People’s Party ex-official who assaulted prime minister deserves jail: Crown

The People’s Party of Canada official who threw stones at the prime minister will find out next week if he’ll be thrown in jail.

“I apologize for my actions,” Shane Marshall, 26, of St. Thomas said in a brief statement in court Monday morning as Ontario Court Justice Kevin McHugh reserved his sentencing decision to May 8.

McHugh has two distinct sentencing arguments to consider: Marshall’s defense lawyer advocated for a suspended sentence that would keep Marshall out of jail while the Crown sought a short, sharp jail stint followed by probation.

Marshall is the former People’s Party of Canada riding association president in Elgin-Middlesex-London. He pleaded guilty to assault on March 7, the same day he was to go on trial for aggravated assault for the very public gravel-throwing on Sept. 6, 2021, outside the London Brewing Co-operative where Justin Trudeau made a stop during the federal election campaign.

Marshall threw the gravel at Trudeau as the prime minister was boarding his campaign bus amid a small but raucous protest. Marshall was identified as the stone-thrower through video taken at the event. Within days, he was ousted from his People’s Party campaign position and charged by London police.

An anti-hate group also linked Marshall to online neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups.

Marshall entered his plea the day after his defense lawyers lost their bid to have Trudeau testify at the trial. Superior Court Justice Ian Leach quashed their subpoena because of Trudeau’s parliamentary privilege but, in his written decision, characterized the subpoena as a ploy “for the purpose of furthering Mr. Marshall’s political objectives.”

All of that earlier legal jockeying over trial issues was absent from Monday’s short hearing, where defense lawyer Luke Reidy argued his client shouldn’t be jailed for a heat-of-the-moment response, while assistant Crown attorney Jeremy Carnegie said Marshall’s actions are “the exact type of offense we need to determine.”

Carnegie said he didn’t care what Marshall or Trudeau’s politics were but “what we’re here for is Mr. Marshall’s actions” during an election campaign.

Carnegie said that what Marshall did was “not only an assault on a candidate, but an assault on democracy” that flew in the face of peaceful debate, especially during an election.

“Violence against candidates – any candidate – hurts democracy as a whole,” Carnegie said. He suggested 30 days in jail plus 12 months of probation to send a message to Marshall and the public. The Crown also recommended a non-communication order with Trudeau, a DNA sample and a weapons prohibition for 10 years.

The only cases that came close to resembling Marshall’s actions were the well-publicized events two decades ago when then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien got a pie in the face in 2000, with the same thing happening to then-Alberta Premier Ralph Klein in 2004. An attempted pie incident was thwarted in 2009 when a woman tried to strike then-Alberta premier Ed Stelmach.

The three people charged in those cases were each sent to jail for 30 days for assault – although Chretien’s pie-thrower was given time served on appeal. Carnegie said a cream pie to humiliate an official is much different than a handful of gravel that could have injured the prime minister.

But Marshall’s defense lawyer argued his client simply acted on impulse while attending a People’s Party protest and that Marshall had learned a lesson. Jailing him would not be deter anyone else from acting similarly, he argued.

Marshall has no criminal record and had been working to be a plumber but was forced to stop an apprenticeship when his employer died. He is unemployed. He has been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder but does not take medication, Reidy said.

“He is passionate about his country, passionate about politics. Without (people like) Shane Marshall, minority opinions would not be heard,” Reidy said.

Reidy said Marshall hadn’t planned to throw the stones and should have controlled his emotions “but at that moment he reacted.” He said his client understood what he did was wrong and “he will never do it again.”

A one-year suspended sentence, with a five-year weapons prohibition, would allow Marshall to get counseling for impulse control and anger management and “help normalize Mr. Marshall into society,” Reidy said.

Carnegie noted, however, that Marshall wasn’t interested in community supervision, pointing out that in the pre-sentence report Marshall told the author: “I’d rather go to jail than have an ankle monitor.”

In his brief apology to the court, Marshall said he “never meant to cause a scene or hurt anybody.”

Outside of the courthouse, Marshall stopped to shake hands with reporters and said he had no comment. But as he walked down the sidewalk to the front of the courthouse, he yelled: “Canada first.”

Unlike Marshall’s last court appearance in March, there wasn’t any sign of anti-Trudeau protests outside the London courthouse.

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