'Polarized' world is fuelling a growing number of protests in Canada, police say

Protesters march in support of regime change in Iran during a demonstration in Toronto, on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sammy Kogan

For hours, protesters slowly marched shoulder to shoulder down Toronto’s Yonge Street in what seemed like an endless throng. The scale of the rally could only be truly appreciated in photos taken far above street level, showing a kilometre-long stretch of road packed with people.

Toronto police estimated that 350,000 demonstrators took over the streets in the city’s north end on Feb. 14. Salar Gholami, the lead organizer of Iran solidarity protests in Toronto, believes the crowd was much bigger than that.

In any case, the rally was one for the history books.

Toronto police say the protest was likely the largest single-day demonstration the city has ever seen.

On the same day, Vancouver police estimated that 50,000 people gathered in a local park, answering the call of Iran’s exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi for mass demonstrations across the globe. Police in Montreal, Calgary and Ottawa say they’ve also seen well-attended rallies in recent months as people oppose Iran’s deadly crackdowns on anti-government protests inside the country.

Those protests’ stunning crowd sizes have captured headlines, but police in some of Canada’s largest cities say the rallies are part of a rising tide of demonstrations they’ve been managing for years.

Toronto police say protests happen weekly, sometimes daily, driven by an “increasingly polarized global environment.”

Overnight Saturday, the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran. Another Iran protest was planned for Richmond Hill on Saturday. While it wasn’t expected to be as large as the one on Feb. 14 in Toronto, it was planned before the attack.

Approximately 4,000 demonstrations have taken place in Toronto since Oct. 7, 2023 – more than 850 of which were related to the war in Gaza, police say.

Calgary police Staff Sgt. Rod MacNeil, who manages major events in the city, said the steady increase in protests – 300 per cent over four years in Calgary’s case – has been the norm across Canada since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The trend is following right across the country, from Nova Scotia to British Columbia,” he said, noting that police overtime costs rise alongside protest activity.

“We’re trying to balance the safety of everyday Calgarians and still answering the normal calls for service we go to, but then trying to keep the public safe at these protests,” he said. “It does cause a bit of a strain.”

In Vancouver, the number of protests increased by 75 per cent between January 2025 and January 2026, causing financial strain for the police department, media relations officer Const. Darren Wong said.

“In terms of overtime costs and officers coming in on their days off, that’s a big departure from our usual trend,” Wong said. “With protests, a lot of them happen as a mirror to what’s actually happening in the geopolitical landscape across the globe.”

The Canadian Association of Police Chiefs said in 2024 that increased protest activity across the country had led to an “unsustainable demand” on police resources.

From the Black Lives Matter movement to the Freedom Convoy in the early 2020s, to more recent pro-Palestine and anti-tariff protests, experts say Canadians are taking to the streets in increasing numbers.

Ronald Stagg, who has been studying protests for more than 30 years, said the recent 350,000-strong rally in Toronto may have been the biggest Canada has ever seen.

“I can’t remember any protest with that many people turning out,” the Toronto Metropolitan University professor emeritus said. “This seems to be exceptional.”

Crowd size aside, Stagg said periods of intense protest activity are nothing new. Protests ebb and flow with political cycles and Canada has been in this position before, he said, most famously during the Vietnam War.

Howard Ramos, a Western University professor studying social change, said protests tend to increase with political participation. He takes the recent spike in protest activity as a sign that Canadians are “more politically engaged and increasingly frustrated with mainstream political institutions.”

This increase in protests is being seen worldwide, Ramos said, pointing to rising demonstrations in the United States against immigration enforcement raids and anti-corruption movements led by Gen Z protesters that toppled governments in Nepal and Madagascar.

What’s unique in Canada is the “unprecedented” rise of diaspora-led protests, aimed less at the Canadian government and more toward calling for change in homelands overseas, Ramos said.

Before the recent Iran rallies, Canada saw protests led by Tamil-Canadians calling for an end to the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009. Police estimated some 30,000 Tamil supporters rallied at Parliament Hill that year, according to media reports at the time, and a separate protest in Toronto shut down the busy Gardiner Expressway.

Those protests were much smaller in comparison, but organizers in 2009 didn’t have the benefit of social media at their fingertips.

“What’s very different in the last 15 years is social media has been a game changer in mobilizing people,” Ramos said. “It’s possible to very quickly get people into the street for a rally.”

Gholami, the organizer of Iran protests in Toronto, said Instagram was the main tool he used to spread the word.

“We posted it on Instagram and right away they share it,” he said.

Ramos and Stagg both said that as protests get larger, so too do the risks associated with controlling crowds – but that doesn’t necessarily mean police should get more involved.

Police interference in protests can lead to increased violence and legal consequences for officers, Stagg said, as seen during the chaotic G20 riots in Toronto in 2010, which resulted in some Toronto officers being charged for assaulting protesters and millions of dollars paid out to protesters who were wrongfully detained.

Stagg said it’s best for police to watch from the sidelines and allow protesters to exercise their Charter rights, only stepping in when necessary. The national police chiefs’ association, however, has said that protests across Canada are “increasingly escalating from peaceful demonstrations to more high-risk situations.”

In the case of recent Toronto rallies in solidarity with Iran protests, however, police have rarely had to step in. A demonstration that saw 150,000 gather in the downtown Sankofa Square resulted in “zero incidents,” police said. One man was arrested for assault at the larger rally of 350,000 people.

Gholami said more protests are on the horizon as supporters continue to call for the end of the Islamic Republic rule in Iran.

Another rally is set to take place Saturday north of Toronto in Richmond Hill, Ont.

Kathryn Mannie, The Canadian Press