Food Not Bombs defies city to continue giving out free meals without permit

This article was adapted from Eddy Sweeney’s reporting for Trent Radio.

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Food Not Bombs continued giving out free meals to “anyone who’s hungry” in Confederation Square on Monday evening, after refusing to apply for a permit from city hall to continue to use the park.

“What we do does not need a permit,” Food Not Bombs volunteer Myles Conner told a crowd of dozens of people who came out to show their support for the free weekly meal.

Organizers feared the city might try to shut down the event, after being told last week they can no longer operate in the park without a permit.

But Conner said the weekly meal is actually a “protest of an unjust system that leaves people without” — and so they don’t need a permit to gather in a public space.

“We’re covered under our constitutional rights to come and protest,” he said.

Food Not Bombs has given out free food every Monday since 2005 without ever asking for permission from the city, according to Conner. He said he received an envelope in the mail from the city in 2010 that might have contained a permit application, but he’s not sure because he never opened it. “I sent it back. And we’ve never been hassled since,” he said.

But then last Monday, a security guard approached volunteers and told them they needed a permit to set up in the park, according to Currents’ publisher Will Pearson, who helps serve meals for Food Not Bombs.

Mayor Jeff Leal later emailed Pearson a statement saying the city had warned the group on Feb. 12 that it would need a permit.

“The permit process helps keep our community safe by ensuring that aspects such as fire safety, electrical setups, the location of structures, and other considerations are agreed upon for the use of public space,” wrote Leal.

Since the group had still not applied for a permit after three weeks, volunteers were asked to remove their tents and tables from Confederation Square, Leal stated. But according to Myles Conner, no member of the group ever received the Feb. 12 warning that Leal referred to.

The city’s Parks and Facilities Bylaw, which was enacted by city council in 2019 in response to a large tent encampment in Victoria Park, states that a permit is required to “sell, or offer, expose or advertise for sale any food or drink” in a city park.

As people gathered in Confederation Square again this Monday, Cindy Conner said it was “great” to see so many people rally to the defence of Food Not Bombs.

“This is what we need to do and sort of stand up to this nonsense. It’s stupid,” she said of the permit requirement.

Conner, who helps cook the meals, said she has been coming to Food Not Bombs since it began and according to her, people gathered right inside city hall in the early years. “We used to eat in the lobby,” she said. “That’s how much things have changed.”

Anna Bernier said she’s been helping cook the free meals every week since last September.

“Everybody needs to have access to food. And I think that can unite a lot of people,” she said.

“Ultimately, we just want to keep serving food to those who need it – to those who want that kind of community,” she said. “That’s the big picture here.”

Nicola Koyanagi came out to support Food Not Bombs on Monday because she said the event is a “beautiful” way for “people from all walks of life to gather over food.”

It’s also a way to “protest capitalism,” which she said “makes it so that money dictates everything we do.”

“This is a way that we can be together, sort of outside of that capitalist system and protesting that capitalist system and just being in community and caring for each other,” she said.

Volunteer Jordan Lee Etherington said applying for a permit would be against Food Not Bombs’ principles.

“You should not need a permit to be kind to other people,” he said.

He said the group is performing a humane act by giving food to some of the “most vulnerable and marginal communities in Peterborough.”

Speaking to the crowd, Myles Conner said the group is not clear why the city is suddenly requiring them to get a permit.

“We haven’t been given a specific set of transgressions that we’re performing,” he said. “Nothing’s been communicated to us.”

“I was really hoping – and our legal counsel was also hoping – that we could get a ticket tonight so that we would at least understand how we can defend ourselves or posture ourselves differently,” Conner said.

He hopes Food Not Bombs will be able to negotiate a solution with the city so it can continue “unimpeded,” he added.

Trent Radio asked the city for further comment on this story, but did not hear back by publication time.

This article was adapted from Eddy Sweeney’s reporting for Trent Radio.

Update: This article was updated on March 13 to include Myles Conner’s denial that any member of Food Not Bombs received a warning on Feb. 12.

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that Myles Conner said he was not certain if the envelope he received in the mail from the city was a permit application since he never opened it.