Sitting in a Downtown Eastside coffee shop, Jakub Markiewicz remains defiant.
Defiant of a court system that only a few minutes earlier slapped him with a criminal record he’ll carry around as he enters his 20s and beyond.
“Literally rapists don’t even get charged, police don’t even respond to calls from crisis workers in the Downtown Eastside, and then protesting results in this,” Markiewicz told the NOW, in response to the end result of his legal battles for protesting Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.
On Wednesday, provincial court judge Laura Bakan sentenced the 20-year-old to 15 months’ probation for two assaults on Burnaby Mountain back in March 2015.
Markiewicz will also have to abide by a number of conditions, including staying 100 metres away from any Kinder Morgan drill sites or survey work on Burnaby Mountain.
The case began on March 16, 2015, when the then-18-year-old tried to disrupt work along the pipeline on Burnaby Mountain. Court heard Markiewicz was videotaping contractors at the site, when he grabbed a log and approached a worker. Eventually the two started to tussle, with the log in Markiewicz’s hand, before it was dropped.
Eight days later, the teen was back on the mountain. He began filming a Metro Vancouver crew carrying out road survey work, which was not related to the pipeline.
At one point, Markiewicz kicked a surveyor in the leg and the two began throwing punches at each other. He was found guilty of one charge of assault with a weapon and one of assault in August.
Crown was seeking a jail sentence of 10 days for each assault conviction and two years’ probation, while the defence was looking for a conditional discharge. The judge chose somewhere in the middle.
In her decision, Judge Bakan said the accused expressed no remorse and described him during his trial as “immature and arrogant.” He also refused to take part in his pre-sentence report.
She also said it was necessary to hand down a sentence that would serve as a deterrent, adding vulnerable workers in the province need to know the courts don’t condone this type of behaviour.
However, the judge noted Marckiewicz’s young age for not sentencing him to prison, telling him “you have a lot going for you.”
Bakan also told him she hoped he would put forward his beliefs in a lawful manner.
After the sentencing, Marckiewicz still wasn’t willing to say that what he did on Burnaby Mountain those two days was wrong, nor was he apologetic.
“If there was no physical contact, then what is there to be sorry about,” he said, suggesting what he had done was not violent. “It’s kind of hypocritical of the system since this Canadian democracy was founded upon literal genocide.”
He also took a swipe at the court system, noting the amount of time and effort in his prosecution to end up with probation and a $200 fine.
As for his future, Markiewicz said he intends to continue his education and study political science. He also has no plans to give up the fight against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. He expects to attend a few protests if the project is indeed approved by the federal government.
