***MEDIA ADVISORY***
January 11, 2026
URGENT NOTE TO MEDIA
URGENT NOTE TO MEDIA
Newsrooms Must Treat TPS Release on Saturday’s ‘Canada First’ Rally With Extreme Caution and Skepticism
MEDIA CONTACT: Gur Tsabar, movementmediahub@gmail.com, 347.248.1390 cell/WhatsApp/Signal
Toronto, ON – This advisory is issued in response to the Toronto Police Service news release regarding arrests at yesterday’s Canada First rally in downtown Toronto.
We are urging all media outlets to exercise serious skepticism in reporting and framing this incident based on police accounting.
This was not a neutral “demonstration.”
This was a “Canada First” rally — an anti-immigrant, far-right formation with documented ties to Nazis, fascists and white nationalist ideology. Among those present were Gus Stefanis, former leader of the Canadian Nationalist Party, and Andrew Benson of White Lives Matter.
That political reality is not peripheral. It is central.
Any coverage that strips this context and presents the event as generic “clashes between demonstrators” is not balanced, but it is misleading.
Toronto Police Service is not a neutral narrator. It is a central actor. Its statements should not be treated as baseline truth, objective account, or narrative anchor.
Toronto police framing cannot be allowed to singularly define reality — while community testimony, legal observers, and civilian evidence are treated as secondary or suspect. That pattern is now well established, and it is dangerously corrosive to our civil liberties.
When an armed state agency is allowed to define the story about its own conduct, that is not verification. That is institutional deference to power, and it harms marginalized communities daily.
When TPS invariably invokes “free speech” or “the right to assemble,” that framing should be treated with caution. No one is disputing the legal right to protest.
The issue is how police power was exercised.
Free speech does not explain who was facilitated, who was protected, who was contained, who was brutalized and who was arrested.
Free speech explains permission. It does not explain policing choices.
Clearing paths, creating buffers, deploying resources, and containing and brutalizing opposition are all operational decisions, not Charter mandated obligations. They shape the terrain. And they reveal alignment.
It is especially critical to name what this TPS release obscures:
This rally involved far-right, anti-immigrant actors.
Police cleared a path for self-avowed Nazis to march down Toronto streets.
Community members who opposed them were criminalized, violently attacked, and arrested.
Who is protected and who is controlled is not accidental. It is the story.
We are also urging the media to be cautious of treating police claims as decisive while dismissing civilian evidence.
Such practices do not produce objectivity. They provide cover for right wing extremists, and the stakes are not abstract.
- People lose jobs.
- People lose immigration security.
- People get publicly branded as violent or criminal.
- People get placed at legal and physical risk, based on police assertions alone.
And when those assertions are proven false, no correction or retraction is made by either the TPS or the media that ran with it. That means that the consequences continue for the people targeted as long as the initial narrative is available online.
We are making Orange Hats (Legal Observers and Community Safety Team) spokespeople available for: on-record interviews, background briefings, data verification, and contextual analysis.
The organization provides:
- On-the-ground presence at demonstrations and jail support (connecting protestors with lawyers for the initial release process);
- Direct observation and documentation of police tactics and escalation patterns;
- Tracking and disseminating records of police-caused injuries at protests and encampment clearings;
- In-person legal support for court appearances and police station visits;
- Community safety workshops such as Know Your Rights or What to Expect When You’re Arrested.
TPS Communications cannot be treated as “the source.” They are ONE source. And in the current political climate, treating police narrative as truth is not neutral. It is political.
People’s bodies, livelihoods, and futures are on the line. Your framing choices matter.
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