfew.
Ul-Haq’s criminal record meant he faced deportation for violating the terms and conditions of his visa to study at Simon Fraser University. That was put on hold in April after intervention from Liberal MP Joyce Murray. Last year, he was appointed to CEF’s advisory board.
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