Wasaga Beach’s deputy mayor is pleading with her fellow Simcoe County councillors to band together to try to put a stop to unsanctioned and unwelcome car rallies across the region.
During the recent Labour Day weekend, the local beach community was again targeted by what Tanya Snell called a “highly mobilized” group of unsanctioned car rally participants
“They don’t care about community safety or abiding by the law and their sole focus is to disrupt and destroy," Snell said during Tuesday's county council meeting. "Our residents have tolerated non-stop sirens, helicopters going 24/7 and extensive damage to public and private property, not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars in expense that is downloaded to the abiding tax payers.
Snell said the Labour Day weekend event was the fourth time in the past three years the town has been overtaken by such groups.
"The last event put OPP officers at risk when hundreds of them swarmed and jumped all over a police car with an officer and police dog in it,” she said.
How a community is expected to continue to endure this type of behaviour, let alone how it is legally allowed to occur, is “mind boggling,” Snell added.
In an effort to prevent these types of events from happening, Snell said the town’s senior leadership team, along with council members, have spent the last several months preparing for the probability that the Georgian Bay community would be subject to this kind of behaviour again.
Through a combination of adopting new bylaws, successfully receiving a court injunction and utilizing all of the municipality’s resources, she said town officials were able to legally set up barricades at its borders in order to prevent participants from entering.
A statement released Aug. 29 on the town’s website noted that police and town officials were aware that an illegal car rally was planned for the long weekend, and that they would be taking proactive steps to try and prevent it from taking place. This included road closures as well as the installation of vehicle checkpoints.
Modified vehicles were not permitted to enter the community over the course of the long weekend, the statement added.
“Because we took this shut-down stance, the over 500 cars dispersed and gathered in smaller numbers in other communities around us. For this, please know, Wasaga Beach feels your pain," Snell said.
Similar rallies, sometimes held in the very early morning hours, have also occurred in Barrie, usually in parking lots along Bayfield Street, as well as in the south end.
Snell said Wasaga Beach has learned a lot in recent years through trial and error, and believes it’s the municipality’s responsibility to share what they have learned as well their successful approach with other communities who are also affected by these unsanctioned events.
“We know Wasaga Beach is not the only town they target,” she said, pointing to the more than 200 cars that gathered last weekend in Brampton during the city’s jazz festival. “That naturally caused a disruption to concert-goers and forced police to redeploy assets, potentially leaving other areas of the community at risk.
"We were hosting an April Wine concert on the Sunday of the long weekend," Snell added. "Is this their new approach? To swarm a community when they are hosting a major event as they are distracted and resources are set? Where does it stop?”
To get to Wasaga Beach, car-rally participants would have driven through several Simcoe County communities, she said, adding local municipalities need to come together and create a plan to combat these events.
“Imagine if 500 reckless renegades took over your community. How would you defend yourself? Consider how you’d even try to close the borders of Clearview or Springwater," Snell added. "We shouldn’t be left to feel helpless and, more importantly, they should not be empowered to execute (these events).”
Wasaga Beach's deputy mayor suggested the province also needs to create a plan to fight these events, which is why she intends to put forward a motion at the next town council meeting on Thursday, Sept. 14 requesting a provincial task force to address the unsanctioned rallies.
“Have we learned nothing from the Ottawa rally?" Snell asked.
Snell said she hopes a provincial task force could, at minimum, review the Municipal Act, consider enhancing enforcement powers for bylaw officers and potentially even revisit the Charter if necessary to give police more power toward "shutting the lawless group down."
“I hope that our community can count on each of you, and (those around) this table, to stand with us in solidarity," said Snell, whose comments received applause from fellow county councillors.
