The Right to Privacy Committee (RTPC) was a Canadian organization located in Toronto, and was one of the city's largest and most active advocacy groups during the 1980s, a time of strained police-minority relations.
[2][3] At the time of the 1981 bathhouse raids, RTPC was Canada's largest gay rights group with a mailing and volunteer list of 1,200 names.
[1][5][2] On March 15, 1979, the RTPC circulated copies of News and Views, the official publication of the Toronto Police Association, which featured racist and homophobic articles.
By April 5, 1979 the RTPC had organized a meeting with the Metropolitan Board of Commissioners of Police to discuss concerns about Tom Moclair's homophobic article "The Homosexual Fad," which had been published in the March 1979 issue of News and Views.
The Board of Commissioners responded on May 31, 1979 with a seventy-page brief entitled "Declaration of Concern and Intent (Standing Order 25)," which made no specific mention of sexual orientation.
The police informed the school where Franco was working of his activities, and confiscated several items, such as membership lists for the RTPC and the NDP Gay Caucus.
The raid was condemned by the gay community as an act of revenge by the police, and the case made history as it was the first home, where no prostitution or sex with minors was occurring, to be charged under bawdy house law.
Brent Hawkes again called for the resignation of Chief Harold Adamson, and the meeting culminated in a spontaneous demonstration outside police headquarters.
It was both the largest raid against gay establishments at that time, and the biggest mass arrest in Toronto’s history after the War Measures Act of 1970.
[9] In response to the raids, which police had codenamed Operation Soap, the RTPC with the Coalition for Gay Rights, the Metropolitan Community Church, and the Body Politic, organized a demonstration for February 6, 1981.
[1] In order to oversee the large amounts of funding raised to defend men charged during the bath raids, the RTPC established the Right to Privacy Foundation to ensure the equitable distribution of money.