Two men were charged with resisting arrest, and all three were charged with mischief by preventing people from using the bridge on Tuesday.
The trio appeared before Quebec Court Judge Manlio Del Negro at the Montreal courthouse. Two men — Olivier Huard, 47, and Jacob Pirro, 24, both of Montreal — were charged with resisting arrest when members of the Sûreté du Québec tried to put an end to the protest. They were also charged, along with Michèle Lavoie, 39, also of Montreal, with one count of mischief by preventing people from using the bridge. A conviction under the mischief charge comes with a maximum 10-year sentence.
A prosecutor said the Crown objected to the release of the accused and they will remain detained for a bail hearing scheduled for next week. One of the reasons cited for the objection was that the public’s confidence in the justice system could be diminished if the trio are released.
The protest began when two men climbed up the bridge after 5 a.m. on Tuesday. The Sûreté du Québec closed the bridge in both directions and a gradual reopening began around 11:45 a.m. Traffic on the South Shore was tied up for hours.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the group Last Generation Canada confirmed that Pirro and Huard were the two men who had scaled up the bridge. The spokesperson said Pirro is part of Last Generation Canada and Huard is part of a group called Collectif Antigone.
Last Generation Canada said on Tuesday it was calling on the federal government to sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls for an end to the expansion of fossil fuel extraction. The activist group is also asking for a national emergency agency tasked with responding to wildfires, flooding and other climate-related disasters.
Huard was reportedly involved in a protest held in Montréal-Est last weekend, along with about 50 other people. Two groups, including Collectif Antigone, were protesting a pipeline that transports oil from Alberta to eastern Canada.
During that protest, Huard told Radio-Canada: “Today is a warning to say that we are going to come back. We are going to intensify our means of action.”
Huard has a criminal record involving a protest in 2013. He was part of a group that protested the construction of a hydroelectric power station on a river in Lac-St-Jean. Five members of the group were chained to cable car cabins that are part of a heritage site in the region.
Huard was initially charged with public mischief, but in 2015 he pleaded guilty to breaking and entering and was sentenced to one year of probation and was ordered to carry out 120 hours of community service. He was also ordered to pay $1,000 in damages to the regional park where the protest was held.