Alan Young, a law professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, says bail conditions are meant to prevent crimes from being committed – and a person’s rights can be infringed upon to a “reasonable” extent to ensure public safety, wrote the Toronto Star Oct. 15 in a story about the case of G20 protester Alex Hundert.

But in this case, Young says, the court has gone too far. “It’s basically putting a gag order on a citizen of Canada, when it’s not clear that the gag order is at all necessary to protect public order,” he said, of Hundert’s restriction from speaking to the media. “People have to be able to air grievances, and the media is a primary tool in which people can air grievances effectively.”

Young called the strict bail conditions “astonishing” – something unheard of in modern-day Canada. “It really seems to be a very severe deprivation of rights,” he said. “I’d be very curious to see how a higher court will respond.”