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If you’re a unionized police officer with no right to strike, you have to be creative when it comes to making your unhappiness known. In Quebec this summer, the pressure tactic of choice is outrageous pants.

Visitors to Montreal have been scratching their heads at the sight of police officers decked out in brightly coloured camouflage pants and red ball caps as they make traffic stops or offer directions.

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They’re letting the steam off

For Montreal natives, the pants protest has become such a regular fixture that they barely notice when the officer handing out a ticket looks like a Rambo wannabe from the waist down.

Most municipalities targeted by the union protest over proposed reforms to municipal pension plans have chosen to look the other way rather than enforce the police dress code spelled out in provincial law. In Montreal, Mayor Denis Coderre has said he would bill the police brotherhood for the cost of removing protest stickers from cruisers and for overtime incurred after officers called in sick en masse one Saturday last month. But he has had nothing to say about the officers’ fashion sense.