Protest in Regina on Monday. Photo courtesy of Manfred Joehnck.
About two dozen protesters picked one of Regina’s busiest intersections during the height of rush hour to express their displeasure with the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities.
Last month, the group overwhelming passed a resolution in favour of giving farmers more rights to defend themselves and their properties.
The resolution comes at a time of heightened sensitivities after last summer’s shooting of an Aboriginal teen by a Battleford-area farmer. The preliminary hearing for Gerald Stanley is now underway amid heightened security.
Protest organizer, Dodie Ferguson, from the Cowessess First Nation, says the resolution is an overreaction that is not supported by the facts. She says rural crime is actually down. Ferguson herself grew up in a rural area and came to depend on neighbours.
Her family was also the victim of rural crime. It was about 1990 when an Aboriginal youth broke into their home and shot her father. Ferguson says despite that, she sees no need for farmers to want to arm themselves against strangers.
“I have forgiven that person, and as a person who has faced rural crime myself, I still would not advocate for any jack-happy person out there to have a gun and to shoot it at will,” she said.
The preliminary hearing for Gerald Stanley is expected to last all week.