(Photo Credit: RCMP/British Columbia Highway Patrol)
By Rob Salerno | VANCOUVER, Canada – A civilian oversight body has cleared British Columbia Highway Patrol officers of wrongdoing in a highway chase that led a tractor carrying an anti-LGBT banner to flip over last fall.
The incident occurred on Nov 25, as police pursued a tractor that was participating in a protest against the province’s inclusive sex education curriculum called the “Stop SOGI-123 Road Rally,” a small convoy of vehicles driving from Chilliwack to Vancouver along Highway 15.
The BC Highway Patrol attempted to get the tractor driver to stop near Surrey in suburban Vancouver, then used a PIT maneuver, where the pursuing car hits the rear quadrant of the target vehicle, causing it to lose traction and spin out. The tractor flips over, and the driver was ejected from the vehicle’s open roof and sustained injuries. He was arrested and taken to the hospital.
The dramatic incident was captured on video by eyewitnesses.
The Independent Investigations Office of BC, which conducts routine investigations into all police incidents that result in injury or death, issued its report on the incident late Friday. While the report has not been made public due to an ongoing court case related to the incident, a news release says that there was no evidence the officers involved did anything wrong.
“The Chief Civilian Director has reviewed the evidence – civilian witness statements, forensic scene analysis, video footage, medical records, and police information – and determined that there are no reasonable grounds to believe any officer may have committed an offence,” the report says.
The tractor driver, who has been identified as Chilliwack farmer Bill Shoker, had released several videos on social media in advance of the rally in which he denounced the province’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity-123 (SOGI-123) curriculum, which is used in public schools to promote inclusion of 2SLGBTQIA+ students and families.
Protests against sexual orientation and gender identity material and sex education more generally in school curriculums have become a regular occurrence in Canada in recent years, as a network of extremist anti-vax and anti-mask protestors morphed gradually morphed into an anti-LGBTQ+ protest network. They routinely disrupt school board meetings, library events, and protest at provincial legislatures. The in-person protest groups are often quite small and outnumbered by counter-protestors who support LGBT inclusion.
Nevertheless, they’ve managed to disrupt events and have scored some policy wins, with several provinces run by conservative governments launching policies restricting students’ pronoun and name use. This month, Alberta announced a new policy would be coming in the fall to restrict discussion of LGBT issues in classrooms, bar trans girls from playing in school sports, and restrict gender care for adolescents.
The BC protesters were trying to launch a campaign to force a recall election of the province’s Education Minister Rachna Singh. The campaign officially failed when organizers were unable to collect the required signatures by the Jan 29 deadline. The campaign had to collect signatures from 40% of the eligible voters in Singh’s district in Surrey (11,811 signatures total), but only reported collecting 3,264.
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