The City of Ottawa’s $150,000 security plan, calling for 15 surveillance cameras in and around city hall by the end of December, has community groups scrambling to mount a legal challenge before it’s too late.
It’s not that they question the need for tighter security around ground floor and underground parking entrances, tunnels or loading docks. As it is, anyone can walk right into city hall using those entrances, without having to sign in or out.
Security cameras inside city hall buildings are necessary and justifiable. And plans for security cameras were in the works long before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 sent public officials scurrying to tighten up lax standards in many government buildings. It’s the two cameras that will monitor areas around the Human Rights Monument and Festival Plaza that community groups suspect violate peoples’ implicit right to privacy, suspicions civil liberties advocates have confirmed.
Ottawa’s city council should pay attention to complaints about state-sanctioned surveillance in public places. Twenty-four hour video surveillance of any public space is bound to raise concerns, but when the public space is a monument celebrating universal concepts of personal freedom and rights, it is downright embarrassing.
The Human Rights Monument, unveiled 11 years ago by the Dalai Lama, was the first monument in the world dedicated to universal human rights. It’s where disarmament and peace groups meet yearly to mark the anniversary of the International Treaty Banning Landmines. It’s where inter-faith groups in Ottawa have met monthly since 1995 to bear witness to their belief that Ontario’s Common Sense Revolution, spearheaded by Premier Mike Harris, has hurt more people in Ontario than it has helped. It’s where former South African president Nelson Mandela stood in 1998 to unveil a plaque honouring Canadian contributions to the United Nations’ Universal Declarations of Human Rights.
Whether holding signs or holding hands, these people have a right to privacy. Capturing their comings and going on video mocks that right. A nd the Supreme Court agrees. It ruled in October that video surveillance cameras installed by Kelowna RCMP in several downtown locations breaches peoples’ inherent right to privacy.
If the security cameras are installed to monitor the Human Rights Monument and the Festival Plaza, it is only a matter of time before the highest court in this country will point out the folly of their actions.
Ottawa’s city council should spare itself this shame.
The monument is supposed to confirm Ottawa’s international status, as the capital city of a country committed to the notion of inalienable human rights. City council should recognize this honour. If this is really a capital city with the first international monument dedicated to human rights, then let the city live up to its perceived stature.
—Corinne Smith