McGill encampment decision expected to come Tuesday [Video]

Pro-Palestinian protesters at McGill University have become “occupiers” living in a fortified and barricaded mini-village, a lawyer for the Montreal school argued on Monday as he asked for an injunction to dismantle the more than two-week-old encampment on its downtown campus.

As lawyers for the encampment members defended the right to protest, McGill lawyer Jacques Darche maintained the encampment presents a health and safety risk and is preventing McGill from holding convocation ceremonies on its property.

He told Quebec Superior Court that while universities respect freedom of expression, those who have pitched dozens of tents on its lower field are not mere protesters. “The proper term, in our view, is occupiers or campers,” he said.

He said there’s a difference between protesting, “with signs and slogans and groups of people, and camping in an encampment, fenced in with a quasi-permanent structure.”

In a judicial application dated Friday, McGill says the …