Unifor protests causing traffic slowdowns on Ring Road: Police chief

Drivers on Ring Road in Regina’s north end have encountered traffic slowdowns over the past couple days — and that could continue.

Regina Police Chief Evan Bray confirmed on the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Wednesday that Unifor picketers have been contributing to the slow-moving traffic.

“With what’s going on with COVID, the ability to have large groups of people outside the gates (of the Co-op refinery) has been very limited so they have gone to in-vehicle protests and pickets,” Bray said.

Members of Unifor have been locked out of the Co-op Refinery Complex since Dec. 5 as part of an ongoing labour dispute.

Bray said due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the picketers have been doing daily vehicle protests outside the legislative building and “a moving picket line” around the refinery.

“When you get a lot of Unifor members in their vehicles — sometimes 200, 300, 400 — it absolutely slows down traffic and so we’ve been getting daily calls to respond out there to try and alleviate traffic (and) divert traffic in some cases,” Bray said. “But it has been a daily piece of work for us for sure.”

Bray said one of the challenges responding to these large-scale events is having enough officers to go to them.

“This labour dispute, while it’s challenging for everyone involved — and I truly hope that it ends very soon — it’s extremely challenging for us to try and find resources to put out there to try and manage this situation when we’re also managing a city of 240,000 people and some very complex needs,” Bray said.

“We don’t always have a lot of resources to send out there and when we do, we try to balance the fact that (Unifor members) have the right to drive and picket as they would normally through this whole process. But we’re trying to divert traffic.”

While drivers are going to be frustrated with the slower traffic, Bray said the police service is in a tough situation.

“We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. If we’re out there ticketing and towing vehicles, we’re infringing on the rights of Unifor and if we’re not doing something, people are frustrated about, ‘Why aren’t they getting tickets and towed?’ ” Bray said.

“It’s trying to strike that balance. They have some constitutional rights to picket under the Charter. They have to do it differently because of COVID but we have to keep traffic flowing.”

Bray said a member of the Regina Police Service will meet Unifor Local 594 president Kevin Bittman later this week.

“I hope that we can reach some common ground and understand how (Unifor) can be seen and heard the way they want to be without totally inhibiting the day-to-day movement of our city and handcuffing our police service when we have other things we should be focused on,” Bray said.

Bittman admitted Tuesday that rallies sometimes do spill out onto Ring Road from the refinery, but he couldn’t say if it was the cause of the slowdown in traffic.

“Sometimes the cops block off Ninth (Avenue) so then it moves to the Ring Road a little bit more,” Bittman said.

In the wake of the recent revelation that the police knew about a bomb threat at the picket line at the refinery but didn’t tell the union, Unifor issued a statement Wednesday saying it was “investigating the possibilities for a civil suit against RPS related to restricting union members’ rights to lawful picketing.”