Mr. Minister, as of this writing to you, two Canadian journalists are being held by police under your jurisdiction for carrying out their work.
This case demands your intervention in order to immediately defuse the aggressive actions of the RCMP against these journalists and to reach a speedy resolution respecting the fundamental rights of journalists. The national police force has, on several occasions, acted well beyond the law when it intervenes with members of the media, in defiance of court decisions. We ask you to exercise your supervisory responsibility to immediately remedy these serious violations.
As you may already know, Amber Bracken and Michael Toledano were illegally arrested on November 19 while reporting on the construction of a controversial gas pipeline in Wet’suwet’en territory in northern Colombia. British. They were in the court injunction zone – to which the courts have upheld, decision after decision, the journalists’ right of access – when the RCMP arrested them and confiscated their property.
The RCMP said the reason for their arrest was that they had “integrated” with the protesters, which has never been illegal in Canada. Justice Derek Green of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador affirmed these rights when he ruled in favor of journalist Justin Brake, who was facing criminal and civil charges after spending several days inside the Muskrat Falls site to cover a protest that stopped work at the dam in 2016. Civil charges were dismissed in 2019 by Judge Green. Criminal charges were subsequently dropped as well.
Bracken and Toledano are both known to the RCMP as journalists, having devoted significant time to reporting on land disputes associated with the construction of the Coastal GasLink Project. Amber Bracken, who was one of three journalists last year to receive the Charles Bury Award from the Canadian Association of Journalists for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism in Wet’suwet’en, was on a mission to The Narwhal. Bracken was specifically selected for the Charles Bury Prize for protecting the public’s right to see events in Wet’suwet’en despite threats of arrest in 2020. Toledano has lived in Wet’suwet territory for three years. ‘as a member of the media to create a documentary titled Yintah, which will air on national television in 2022.
The arrest of Bracken and Toledano is just the latest example of the detention by Canadian police of journalists who are simply trying to do their job. Last Thursday, the RCMP detained independent filmmaker Melissa Cox, who was later released without charges being laid against her. This incident marks the second time Cox has been detained while covering a land dispute over Wet’suwet’en territory. Previous mischief and trespassing charges were dismissed by the court last summer. In addition to Melissa Cox’s case, law enforcement also arrested the indigenous journalist and host of podcast Karl Dockstader who was covering a land dispute in Ontario. These charges were subsequently withdrawn.
In Fairy Creek, journalists were also threatened and detained on several occasions by RCMP officers. The situation became so serious that in August, the Canadian Association of Journalists and a coalition of media intervened to issue an injunction, asking the courts to remind law enforcement of media rights.
In two scathing written decisions, Justice Douglas Thompson of the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that the large exclusion zones, affiliated checkpoints and media restrictions imposed by RCMP officers in the target area by the injunction were illegal and infringed in a “serious and substantial” way important freedoms. Justice Thompson ultimately refused to extend the injunction when he rendered his second decision in September, stating that the way the RCMP continued to violate Charter rights when the injunction was applied caused ” depreciation ”of the reputation of the court.
With proceeding with 29 arrests in two days, the RCMP decided to detain the press alongside the protesters substantially to prevent the public from knowing what is happening on the ground, during a clash which, so far, s ‘resulted in the running over of an elderly person by an RCMP vehicle, the use of dogs to make arrests and the establishment of excessive exclusion zones.
It is essential to underline the context in which these detentions, which affect both land defenders and media professionals, take place. As Canada and its democratic and civic institutions face their role in the oppression and dispossession of indigenous peoples from their lands and promise to remedy this situation, journalists have a special and explicit duty to report on significant events and to cover them completely. Federal agencies should consider that it is in the collective democratic interest of all not to illegally obstruct citizens’ access to information of public interest.
The coverage of the events by Bracken and Toledano does not concern freedom of the press. Since the Charter expressly guarantees everyone in Canada, including, but not exclusively the press, the right to freedom of expression, their statutory rights of access must be respected so that they can, like all other media professionals, do their job without becoming a hot topic themselves.
The RCMP must be held accountable for its repeated violations of Canadian media rights. As Minister responsible for RCMP oversight, we call on you to take immediate action to correct the actions of the RCMP and to ensure that in the future, journalists’ right to report will be protected in this country.
We, the undersigned: APTN News, Baaz News; British Columbia Civil Liberties Association; Brunswick News; Burnaby Beacon ; Canada’s National Observer; Canadaland; The Association of Black Journalists of Canada; The Canadian Association of Journalists; The Canadian Journalists Forum on Violence and Trauma; Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression; Racialized Journalists of Canada; Glacier Media; Indiginews; Journalists for human rights; J-Source; Press ; Martin O’Hanlon, President, SCA Canada; National Press Photographers Association; New Canadian Media; News Media Canada; Postmedia; Press Forward; Ricochet Media; School of Journalism, X University; The Breach; The Canadian Press; The Coalition for Women in Journalism; The Discourse; the Globe and Mail ; The Logic; The Narwhal; The Tyee; the Winnipeg Free Press ; Torstar; TVO; Village Media; World Press Freedom Canada
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