To be fair, despite being Canada, the judge agrees with you. At the start:

> [5] To the complainants, the presence of young families outside it is a source of scorn and vivid resentment that ultimately spilled over into a criminal complaint against their neighbour. A school teacher. A caring father of two young daughters who committed no crime whatsoever. A man who has somehow been subjected to criminal charges for almost two years.

> [6] This injustice ends today.

And at the end:

> [168] To be abundantly clear, it is not a crime to give someone the finger. Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, Charter enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian. It may not be civil, it may not be polite, it may not be gentlemanly.

> [169] Nevertheless, it does not trigger criminal liability. Offending someone is not a crime. It is an integral component of one’s freedom of expression. Citizens are to be thicker-skinned, especially when they behave in ways that are highly likely to trigger such profanity – like driving too fast on a street where innocent kids are playing. Being told to “fuck off” should not prompt a call to 9-1-1.

> [170] On that topic, the evidence in the case at bar established that even after the accused’s arrest, therefore after the period covered by these charges, Michael Naccache called the police again to report that Mr. Epstein’s wife had given them the finger while walking on the street.[55]

> [171] This needs to stop. The complainants are free to clutch their pearls in the face of such an insult. However, the police department and the 9-1-1 dispatching service have more important priorities to address.

What a great judge.

They have crystallized all the issues with this bullshit in a really straightforward, yet persuasive and hilarious way.

Yes, but there’s no first amendment in Canada. There’s the Charter of Rights and Freedoms at the federal level, and the Charte des droits et libertés de la personne at the provincial level.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is meaningless given the notwithstanding clause. The government can violate the “rights” in the Charter as long as they’re willing to pass legislation to do so every five years.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/notwithsta...

Section 1 doesn't even require the every-five-years bit, the violation just needs to be "demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society". Drinking and driving laws and traffic checkstops, for example, fall under this; there's no evidence that a crime as been committed or any probable cause at all at the moment you're being temporarily detained, and it's a crime to refuse to provide a road-side breath sample. Both of these have been assessed by the SCC and determined to, yes, be charter violations, and yes, perfectly ok because they're justified in a free and democratic society.