Uneasy riders

>> Innocent motorcycle enthusiasts fear clampdown

By RINA CALABRESE

Sure he christens his motorcycles with nicknames such as Wet Dream Machine and Freedom Blues, but Denis Noel considers himself a poet nevertheless. Not only that, he's also a fiction writer and a teacher. He also happens to be a lifelong biker.

 Noel is the president of Bikers Quebec and, at 51, he's been riding motorcycles for nearly 40 years. But these days, it's not easy being a biker. Noel says that events such as the recent shooting of Journal de Montreal crime reporter Michel Auger spur negative publicity of bikers and make things worse for hawg hobbyists like himself.

 "After that, the police, when they see a motorcyclist they think it's a criminal on the motorcycle," he says. Though he's been mistaken for a Hells Angels member in the past, his association, he says, is as far removed from the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine as you can get. "Those guys work the night shift and we work the day," says Noel. "We look like them because we dress the same and the motorcycles look the same, but that's it."
 
 We're no Angels
 Except sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. In 1995, the same year 11-year-old Daniel Desrochers was killed by shrapnel from a biker-gang car bomb in the east-end Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district, a policeman stopped Noel for illegally passing a car on the right. When Noel reached into his fanny pack to show the cop his driver's license, the cop grabbed him and pushed him, placing his hand over the pack to see what Noel had in there. "He treated me like I was a criminal," says Noel. "The cop was mad and pushed me and called me a bastard and everything."

 Noel says he understands that there are criminal biker gangs in Quebec and that the police need to crack down. "But they're not the same as us and we should not have to suffer the repercussions."

 But the shooting of Auger has once more galvanized the call for tougher anti-gang legislation. Quebec is home to Canada's bloodiest criminal biker-gang war. In the last six years, organized crime and criminal activity in Quebec have accounted for 150 deaths. On Monday in the House of Commons, Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe requested that the federal government adopt a bill by October 6 that would make it illegal to belong to a criminal organization.

 If necessary, Duceppe added, the Liberal government should invoke the notwithstanding clause to override Charter of Rights guarantees on freedom of association. The federal government blocked both the debate and vote on the Bloc motion, stating that they had already introduced an anti-gang law in 1997 and recently increased the RCMP's budget by $584-million over the next three years.

 Noel says this type of law would not necessarily affect an association such as Bikers Quebec, but on the other hand, "It'll give them a power to use over us." If the police are badly trained, he adds, "They'll start arresting anybody--like what happened in 1995."
 
 Notwithstanding dangers
 Montreal lawyer and constitutional expert Julius Grey opposes such use of the notwithstanding clause. "I think there's nothing more dangerous than adopting legislation in the heat of the moment," he says. Grey says that the threat to civil liberties in adopting such a law is much greater than its potential gain. Furthermore, he adds, countries that have passed anti-gang laws of the sort advocated by the Bloc Quebecois, such as Italy, have not solved their crime problem. "I think the police already has tremendous tools and maybe they're not using them properly," he says. Grey argues that you can't tell who's a criminal or not in advance.

 He says criminal gangs do not issue membership cards or have membership lists, so it would be very difficult to determine who is a member of such a gang. "It's giving a tremendous discretion to the police," he says, adding that they are not always trustworthy.

 In the meantime, Noel says he plans to ride out the storm. "Well, winter is coming so we'll have to put our bikes away soon and hopefully by springtime all this will have blown over." :

more news...