I was feeling hopeful when I made my way to the Coal Association of Canada’s conference registration desk at the Sheraton Wall Centre in downtown Vancouver last week. The association had denied my media request to attend the conference but didn’t share their decision-making process or reasoning. I thought an in-person conversation would help clarify any concerns and hoped it was an oversight. 

Unfortunately, The Narwhal was denied access to the conference without any explanation, despite multiple attempts to learn why. This denial is part of ongoing attempts to prevent journalists from covering events where industry representatives or government officials are gathering.

“It’s really unfair and unreasonable,” president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, Brent Jolly, said of the decision and lack of transparency. It’s crucial to have a diversity of journalists at events and forums like this where important discussions are happening with those who have major influence, Jolly told The Narwhal.  

The Coal Association of Canada represents dozens of members involved in all aspects of the industry from exploration, production, transportation and consulting. It advocates for a vision that “Canadians understand the role and value of coal in Canada.” 

The conference was scheduled in Vancouver over three days. Guests included industry and government regulators as well as government bodies like the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and the privatized Canadian National Railway Company. Coal producers and miners like Teck Resources Limited, Conuma Resources Limited and Telkwa Mining Limited were also listed as presenters.

I was particularly interested to attend a session by Tim McMillan, from the public relations firm Garrison Strategy, titled, “Advocacy and Resource Development.” McMillan was the former president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, a major oil and gas lobby group. He also has decades of political experience, including as the minister of energy in Saskatchewan. 

Since I couldn’t be there, I requested a copy of Garrison Strategy’s presentation but have not yet received a response. 

Public relations firms play a huge role in climate change politics. How they do that is not always obvious. Environmental scientists are worried the risks posed by the climate crisis are being downplayed and important data is being misrepresented. Having reporters in the room to learn how lobbyists, public relations firms, government and industry are working together is crucial.

One of the Coal Association of Canada’s five key values is accountability, promising to be “open and transparent and held accountable for all we do.” The association invites registered media to apply for access to the conference through a form available online. It also states the association “reserves the right to limit and/or restrict media to the conference.”

After my application was denied, I followed up to provide more information about our team, professional record and ethics and offered to answer any questions about our news-gathering process. Despite multiple attempts I did not receive any response.

The Canadian Association of Journalists wrote to the Coal Association of Canada to advocate for The Narwhal’s access but also did not receive a response.

“We’re continually retreating into what I worry is this authoritarian creep, that is becoming more and more pronounced,” Jolly said. “The answer to that is more journalism and more accountability. And if we don’t take that seriously and allow this to continue to slide, we’re going to be in a far worse position in the long run.”

Why we care about coal

We have lots of burning questions about coal at The Narwhal. Our team has covered the industry for years, including stories of coal miners navigating the energy transition. We’ve looked at projects that threaten caribou herds, concerns about pollution in the Elk Valley and corporate influence in government decisions.  

Coal is a major player in the resource extraction industry in Canada. It is a multi-billion dollar industry that employs thousands of people across the country. Canada is ranked 14th in the world for coal production and is one of the top-ten world exporters of coal. The country produced 50 million tonnes in 2021 and exported more than half, according to government data. More than half of the coal produced in Canada is metallurgical coal — used in steelmaking — while the remainder is thermal coal, which is burned to create electricity.

Coal-fired electricity is also one of the biggest contributors to climate change and a major source of toxic pollution. There’s been a shift away from the fuel and coal production in Canada has been declining over the last decade. Nearly five years ago, in 2018, the Government of Canada finalized its commitment to phase out coal-fired electricity by 2030. 

The industry still sees a future. “Our product is highly sought-after around the world and by bringing together representatives that span the full supply-chain, we can collectively chart a path forward which ensures a strong future for Canadian coal,” Robin Campbell, the organization’s current president said in a press release about the 2023 conference goals. 

Our reporting using freedom of information requests has revealed how influential lobbyists can be in shaping government policy.

Campbell is a former Alberta finance minister who is well-versed in the political scene. The association is an active lobbying group and policies on coal mining in Alberta have changed after government meetings with Campbell. In 2020, The Tyee reported the Alberta government removed barriers to open-pit mining in much of the Rockies after several meetings with Campbell. There was no public consultation. A large public outcry followed and eventually Alberta’s United Conservative Party was forced to reverse the decision in 2021.

Today coal projects continue across the country including in Alberta’s Rockies and foothills. An underground coal mine near Grande Cache is being resurrected and an open-pit mine in the Crowsnest Pass region is being reconsidered. In B.C.’s Elk Valley, Teck is planning to extend their operations. New projects and expansions are being considered in Chetwynd and Sparwood, B.C., and Hinton, Alta.

The scheduled keynote for the conference, Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council, wrote an opinion piece in the Duluth News Tribune advocating to keep coal in the conversation as a reliable energy source that keeps America energy-independent and reduces the country’s “exposure to hostile nations.”

“If we fail to support all available energy sources — including coal, nuclear and natural gas — we may find that in just a few short years we too will be asking for coal at Christmas,” Arthun wrote last year.

Arthun, Campbell and McMillan, likely did not have anyone outside of industry documenting what ideas, opinions and strategies they shared. While the media was invited to attend, so far, there has been no coverage of the conference. 

A ‘sustained assault on journalism’

If we shrug and accept that the people making major economic and political decisions can restrict the media, journalist Geoff Dembicki told me, then press freedom will continue to decline.

Last summer, Dembicki was denied access to a major liquefied natural gas (LNG) conference in Vancouver. It’s billed as the largest global liquefied natural gas conference in the world and a big part of the discussion was projects in northwestern B.C. These projects represent billions of dollars in investments and have major implications in the fight against climate change, Dembicki said.

Dembicki, who was reporting for Desmog, has written for VICE, The Tyee, the New York Times, Foreign Policy and the Guardian. He’s also written two books including The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change and has been invited to address a senate committee on energy, the environment and natural resources. 

“There has been really a sustained assault on journalism over recent years. Not just in Canada, but all over the world,” Dembicki told me. He pointed to politicians who have mocked journalists, painted them as the enemy or pushed conspiracy theories about climate reporters. “These denials to conferences that we see are just part of that overall trend of restricting press freedom. I think they represent a fossil fuel industry that’s feeling increasingly emboldened these days because of that political support.”

We need journalists, “to fact-check the claims being made by industry and government and to basically ensure that Canadians have an accurate idea of what is actually being done in terms of fighting climate change, or making it worse,” Dembicki said.

As The Narwhal’s mining reporter, speaking with people involved in all aspects of the industry is extremely important. Last year, I attended the Association for Mineral Exploration’s annual conference. I spoke with geoscientists, exploration companies, prospectors, miners, financiers, First Nation representatives, government officials and other journalists.

“Hearing the questions from a diversity of media is really important,” Kylie Williams, director of communications and member relations for the Association for Mineral Exploration, told The Narwhal. “They reflect what the public is asking and what the public is seeking. And we have some work to do as an industry to reach beyond our normal audiences.”

The association has hosted the annual industry conference for the last 40 years. “It’s also a place where we have those difficult conversations,” Williams said, adding even if a journalist was writing stories critical of the industry they would be welcome to attend. “We accept everyone who has press credentials.” She could not comment on any decisions made by the Coal Association of Canada.

I go to conferences to meet people, better understand their work, where they are coming from and what’s motivating them. These conversations and relationships lead to a better understanding of the issues and more nuanced stories.

Being denied access to such a major conference is frustrating, but it doesn’t mean I’ll stop asking questions and looking for answers. 

Updated on Feb. 21, 2024, at 10:04 a.m. PT: This story has been updated to clarify the Canadian National Railway Company is a company and not government owned as previously written. The railway was previously a crown corporation but was privatized in in 1995.

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The Nisg̱a’a word for respect is kwhlix̱hoosa’anskw. 

Driving up to Nisg̱a’a territory to bear witness to a ceremony and take part in a feast, I knew there was going to be a lot of media at the events and I was concerned I might see some extractive or disrespectful behaviour. As a non-Indigenous journalist who lives near Nisg̱a’a lands, I am committed to decolonizing my journalism and know how easy it is to make a mistake.

I was worried there would be a lack of kwhlix̱hoosa’anskw. 

I’d spoken to Sigidimnaḵ‘ Nox̱s Ts’aawit, Amy Parent, a couple of weeks prior and she asked me to keep an eye out and gently step in if I saw any examples of that happening. But in the end, it was me.

Luu-giis n̓iiy̓, x̱ts’iwaalhl wiliy̓is. I made a mistake, a bad mistake.

On Sept. 30, the day after the ceremony and feast, photographer Marty Clemens and I were taken inside a temporary structure in the village of Lax̱g̱alts’ap to see the Wilps Ni’isjoohl pts’aan (totem pole) — an ancestor that had been brought back to Nisg̱a’a lands nearly a century after it was stolen from the village of Ank’idaa. Protocol specifies no one but family members of Wilps (House) Ni’isjoohl is allowed to touch the ancestor. 

Standing next to the pts’aan, her hand resting gently on it, Nox̱s Ts’aawit answered a few questions and told me about the crests carved into the pole. Marty did his best to take photos in the confined space.

She was talking about clashing worldviews, settler-colonial impacts and the importance of people being willing to express vulnerability when I heard the sound of a ladder clattering behind me. I later learned that Marty had been standing on a small step ladder to get an overhead angle of the pole when it suddenly gave way under him. Instinctively, he stopped his fall by bracing himself on the pole. We were a team and I feel responsibility for what happened. 

Moments later, everything was done — interview over, cameras away, everyone out. But for Nox̱s Ts’aawit, Sim’oogit (Chief) Ni’isjoohl and family members, it was not over. Protocol had been breached. Ceremony had to be held to cleanse the pole before it could be raised. 

I often tell my kids mistakes are gifts; what comes after a mistake is made, the learning experience, is what matters most. At The Narwhal, we are deeply committed to decolonizing our work, minds and hearts, and this mistake is teaching us that it’s a journey, a process. Journeys are rarely linear and often they include moments of stumbling, faltering, making mistakes. We are still learning.

Reporting in Indigenous communities — especially for non-Indigenous journalists — comes with great responsibility and requires a lot of care. For too long, media has been entrenched in colonial ideas and historically has been used as a tool or weapon that privileges settler-colonial ways of thinking over Indigenous ways of being. Starting to address that imbalance means you need to learn about the people whose land you’re on: protocol, ceremony, expectations. You need to be mindful of who you are and where you’re coming from, and continually question what you might be consciously or unconsciously carrying with you. You need to be patient. And, most of all, you need to be respectful.

As Anishinaabe educator Duncan McCue noted in Decolonizing Journalism, building relationships with the Indigenous communities we report on can be complex and messy. 

“There will be missteps and miscommunication,” he wrote. “But it’s all about building trust. Over time, the benefits will be apparent.”

As we drove away from Nisg̱a’a territory that afternoon, Marty expressed his deep regret and admitted he didn’t know what to do. We’ve since reached out to Nox̱s Ts’aawit to apologize and ask for guidance. We’re waiting to find out the protocol for our next steps. Whatever it takes, we want to make things right — and using this as a teachable moment is part of that process. Nox̱s Ts’aawit said she wants others to learn from this and asked me to share what happened in a public way, to help us all collectively take a step forward. 

What happened was avoidable. I’m left thinking that sometimes it’s best to walk away without getting the beautiful photo or that perfect interview moment. Be patient and accept that building trust takes time. And when mistakes are made — and they are inevitable — sit in the hard and uncomfortable space of apology. Do what’s needed; ask if you don’t know. 

The ancestor was cleansed and blessed and, on Oct. 3, it was successfully raised inside Hli G̱oothl Wilp-Adoḵshl Nisg̱a’a (Heart of Nisg̱a’a House Crests, also known as the Nisg̱a’a Museum) where it now stands in soil gathered from Ank’idaa. 

To Sim’oogit Ni’isjoohl, Sigidimnaḵ‘ Nox̱s Ts’aawit, and members of Wilps Ni’isjoohl, t’ooyaksiỳ n̓isim̓ (thank you) and gwilks-at’itkws n̓iiy̓ loon (we apologize to you).

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Imagine if a senior operative working behind the scenes of Premier Danielle Smith’s government scheduled a private meeting with a bunch of oil industry lobbyists to chat about Alberta’s policies.

One of the lobbyists responds to the invitation by sending over an agenda with a range of topics and proposals including the creation of new subsidies for the oilpatch, crafting a strategy to fight federal government rules aimed at cracking down on pollution and introducing obstacles to make it difficult for renewable energy projects to launch.

The lobbyist also proposes they discuss a bailout plan for a company that is near bankruptcy, but facing a multimillion-dollar bill to clean up a bunch of contaminated sites where it used to operate.

This scenario is not all that far-fetched in a province that has access to the world’s third-largest reserves of oil, following Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

But what happens when a government that is supposedly operating in a free democracy breaks the law to conceal its dealings with lobbyists?

Sadly, I believe this is what happened earlier this year when the Alberta government began to systematically refuse to release records of its meetings with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and other oil and gas lobbyists. Although we know officials from at least four ministries have been significantly influenced through regular meetings with industry lobbyists, the departments collectively refused to accept more than 20 separate requests I made through freedom of information legislation since the beginning of 2023 to get the details.

But there’s also some good news I can share. Thanks to The Narwhal’s persistence, a provincial watchdog — Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta Diane McLeod — has agreed to launch a systemic investigation after we filed a complaint detailing a plethora of evidence we have collected about an apparent cover-up.

How Alberta government secrecy prompted my watchdog complaint

Through my research, I learned officials from across the Alberta government arranged private meetings amongst themselves to discuss how to deal with my requests. And it isn’t clear whether any of the seven people invited to the meeting took any notes about what they discussed, since the government was unable to provide anything when I asked about this.

In refusing to respond to my requests, officials offered a range of excuses such as claiming they were unable to print out the calendar appointments of their own staff or saying it would be too much of a burden to retrieve email correspondence between their staff and the lobbyists unless I agreed to scale back my requests to emails on a single topic within a date range of less than 12 months.

The latter excuse would have made it very difficult for anyone to uncover how oil and gas lobbyists had put a 132-item wishlist as a top priority on the government’s agenda, as my colleagues Carl Meyer and Drew Anderson reported last year. It also provides a twisted and Orwellian interpretation of a section of Alberta’s transparency law that says requests “must provide enough detail to enable the public body to identify the record.”

That’s because under this new interpretation, a member of the public might be required to file hundreds of requests in order to discover any of the emails that listed everything the industry pressured the government to adopt.

Alberta’s transparency law requires public bodies to release copies of internal records to anyone who pays a $25 fee unless the agency has a valid reason to refuse. But with all of these tactics it could become prohibitively expensive and time consuming for anyone to obtain the records they actually requested.

Was the government deliberately breaking the law to avoid releasing anything that would cause embarrassment to the governing United Conservative Party in the middle of a general election campaign that resulted in the UCP’s re-election in May?

If so, it wouldn’t be the first time evidence emerged suggesting the Alberta government was trying to cover things up.

Thanks to an investigation by Charles Rusnell and Jennie Russell in The Tyee, we have heard about other allegations suggesting provincial staffers previously used questionable and potentially illegal tactics such as the destruction of records to prevent embarrassing details from coming to light.

This is all part of what I asked the watchdog to investigate in a 10-page complaint I sent in April. Included in that complaint, I also asked the commissioner to review how the government is interpreting a rule that defines how much detail a requester must provide to obtain records they haven’t seen. In addition, I asked whether the government was failing in its obligation to assist people in efforts to locate records that reveal how the government operates and whether it is acting in the public interest.

Within two weeks, McLeod’s office confirmed she was interested in launching a probe. By August, watchdog staff told me they were sending out notices to various ministries based on the mounting evidence compiled by a variety of sources, including The Globe and Mail, which released its Secret Canada project about freedom of information laws in June.

I haven’t seen copies of the notices delivered to Alberta ministries, but earlier this week, The Globe and Mail reported that revelations from its Secret Canada project were mentioned in those letters.

Chris Stinner, the director of investigations at the provincial commissioner’s office, told The Narwhal that it was looking at three different sections of Alberta’s transparency law as part of its probe, including two raised by The Narwhal and one raised by The Globe and Mail.

“Since all these topics relate to how Government of Alberta departments carry out their duties under the FOIP Act, they are part of the same investigation,” Stinner said.

The commissioner is a watchdog who has some enforcement powers allowing her to intervene when people break the province’s information and privacy laws.

A systemic investigation like this one is rare. While it is common for information commissioners to review individual complaints about decisions to withhold or censor records, “only a handful of systemic reviews involving access-law compliance have been executed in recent years,” wrote Globe and Mail reporters Robyn Doolitle and Tom Cardoso in their report this week.

It also takes a significant amount of due diligence to compile enough evidence to file a complaint. In this case, it took me weeks to file 22 separate requests to various Alberta ministries and carefully parse through the responses before I identified a disturbing pattern.

After this I spent a few days drafting the letter, highlighting what I found. Special thanks also to lawyer Sean Hern who offered to review my letter and provide some guidance before I sent it off.

Governments may assume the average person isn’t paying attention to the ins and outs of what happens when journalists file freedom of information requests.

But I’m writing this today because I think you have the right to know about all the obstacles we face in getting the full story about issues that matter to you.

My colleagues at The Narwhal are constantly spending time on efforts like this one to expose what governments do when they think no one is watching.

While we don’t know where this watchdog investigation will lead, we hope this gives you a special glimpse behind the scenes and shows you just how far we’re willing to go to get the truth.

Updated on Oct. 5, 2023 at 3:59 p.m. MT: This story was updated to include a new comment from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta.

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The Narwhal was honoured with four citations of merit, while editor-in-chief Emma Gilchrist won for best long feature, at a National Newspaper Awards event last Friday in Toronto.

The Narwhal was a finalist in four categories for the awards, honouring the best journalism in print and online newspapers across Canada every year.

Gilchrist, who co-founded The Narwhal, won an award in the long feature category for her first-person piece, published in the Globe and Mail: The harrowing, heartbreaking reality of terminating a pregnancy for medical reasons.

“It’s an incredible honour to be recognized alongside journalists I admire so much,” Gilchrist said. “I’d like to thank the Banff Centre’s literary journalism program for helping to usher this article into being, and my colleagues at The Narwhal for supporting me throughout the journey of bringing this to light.”

Ontario reporter Emma McIntosh and Toronto Star reporters Noor Javed, Brendan Kennedy and Jesse McLean were finalists in the investigations category for their groundbreaking work about the Ford government’s decision to open up areas of the Greenbelt for housing construction. The Globe and Mail’s Kelly Grant won this award for her investigation into a tuberculosis outbreak in Pangnirtung, Nunavut.

In the presentation and design category, a Narwhal team of Carol Linnitt, Arik Ligeti, Ashley Tam, Shawn Parkinson and Jimmy Thomson received a citation of merit for an interactive multimedia feature about how Indigenous guardians are reestablishing sovereignty and stewardship of traditional territories. Christopher Manza from The Globe and Mail won the award in this category for a portfolio of multimedia stories. 

Room Up Front — a volunteer group that promotes training and guidance for photojournalists who are Black, Indigenous or people of colour — also won a special recognition citation during the awards. The Narwhal partners with Room up Front to offer paid fellowships for BIPOC photojournalists.

In another category recognizing reporting on Indigenous issues and climate change, The Narwhal received two citations of merit. One was for Julia-Simone Rutgers for her reporting for The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press on the everyday impact of climate change on people in Manitoba. The second was for The Narwhal’s integrated coverage of Indigenous issues and the climate crisis, including the rise of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas.

A team from the Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Province — Gordon Hoekstra, Glenda Luymes and Nathan Griffiths — won in this category for a data-driven investigation examining how prepared B.C. communities are for an anticipated increase in fires and floods.

This was the first year The Narwhal was eligible to enter the National Newspaper Awards. Gilchrist said she was grateful for members who have made The Narwhal’s work possibly through their generous donations.

“In a world of bad news for the media industry, the future of The Narwhal is looking very bright, thanks to our members,” Gilchrist said.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Kate Beaton hit the comic scene with Hark! A Vagrant, a mid-aughts web strip that combined a love of history with an absurdist sense of humour. Born and raised on Cape Breton Island, Beaton honed her joke-telling skills under serious circumstances: in her early 20s, she joined generations of Maritimers and left home to pay the bills, in her case student loans. 

Beaton spent two years in worker camps in the Alberta oilsands, which she experienced as lonely places where everyone is homesick and women are seriously outnumbered. Scribbling about the sex life of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert was a way for her to remember who she was, or at least who she wanted to be. Hark! A Vagrant eventually became two bestselling collections. 

In 2014, Beaton released a five-part comic as a first go at telling her oilsands story. Now it’s a full memoir, and it’s spectacular. Fans of her signature so-bad-it’s-good illustration need to be prepared: turns out Beaton can actually draw really well. Her precise lines convey the enormity of oilsands landscapes — “it looked like the moon,” she says of her first day pulling into a Syncrude mine site in Mildred Lake, Alta. — as well as the intimate emotions of workers separated from loved ones for weeks at a time. 

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is about Beaton, her debt and the effects of isolation and family separation, particularly on men. It’s also about power, capitalism, the land and labour, and what Beaton learned about Canada as she came of age. The Narwhal caught up with her to talk about the book, being released on Sept. 13. 

Before we get into the content, let’s talk about the art! The section-opener scenes of the various sites, that’s not cartoon to me, that’s fine art illustration.

I had to use so much photo reference to get it right. They’re too precise, you know, what a Syncrude site is. I didn’t want to misrepresent what it was and it’s also very intricate. I’m looking at the thing and I’m like, pretty much copying it, exactly. You need to do that to get the impression of the scale of the thing because if you look at a cartoon landscape, you might not be wowed by it in the same way that I was in person.

That comes across — the scenes where it’s you and some giant truck that’s as big as a house.

They would be as big as a house, you know. You had to climb stairs, staircases to get into them. You’d stand up and be about as high as the tire rim or something. The trucks were just unfathomably large. 

A lot of women drive these machines, probably because you don’t need to trade to do it, you just need a certain licence. That was an opportunity for women who don’t usually go into red seal trades, it’s a high paying job. 

I was in the tool crib and I got offered like, you know, “we could train you to do this.” But somebody told me it was like driving in a video game because it was very unreal up there. So high up and you’re so far away that it’s almost like watching like a screen of the earth — everything is just so small and you disassociate from what you’re looking at. 

There was an inherent danger of that responsibility that made me squeak a little. Because if you zone out and you’re driving that thing, you could kill someone. And someone does die in the book because of that. And it was horrific. Because they rolled over a pickup truck. As if anything on earth should be able to roll over a pickup truck and crush it like a pancake with a person inside. Can you imagine? Living with that? It wasn’t a job I was interested in.

Do you think maybe women do that job because they’re by themselves? You talk about working in the tool crib, giving people the tools they need, and in the book you get harassed and ogled and bothered a lot. 

Oh, for sure. For sure. The pay is probably the first driver. But then being alone, yeah, a job like that would have been great. No doubt. That kind of isolation does also get to you especially if you’re on a night shift or something. It’s tough. It’s all tough. No great options, I gotta say.

That is a real theme, no good options. From the beginning, when you’re deciding whether to go and your mom is saying, ‘Oh, my brothers and sisters went to other provinces for jobs. And it makes me really sad that you all have to do that, too.’ 

I am part of a pattern. The Maritime provinces, and Cape Breton very especially, have been exporting labour for over 100 years. We have all the hits in the family, we’ve got Boston, we’ve got Toronto, we’ve got Windsor, Elliot Lake, the logging camps in B.C. — wherever these engines of capitalism needed cheap labour, pretty much. 

My mom’s family, they would come home every summer and my grandmother’s house was full of life and laughter. And then the ones from Ontario would have to leave. And they would cry going in the car and my grandpa would cry. My grandmother would be very silent in her sorrow. And my mom would take her grief back to ours and this house that had been full of life would be very silent. 

You saw these choices in front of you and you were like, this is going to be me. I’m either going to be the one crying getting in the car or I’m going to be the one grieving them leaving. But what choice do you have when you have no money? I had no money when I graduated from university.

You have to understand that Cape Breton at that time was at its lowest point. They closed the pulp mill, which employed a good part of the population. They had closed Sydney Steel and the coal mines. And they did it in such a shitty way that devalued who you are as a population. 

One of the coal mines, the Phalen mine, closed right around Christmas. The workers would come to work and there would just be a sign on the door. The owners of the company would be gone by then because they didn’t want to have a riot or they were scared if they had to tell people face-to-face that people will be mad at them — because of course, they f*cking will be mad at them. 

Why did I leave out west for work? It was just like, inevitable. I never expected humanity from my bosses or from companies. You go there expecting a certain amount of abuse, to be honest, in exchange for what you’re told is the better thing, the opportunity to make money. People called it “money jail” when I was growing up.

And meanwhile, you know, there’s always the running jokes about people in Cape Breton who don’t like to work. The Maritimes are always looking for a handout.

Even when you get into the darker sides of camp, there’s a real sense of empathy. The one scene where the guy’s crying on his cellphone when his kid called him by sneaking his wife’s phone…

I remember that clearly. Because he’s like, “my wife would never call in the middle of the day, there must be an emergency.” But what really happened was that his kid found the cellphone and was like, “I’m just gonna call Daddy, because I miss Daddy.” 

He basically had a moment where he dropped his facade in front of us, in a place where you’re performing a certain kind of masculinity in the workplace. He was like, “watch for me in the sky, buddy, I’m coming home.” And it broke my heart. To be that parent, knowing that that kid is there waiting for you all the time.

In that workplace culture, it’s not a thing that gets discussed like, “gee, this isolation and loneliness is really getting to me.” In the book, you see people struggling with their mental health. The obvious repercussions of that kind of culture where there is a greater availability of alcohol and drugs. And there is a scarcity of mental health help and understanding, at least there was at the time.

You had an idea ahead of time about the emotional aspect of going. What did you think about the environmental aspect before you went and how did that change?

I had no sense of the scale. And the internet wasn’t the way it is now. I had just graduated from university and nobody was talking about it. The politically engaged students, I remember them having a demonstration on Darfur, not even on our continent. 

So no one said, like, “tar sands” around you.

No, no, nobody was talking about it. It was not in the conversation at all. People were worried about like Hurricane Katrina and other stuff that was going on, almost none of it within Canada. 

I think Canada still maybe had sort of a view of ourselves as like [clasps her hands under her chin and flutters her eyelashes innocently]. I mean, I took [anthropology] and we studied Indigenous cultures and stuff. And I don’t think anyone ever brought up residential schools or anything. Now you’re like, “Oh, I get it.” But like at the time, you’re not asking the questions because you don’t even know what questions to ask. And you’re 20. Your whole life you’ve lived without knowing about things. So why would you ask a question about it? 

You seem to grow a consciousness as the story goes on.

There’s a scene where I get on the bus for the first time and it pulls in front of Syncrude and it’s like — is this the moon? Plus it’s six in the morning and it’s dark and it’s all lit up in lights and fire and the lights are illuminating smoke that’s swirling all around it. And you’ve never seen anything like this.

Slowly you gather information over time, the old fashioned way, by being there. When I get there, I meet these archaeologists. “Oh, they’re here before we start digging, we have to find out if there’s anything important here before we dig up.” Anything important before we dig? That’s a loaded, loaded thing. 

By the end, you’re thinking about all this stuff — who lives around here? The first time I drove by Fort McKay, the Indigenous community, I thought it was another mine because it was so close to Syncrude. But it’s the community of Fort McKay. Syncrude was like, “we’re going to build right here. Is that okay?” And they’re like, “I guess it fuckin’ has to be.” Of course, they’re like, economically very successful and everything but what choice did they have? Yeah. It’s all so complicated. And heartbreaking. 

In the book, there’s a bit where photos of ducks covered in oil because they landed on tailings ponds become a huge deal, internationally. Is that what the title of the book is about? Those ducks? 

Ducks are migratory animals that get stuck when they land in the oil — the metaphor is easy. But beyond that, that was a big event when I was there. That happened in 2008. You could feel the necks snapping when people looked at Fort McMurray for the first time. It was a triggering point that made the world pay attention to the oilsands.

During the time that I was there, I was seeing people in crisis without any kind of recognition of that anywhere. And outside of Fort Mac, you had Indigenous communities talking about the cancers that they were having and people having high rates of asthma, stuff like that. And the response from outside is always pretty violent. There were these environmental impact studies done by the government and stuff for them to say, “Look, those things are not so bad.” And then you find out that, of course, these are heavily biased in favour of government and oil. 

People really focused on the ducks because of how tangible it was, how horrific the numbers were and everything. Imagine looking and seeing thousands of dead animals like that. It’s tragic. But also imagine being someone trying to get attention for having high cancer rates that are rare, and having no one give a shit. And then to have the New York Times be like, “Look at all these ducks.”

Kate Beaton’s book launch tour for Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands begins Sept. 20, 2022, with stops in Halifax, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg and some U.S. cities. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. 

All excerpts from Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, copyright Kate Beaton, courtesy Drawn & Quarterly.

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“We were detained for days in cold cells. They took most of our clothes, denied us soap and toothbrushes, and only allowed us to speak to our lawyers.”

On its website, Reporters Without Borders has a brightly coloured interactive map of the world illustrating the results of its World Press Freedom Index, which identifies nations deemed to adequately uphold press freedoms within their borders. Green indicates countries with a “good situation,” yellow means “satisfactory,” light orange is “problematic,” dark orange is “difficult,” and red is “very serious.” The Arab region, including Egypt, where I have roots, is largely and unambiguously demarcated by red, while Canada is yellow.

And yet the opening quote was not uttered by a journalist from the red or orange nations. These are the words of photojournalist Amber Bracken, detailing her treatment at the hands of the RCMP in Canada last year. And they are hauntingly similar to words we have read and heard frequently from journalists working under seemingly impossible circumstances in countries relegated to the inglorious lower levels of the press freedom rankings.

If the red areas on the world map represent an information gap, dark red cracks have gradually been tarnishing Canada’s bright yellow reputation. On Nov. 19, 2021, two journalists, including Bracken, and several protesters, including Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, a wing Chief of the Gidimt’en clan, and Jocey Alec, daughter of Hereditary Chief Woos, were arrested on the Coastal GasLink drill site near the Wedzin Kwa (Morice) River in British Columbia.

As well, since a May 2021 injunction against the Fairy Creek blockade, more than 1,100 protesters have been arrested on southern Vancouver Island as they fought to protect what remains of our old-growth forests and First Nations territories. During the blockade, the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, the media was shackled behind a vast exclusion zone, with the RCMP initially prohibiting all journalists from entering the area.

On the day of the Coastal GasLink arrests, I felt the need to rub my eyes when I read a headline calling into question Canada’s press freedom. Was I reading this right? Surely there must be a mix-up. And when I read of the attempt to block the collection and dissemination of information on the Fairy Creek protest, I thought of the media blackout in Egypt during the early days of the 2011 Revolution. With tens of thousands of people on the street demanding their basic rights, the state-controlled broadcaster continued to present its regular programming, completely denying the reality unfolding on its streets. What was that if not a clear example of democratic failure?

For more than a decade, I have studied and worked on media in areas that include some of the most commonly cited violators of press freedom in the world, researching and writing on the Arab region and its media landscape for international media outlets, commentary websites and academic journals. I began my career hungry to change stereotypical representations of Arabs in the West, and became engrossed in the intricate and at times dangerous web of the region’s diverse and complex media systems. Implanting myself in them seemed like the only fair way to make my own determinations on the narratives of oppression and censorship.

By virtue of genetics and close family ties, I have always felt a deep connection to the Arab region, and to Egypt specifically. My father moved from there to Canada in 1969 to complete his PhD at the University of Waterloo, where he met my Saskatchewan-born mother, who was also pursuing her PhD. I have existed in an odd balance, firmly Canadian but abundantly aware of my roots and the responsibilities that I internalized as a result of those roots. But if I were to be truly, uncomfortably honest, my relationship to the Arab region within the context of my work has always been from the vantage point of looking in from outside — even, dare I say, from above — holding pride and confidence in the freedoms afforded to us as Canadians, and as Canadians working on or in the media.

I feel certain I am not alone in these sentiments. As Canadians born here, as well as new immigrants and aspiring ones, we all believe ourselves to belong in the yellow. And we are perceived as such.

We are a refuge. We are a representation of safety, of inclusion, of freedom. We, as a nation, are aspirational to so many. And yet for many of our own, we continue to fail.

This should not be a heavy burden to bear, but rather an incentive to strengthen and reinforce the values that have afforded Canada this reputation. It should be an incentive to fully embody these ideals by, for example, breaking the pattern of misrepresentation and underrepresentation of Indigenous and First Nations communities, while standing against violators of human rights and press freedoms elsewhere.

Unfortunately, for individuals immersed in this subject a fatigue can begin to emerge, and often with it a regrettable complacency. It took a murder as ghastly and shocking as Jamal Khashoggi’s for me, and much of the world, to re-examine the degree of danger faced by journalists in the regions I study and beyond. Reports of journalists being arrested, detained, gagged, harassed or worse are so common that one barely feels compelled to read the headline in its entirety — exhausted by the frequency of such reports, and unwilling to fully face the feeling of helplessness that comes with it.

When one digs a little deeper into our own Canadian failures when it comes to democracy, representation and press freedom, a complicated picture emerges, one that echoes the fatigue and helplessness I have felt so frequently working on media in the Arab region.

In 2018, while exploring media coverage of Indigenous issues in Canada, veteran Mohawk journalist Dan David reflected on the explanations he had received as a young local news reporter in the Prairies for why Indigenous issues were covered so poorly. David wrote that he was given the usual excuses: Time. Tight schedules. Inadequate resources. Dependence on advertisements for goods and services that would not be purchased by poor people.

But David was also given another explanation for the lack of coverage: No journalistic payoff. While journalists thrive on exposing corruption and injustice, the non-financial remuneration for that work is the knowledge that it has had a positive impact — and most of the time, that is not the case. “Stories about Indigenous communities never went anywhere. Things never changed,” he wrote.

While David admits that there has been progress since the informal survey he conducted as a young man nearly 30 years ago, other journalists have identified a pattern of something even more disturbing than the systemic negligence toward Canada’s Indigenous communities: a planned and aggressively enforced prohibition of coverage. So what happens when something that has long been ignored ceases to be ignored? For our purposes, we must also interrogate what happens to the journalists who dare to cover it.

In any context where financial, political or religious interests are at play, there exists a tension between journalists’ incentives for coverage and the incentives of those in positions of power to limit or control the coverage of certain issues. Unfortunately, it is almost always the journalists who are at a disadvantage, with more to lose. While the degree of risk varies by issue and region, that tension exists from Riyadh to Regina. In the arrests of Bracken, her colleague Michael Toledano and so many others, we see the price of fighting to hold power to account.

I am not the first to draw comparisons between the failures of Canadian democracy and those of our authoritarian counterparts. Global News reporter Paul Johnson likened the restrictions imposed on reporters covering Fairy Creek to those he had faced while reporting in places such as China. And in response to the same events, the president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, Brent Jolly, decried the attempts by the RCMP to “hide behind a curtain and execute their orders in complete darkness.”

“Maybe that’s OK in a dictatorship,” said Jolly, “but it’s not acceptable here in Canada.”

Dark red cracks.

I, like so many other journalists, media researchers and communicators, entered this field — forgive the colloquialism — bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. My optimism in the power of the word, and its ability to change narratives and consequently the lives of underrepresented or inaccurately represented populations, is squarely rooted in my Canadian-ness.

It is for this reason that the arrests of Bracken and Toledano — and other similar events, particularly those relating to the coverage of Indigenous land defenders — are so jarring, and such a big deal. The point is not to compare the press freedom violations that occur in Canada with those that take place in more oppressive or authoritarian countries or contexts. The point is to hold up a mirror to the actual exercise — successful or not — of our ideals. The point is to examine the dark red cracks in the yellow concrete of our democracy and mend them with care and accountability. And those cracks are growing deeper. When I originally wrote this piece in 2021, Canada was ranked 14th on the World Press Freedom Index. Since then, it has fallen five spots, to 19th.

It is the similarities between the red and the yellow that we should all be concerned about — similarities that call into question our democracy, and the very fabric of our society.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Reaction to The Narwhal’s investigation into allegations of verbal abuse and safety issues at Pacific Wild was swift this week, with The Globe and Mail, Politico, The Tyee and the Capital Daily sharing our story and dozens of readers reaching out to thank us for taking it on, despite its difficulty. 

“If something like this were happening at an organization I worked for — or even led — I think it would be important for these stories to be told. Our sector has to be accountable,” tweeted Chris Rider, executive director of CPAWS Yukon.

“Well-evidenced and enlightening. Truly a reflection of The Narwhal’s commitment to the truth and professional reporting and investigative journalism, even when uncomfortable,” tweeted Clayton Lamb, a wildlife scientist at the University of British Columbia.

“Thank you for your conviction to tell the truth. It’s why I am an avid donor,” wrote long-time member Renee Mikaloff. 

But it wasn’t all praise. We also heard from a few readers who thought the environmental good accomplished by Pacific Wild outweighed any alleged harm done to workers.

It’s worth noting that the vast majority of those who felt this way are older men. If you’ve never been in a workplace where you were targeted by a boss or yelled at by someone twice your size perhaps it’s difficult to imagine how deeply harmful these experiences can be. As a woman in her 30s, I don’t have to imagine what these experiences are like — I know. This is why it’s important to have a diverse array of people making decisions about what’s newsworthy. This story, perhaps more than any other we’ve published, has demonstrated how the values and lived experiences of readers influences what they think is important.

The question for some readers is whether these experiences are worthy of reporting on — or whether they weaken the environmental movement. This line of reasoning reminds me of the point made by a former Pacific Wild worker, who we called Taylor in the investigation, who said environmentalists often feel they can’t “air dirty laundry” because it will “undermine our achievements and goals.” 

The conclusion I’ve come to over the years is this: allowing environmental organizations to be poorly run with low levels of accountability doesn’t help the movement. It drives young talent and future leaders out of the movement. Furthermore, if environmental groups are going to call for transparency and accountability from governments and corporations, they ought to be willing to hold themselves to at least a minimum standard themselves.

If The Narwhal’s investigation into Pacific Wild serves as a clarion call for non-profits to examine their governance structures and ensure they have bullying and harassment policies in place, that’s a good thing. In fact, I’d argue that is going to help save the planet, not hinder the cause.

It’s no surprise that our investigation has caused cognitive dissonance — the tension that occurs when a person holds two beliefs that are inconsistent — for many. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, and when humans are uncomfortable, we grasp for ways to ease that discomfort. 

“Resentment is like a drug. It feels good to go home and say: ‘Those assholes! Those jerks! Those liberals. Those conservatives … I’m right, they’re wrong,’ ” Roger Conner, a now-retired law professor and conflict resolution practitioner at Vanderbilt Law School, told James Hoggan (a former board member of The Narwhal) in his book I’m Right and You’re an Idiot. 

“The truth is we all have some degree of uncertainty and we go to this self-righteous place to protect ourselves from that uncertainty.”

Hoggan’s book also features social psychologist Carol Tavris, author of a book called Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). 

“The greatest danger we face on the planet is not only from bad people doing corrupt, evil and bad things but also from good people who justify the bad, evil and corrupt things they do in order to preserve their belief that they’re good, kind, ethical people,” Tavris told Hoggan.

“In all social movements, you are not only justifying the beliefs you’ve acquired, but you became part of a group of like-minded people, all echoing the reasons you’re right.”

It’s tough when you learn that someone you saw as being on your “team” may have acted in a way that’s inconsistent with your broader values. Speaking out against someone on your team is even harder. 

As Brene Brown writes in her book Braving the Wilderness: “Belonging so fully to yourself that you’re willing to stand alone is a wilderness — an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. The wilderness can often feel unholy because we can’t control it, or what people think about our choice of whether to venture into that vastness or not. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it’s the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.” 

Here’s what I know for sure: many, many people braved the wilderness for this investigation to come into being. For The Narwhal’s part, the decision to tell the story of Pacific Wild was not made lightly. What I keep coming back to is this: one of the key purposes of journalism is to shine a light on what powerful people and organizations do in the shadows. While sometimes we may not like what we see, it doesn’t make it any less worth seeing.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This story is a co-production between The Narwhal and VICE World News.

Two years after fisheries observers came forward to talk about harassment, intimidation, assault, sexual assault and threats aboard fishing vessels, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has created a suite of new policies intended to limit harassment and is spending millions of dollars on modernization — but is refusing to talk about it. 

Whistleblowers within the trawl industry went on the record for investigations published in The Narwhal and VICE World News after DFO, Canada’s regulator of commercial fisheries, failed to take steps to make working conditions safer for at-sea observers.

While the department has been silent on its inner workings, internal documents released to VICE and The Narwhal through access to information legislation show that below the surface there has been a steady flow of activity at DFO offices in response to revelations published in the investigations. 

Observers are the eyes and ears of the public aboard fishing vessels, reporting information about illegal fishing, the kinds of fish being caught, accidental bycatch, vessel location and more to DFO, under whose purview observers are assigned to fishing vessels. But as earlier reporting revealed, observers — often young women, working alone on vessels mostly crewed by men — suffer from workplace abuse, with many recounting stories of being screamed at by boat captains, coerced into falsifying their reports and sexually abused, among other mistreatment. 

The result of that intimidation, whistleblowers say, is systematic under-reporting of the amount of accidentally caught fish and deliberate malfeasance — because observers do not feel safe enough to speak out about infractions that could jeopardize vessel permits and profits.

“You are all alone out there, and nobody wants you there,” said one female former observer, who said she, as a recent biology graduate, had spent a year being subjected to a gauntlet of sexual harassment and violent intimidation on trawlers before quitting. 

That reporting kicked off a lumbering internal response at DFO that, while happening behind closed doors, is still ongoing. 

More than 700 pages of documents, received by VICE and The Narwhal, show an emotional response within the department to the allegations raised in reporting published by both outlets in 2020 and 2021.

“This article is horrific,” wrote Adam Keizer, a DFO regional manager, in an email to three colleagues on Feb. 9, 2021, the morning the investigation was published in VICE. “I know we’ve discussed the limitations about what DFO can do with respect to harassment of [observers], but we must have a discussion about what is within our means to ensure [they] are protected.” 

The earlier discussions Keizer is referring to were regarding the incidents reported in the 2020 article in The Narwhal. 

“Agreed Adam, I’ve just finished reading this. It is very upsetting and extremely troubling,” a colleague, Neil Davis, replied. 

Keizer declined to comment for this article, citing DFO communications policies. Over the course of two years of reporting and interview requests, DFO has never made anyone available to talk about the allegations or the department’s response, preferring instead to send bullet-point written responses. Requests for interviews with three officers who the documents show were on the front lines of the response and pushing internally for change were also declined.

Multiple requests for interviews with federal fisheries minister Joyce Murray were initially deflected. In late February, a spokesperson for the minister wrote, “I spoke with my DComm [director of communications] who agrees with me that its (sic) important to Canadians that the minister speak on these issues.” 

A month later, the line had changed. The minister would not be made available at all. “Heather McCready is best positioned to get you the information that you’re looking for (sic) your story.”

McCready is the director general for conservation and protection, who has been leading the internal changes in response to the allegations over the past year.

That interview was cancelled two hours before it was set to begin. In an emailed statement, in lieu of an interview and sent at the same time, the department said it “does not and will not tolerate harassment of at-sea observers” — the exact same wording that appeared in media lines more than two years ago.

In the absence of access to DFO officials, the recently released documents shed light on a department that is both confused regarding its responsibility to the observers working on its behalf, and frustrated by its own inability to respond. The department recognizes the problem, but according to emails, briefing notes and meeting minutes, appears unsure of how to address it. 

However the internal documents also reveal the department quietly responded to the allegations with one major measure: entirely new sections of its nation-wide observer policy devoted to harassment, amounting to dozens of significant changes intended to protect observers. 

The revised policy was meant to be released last spring, but has yet to see the light of day. In an email to VICE and The Narwhal, five months after we received the documents and following repeated requests for comment, DFO cast doubt on the legitimacy of its own draft policy.

“The documents you have obtained through ATIP reflect work that has been done, and in some cases continues, to explore options for future consideration of the At-Sea Observers Program,” a spokesperson wrote. “We have nothing else to add in terms of your questions below – at this time, there isn’t a new policy related to the At-sea Observers Program.”

‘Shut him down’ 

A week into 2020, Misty MacDuffee, the wild salmon program director at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, reached out to The Narwhal with a tip. MacDuffee had heard from an observer that people in his position were being mistreated at sea, and that it had major consequences for how bycatch — sea life that is unintentionally caught and sometimes has to be discarded — is reported.

“I think it is atrocious and needs to be exposed,” MacDuffee wrote in her email. 

That email set off the investigations that would run, respectively, in The Narwhal five months later and in VICE a year later. 

The investigations took a long time, in part, because of a lack of cooperation on the part of DFO. The first interview request was sent to DFO by the end of January 2020. 

“Communications responded to the reporter with approved messaging,” reads a record of the interaction obtained through a separate access to information request. Keizer suggested in an email to communications staff that he himself could be a good source to explain what was happening in closed-door meetings with industry. “I think there will be value in speaking with the reporter,” he said. 

“If he wants to speak about any of the allegations, then DFO should not be speaking nor providing any kind of comment. [Sentence redacted by DFO]. My response to him last night should have shut him down continuing to poke DFO staff on this,” the communications staffer wrote back. “Just so you know, we are back to being in a ‘no surprises’ environment.” 

When the investigation in The Narwhal ran on May 6, 2020, detailing the kind of harassment MacDuffee had raised in her email and which DFO had declined to respond to, MacDuffee herself was taken aback. “It was worse than what I thought,” she said. 

Two weeks after publication, Kelly Andersen, a trawling skipper that five whistleblowers named as being among the perpetrators of the harassment, resigned from the industry group that oversees the trawling fleet. Andersen’s ships are still actively fishing in B.C.

Despite Anderson’s resignation, the public response to the harassment allegations by DFO remained muted. What the documents now reveal is that while an internal investigation by DFO dragged on, it would take the second investigative piece in VICE to fully get the wheels turning. 

Limited at-sea observer companies may have stymied DFO response to allegations

Within five hours of the VICE investigation reaching DFO staffers’ desks on the morning of Feb. 9, 2021, a briefing note had been put together for then-fisheries minister Bernadette Jordan.

The focus of the briefing note was that DFO is not directly responsible for the treatment of the observers who work on its behalf. 

“Canada’s National At-Sea Observer Program places designated private-sector observers aboard fishing vessels to monitor fishing activity,” the note read. “At-sea observers who feel they are being harassed are encouraged to report instances to their employer, as well as their local police.” 

While DFO mandates at-sea observers must be present aboard fishing vessels, observer services are contracted through private fishery observer companies like Archipelago Marine Research, a company accused by whistleblowers of failing to protect employees or penalizing them for speaking out. The internal briefing note does not indicate any steps DFO intended to take to protect the observers by holding companies such as Archipelago accountable.

However, by October 2021, a month after the VICE story appeared, a working group had been established, and the department had met with Archipelago to rake them over the coals regarding their labour practices. 

“I have serious concerns about their labour operations,” Keizer wrote to a colleague who was looking at whether or not to renew the company’s designation — a critical approval the company needed to operate. But according to meeting minutes, a lack of competition meant the department had few options; DFO could not have cut off Archipelago’s designation even if it had wanted to (and there is no evidence it did want to) without dealing a serious blow to the West Coast fishing fleet’s ability to operate because there were no other companies that could step in to provide the observers.

In an email, DFO confirmed that Archipelago is still designated as an at-sea observer company — and that in the history of the program “no at-sea observer corporation has lost its designation for at-sea observer-related activities.”

Meanwhile, the people in charge of industry compliance were scrambling to speak with the same people whose solutions had been put forth in The Narwhal and VICE investigations, including Jaclyn Smith, an investigator for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Liz Mitchell of the Society for Professional Observers.

Ann Bussell, a DFO investigator, asked her U.S. counterpart Smith about potential improvements that had been raised in the investigations, including giving observers their own independent communications systems rather than forcing them to rely on the ships’ radios or internet.

Bussell reached out to WorkSafeBC on Feb. 18, who said they were working on a plan and talking to their federal counterparts. She reported in an email to colleagues that she was feeling “very encouraged” that the provincial organization was willing to take action.

“They are familiar with the trawl vessels and companies,” she wrote. “They want to do more work on this as they know there are problems.” 

But when Bussell spoke with Mitchell a month later about how to support observers and help them report incidents of harassment, the DFO officer sounded frustrated, Mitchell recalls. (Bussell declined to speak with VICE and The Narwhal for this story. She has since retired.)

“She sounded genuinely concerned, but because of the employment arrangement with the outsourced companies … that’s kind of a conflict of interest,” Mitchell says.

That conflict was created following deep cuts to DFO under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government last decade; until 2013, DFO funded the program rather than industry. So one possibility the department explored to deal with its lack of oversight power was to go back to how things had been originally: either operating the entire program within DFO, or at least funding the observer role rather than leaving it up to the fishing companies. It also considered adding “increased legal obligations” for the companies involved, including monetary penalties. 

“May need extreme consequences for the fleet,” someone wrote in the minutes for a meeting that included multiple DFO divisions involved in fisheries enforcement.

It’s unclear which of these options, if any, were adopted — or if any fishermen, skippers, fishing companies or observer companies have ever been charged for the mistreatment of an observer.

But one major change — a change for which some had been agitating for years — would be accelerated in the wake of the pandemic, and conveniently it helped solve the harassment issue at the same time: take the observers off the trawlers altogether.

A shift to electronic monitoring

Jon Eis was among the whistleblowers who spoke to The Narwhal in 2020. He said he had been threatened and intimidated out of accurately reporting how much halibut was being discarded aboard the trawler Raw Spirit — and that DFO, and the industry, had done nothing to protect him. 

Since the allegations surfaced, he’s had some hard conversations with people he had worked closely with for years, including fishermen, observers and the company that put him in that position, Archipelago. In all those conversations, he says no one has questioned the veracity of his story.

“No one’s ever called me a liar, in all of this. Even [Archipelago] has never called me a liar or a bullshitter.”

Now he’s working with industry insiders to create the next generation of technology that is already making observers like him obsolete.

Eis admits, in his classically straightforward fashion, that he has some discomfort now working within the industry: “I don’t know if I’m just a political pawn so they can tell DFO they’ve got the whistleblower.” But, he adds, “from what I can tell they’re absolutely taking this seriously.” 

The technological solution Eis is working on? Electronic monitoring. If the primary problems with observers are that they can’t be everywhere, electronic monitoring can be. If the problem is that observers can be cajoled or coerced into misreporting what they see, electronic monitoring can’t be. That’s the theory driving the technology forward, and it’s been underway since the mid 2010s. The pandemic, however, vastly accelerated the desire to replace people — who move from ship to ship and can spread COVID-19, potentially shutting multiple vessels down — with cameras.

When observers were abruptly ordered off ships in the early days of the pandemic, electronic monitoring was put forward as the natural replacement — on an interim basis.

“We had no choice; we couldn’t put observers on board [due to the pandemic]. Our whole fishery’s management is based on at-sea data collection,” says Bruce Turris, an industry insider who, along with Brian Mose, head of the Deep Sea Trawlers Association of British Columbia, is spearheading the work to make the change.

That data collection previously depended on the eyes and estimates of observers. Now, increasingly, it depends on high-definition cameras that are strategically placed throughout the ship. 

Every time the gear is moving, data is recording where the ship is and what is being used. Cameras capture every fish that passes through the sorting area, and grids all over the deck help size them. A human later watches a sample of that footage to compare it to what the ship’s own logbook recorded, and when discrepancies arise it costs the ship more money to pay for a deeper audit. 

It also costs the ship time if the audit has to be completed before it can leave the dock. That, Mose and Turris say, is the real deterrent.

The people doing that audit, often, are former observers themselves — only working from a warm, dry office instead of at sea.

Turris says that’s an improvement for everyone.

“[Electronic monitoring] works 24 hours a day and captures information in all places at all times, as opposed to an observer — even two observers.” 

Turris and Mose downplay the role the whistleblowers’ allegations played in the acceleration of their electronic monitoring program. 

“I don’t mind saying that the whistleblower … when we were made aware about his complaint, [the revelations were] certainly alarming and disappointing,” Mose said.

The revelation “helped to accelerate the move,” Turris says. But there was more at play, including efficiency gains and the pandemic: “To be completely honest, outside of that, we were already on the path to [electronic monitoring]. I think COVID accelerated this exponentially.”

But a DFO memorandum for then-minister Jordan in May 2021 suggests that from the government’s perspective, the issues were much more closely related. The briefing memo lumps together the big issues that have been plaguing the observer program — harassment and a lack of jurisdiction to deal with it,  the financial strain on observer companies, and the pandemic — as the reasons to more widely overhaul the system. The changes proposed to deal with the multitude of problems include electronic monitoring and the new, as-yet unreleased, observer harassment policy. 

In September 2020, four months after the first investigation was released in The Narwhal, then-fisheries minister Jordan approved the creation of a $2 million fund to modernize the at-sea observer program, “focusing on addressing the vulnerabilities resulting from the current delivery model.” According to a briefing note, those vulnerabilities included “challenges in recruitment and retention of qualified at-sea observers, particularly in light of recent media attention on incidents of harassment in the industry.” 

Archipelago is among the beneficiaries of that $2 million program as it works toward growing its electronic monitoring operations. Scott Buchanan, Archipelago’s vice president for operations, declined to comment for this article.

“We were disappointed with how Archipelago was presented in the [earlier] articles and as such do not wish to provide you with any information or our perspective on the ongoing changes being made as monitoring programs and fisheries continue to evolve,” he wrote in an email.

MacDuffee and Mitchell are wary of the shift toward electronic monitoring, though not opposed to it.

The observer companies that failed to deal with observer harassment, after all, are the same companies that will be handling the electronic data. And it will all be overseen by DFO, which has spent a decade turning a blind eye to problems in the industry.

“Are they suddenly going to start being super transparent? I don’t think so,” Mitchell says. “I think it’s more a move to avoid accountability.” 

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As police helicopters moved into unceded Wet’suwet’en territory and dropped off armed tactical officers accompanied by police dogs on Nov. 19, 2021, photojournalist Amber Bracken was reporting live updates.

She was inside a tiny house occupied by Indigenous land defenders and their allies.

Since December 2018, Bracken had taken on multiple assignments covering the unfolding conflict over Indigenous Rights and the 670-kilometre fracked gas Coastal GasLink pipeline proposed by Calgary-based energy giant TC Energy in British Columbia. The B.C. government has authorized construction of the pipeline without the consent of Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs but with support of elected chiefs from First Nations alongside the project’s route.

On this chilly day in November, Bracken captured images for The Narwhal and posted more than a dozen tweets detailing what was happening before someone cut off power and communications. Moments later, she and documentary filmmaker Michael Toledano would be arrested by the RCMP and restrained — Bracken restrained with zip ties and Toledano restrained with handcuffs — preventing them from being able to fully report on the major incident.

This was not the first time police in Canada arrested journalists covering Indigenous Rights issues in recent years. Journalists Karl Dockstader and Justin Brake were also arrested under similar circumstances in separate incidents.

Canadian courts have described this type of police response targeting journalists as an overreach, interfering with press freedoms and potentially keeping the public in the dark about what goes on during complex and dangerous police operations. They have also noted that interference with the press should especially be avoided when it relates to coverage regarding Indigenous Rights.

The RCMP has argued that it respects journalists and wants to set boundaries to ensure everyone is safe.

In the case of the November arrests, the RCMP initially alleged that Bracken and Toledano had breached a civil injunction that prohibits people from interfering with construction. One month later, Coastal GasLink said that it would no longer pursue charges against the two, but did not explain why.

Newly released emails obtained by The Narwhal provide fresh insight into how some of the highest ranking members of the RCMP viewed the work of journalists covering the conflict.

They also reveal stunning contradictions between what RCMP officers told their commissioner and members of the public versus what actually happened during the raid.

RCMP ‘package’ about ‘lack of impartiality’ of journalists was never released 

Bracken and Toledano’s arrests drew international media attention and escalated an ongoing controversy over the RCMP’s efforts to restrict journalists from exercising their right to report from within injunction zones without risking arrest.

One day after the arrests, RCMP Chief Superintendent John Brewer sent off a 430-word email to RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki and other high-ranking federal police officials, offering his explanation for the arrests.

Brewer is the gold commander of a special British Columbia unit of the RCMP that works with fossil fuel and other natural resource companies, including TC Energy.

His email alleged that the journalists were activists and that his unit, also known as the Community-Industry Response Group, or C-IRG, was about to produce the evidence.

“CIRG is preparing the package for court on Monday which will articulate the reasons for arrest and the background activities of these individuals which bring into question their impartiality and show they have been advocating and assisting the protesters,” Brewer wrote in his email.

Less than three minutes later, according to time stamps on the emails reviewed by The Narwhal, Eric Stubbs, an RCMP assistant commissioner forwarded Brewer’s message to Wayne Rideout, a senior provincial government official.

Stubbs publicly stated, in the wake of the arrests, that he was “willing to work with the media” and that the RCMP followed direction from the courts to not interfere with the work of journalists. But the language used in the emails and other evidence from the scene appear to a different story.

“Give this a read as it helps a bit on the journalist perspective and the approach taken,” Stubbs wrote in an email as he sent Brewer’s note to Rideout, the assistant deputy minister and director of police services for the B.C. Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General.

But the package of evidence that would supposedly show how journalists were supporting protesters never materialized.

Comparing RCMP affidavits to their emails

To piece together the sequence of events, The Narwhal reviewed dozens of pages of records, released through provincial and federal access to information legislation, as well as more than an hour of video and audio recordings of the incident and dozens of affidavits filed with the B.C. Supreme Court by the RCMP last November.

Sworn affidavits signed on the same day as the emails from Brewer and Stubbs by another RCMP officer, Constable Benjamin Laurie, did not offer any claims or evidence that either Bracken or Toledano were assisting or advocating for protesters, nor did they mention any of the “background activities” of the journalists alleged by Brewer.

The affidavits instead suggested the journalists should face charges since they had not identified themselves or left when RCMP first knocked on the door of the tiny house to inform people inside they were allegedly breaching the Coastal GasLink injunction.

“I think it is a telling detail that the supposed ‘package’ that was being prepared for the court proceedings on Monday was, to the best of my knowledge, never tabled,” Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, told The Narwhal. “This fact should compel the public to think critically about all the facts presented in any case and urge the public to consider the source of any reports and any potential agendas they are attempting to advance.”

The affidavits also appeared to suggest the RCMP was well aware that Bracken and Toledano were covering unfolding events, noting police officers had tracked interactions in the region with both journalists over the years in an active criminal investigations database — PRIME-BC — even though neither journalist had committed any crime.

‘Creepy’ emails

Bracken and Toledano were detained for days, along with more than a dozen land defenders, following the arrests. Their detainment delayed the publication of images and video footage showing how heavily armed police used a chainsaw and an axe to break down the door before pointing firearms at people inside the tiny house and arresting them.

“The idea that powerful people are maligning me behind my back is creepy,” Bracken said, when asked to comment on the contents of Brewer’s email.

“The idea that they can do this in secret, without needing to produce any evidence is a chilling comment on the state of press freedoms in Canada. I hold myself to the highest standard of ethical reporting and have not been given an opportunity to respond to these false allegations.”

Amber Bracken, photojournalist

Bracken has earned international acclaim for her work, which has been published in a range of publications, including The Guardian, the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. She recently earned international World Press Photo of the Year honours for an image she captured for The New York Times that shows a roadside commemoration of children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Toledano’s 2019 short film, Invasion, which documents Wet’suwet’en resistance to the Coastal GasLink pipeline and the RCMP raids that year, was an official selection at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival. He is currently working on a feature-length documentary, Yintah, for the CBC.

TC Energy publicly criticized the credibility of Bracken and Toledano, without offering any detailed evidence or explanation. In December, when the company announced it was not pursuing charges against the two journalists, it told CBC News it had “ongoing concerns with respect to the fairness and approach of these individuals.”

TC Energy declined to respond to questions from The Narwhal asking the company to identify those “ongoing concerns” or elaborate on whether it had shared its views about the journalists with Brewer from the RCMP.

The company is under pressure to complete the multibillion dollar pipeline, which has international ownership and financing, but is mired in significant cost overruns and delays that threaten its viability. It has also suffered significant losses in recent years after abandoning its Keystone XL and Energy East oil pipeline projects.

“Police simply don’t want the public to see what their ongoing seizure of Wet’suwet’en lands looks like,” Toledano said.

“Over three years of raids, police have arrested and detained journalists, removed journalists from the territory, set up media exclusion zones to entirely restrict access and even pointed a gun at multiple reporters.”

Brewer, Stubbs and other RCMP officials declined interview requests, choosing instead to respond to written questions from The Narwhal in a series of emails.

In one of those emails, The Narwhal typed up and sent a copy of Brewer’s Nov. 20 message to give them an opportunity to provide an explanation and full context.

But an RCMP spokesperson, Sergeant Chris Manseau, told The Narwhal that it would be “presumptuous” for its B.C. media relations staff and Brewer to comment on the email he sent, since they hadn’t seen the original, just The Narwhal’s reiteration of it.

Manseau said that copying and pasting email contents is not the same as having the email itself, but he declined to elaborate on what additional details they would need to provide a comment about the remarks about the journalists, made in the email.

He also claimed that Brewer himself did not have a copy of his own email.

The email records obtained by The Narwhal also indicate that Brewer sent a copy of the email to himself.

The Narwhal asked the RCMP in a followup email if anyone had verified whether Commissioner Lucki and other high-ranking officers who received the email from Brewer in November had read it or could comment on it. The Narwhal also asked the RCMP whether the email was deleted.

The RCMP did not respond to these questions, explaining in a new email they had “provided everything we can with respect to this request.”

In Justin Brake case, Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal said it was ‘vital’ to protect free press

A free press is protected under Canada’s Constitution. Recent Canadian court rulings confirmed that civil injunctions restricting the movement of people or demonstrations in Canada do not apply to journalists who are covering these types of events — as long as the journalists are not interfering with the work of the police. If there are cases where police need to restrict access to journalists, the courts have said police need to minimize that action and avoid arresting journalists based on an officer’s assumption that charges could later be dropped in court.

At that point, it’s too late, since the damage to press freedom would already be done, according to the recent rulings.

This standard was spelled out in a 2019 ruling by the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal regarding charges against journalist Justin Brake, who was reporting for The Independent, a publication based in the Atlantic province. Brake was covering opponents of a hydroelectric project at Muskrat Falls, including Innu and Inuit land defenders. The court noted in the ruling that it was “vital” to protect a free press, particularly for coverage of Indigenous land issues since Indigenous people have traditionally been underrepresented in Canadian media.

Last summer, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Douglas Thompson reinforced the standard by directing police to stop interfering with journalists without a valid reason. In his ruling regarding police action at old-growth logging protests, Thompson said there were “substantial and serious” examples of RCMP “interference with liberties of members of the public and members of the media.”

He also said there were “unlawful actions” by the Mounties during those protests in the Fairy Creek watershed in Pacheedaht territory and in the neighbouring territory of Ditidaht First Nation. At this location, another private company — Teal Cedar Products Ltd. — has obtained an injunction against opponents seeking to disrupt its commercial activities on Vancouver Island.

At Fairy Creek, the RCMP and Canadian government officials used arguments that are similar to what the RCMP is now saying justifies its arrests of Bracken and Toledano — namely that the presence of the journalists as well as protesters claiming to be journalists was putting others in danger.

Justice Thompson noted the RCMP failed to produce credible evidence to support these claims at Fairy Creek. He also expressed his disappointment that the force submitted an inaccurate example of a journalist allegedly assisting protesters that was proven to be false, thanks to a recording captured by this journalist.

“It is fortunate that the journalist recorded the interaction with police that led to the allegation,” Thompson wrote in the ruling. “It is most unfortunate that the allegation was made.”

The injunction at Fairy Creek was later overturned, before being reinstated a few months later. However, neither ruling affected Thompson’s findings regarding media access.

In audio recordings, RCMP officers said they didn’t know about Justin Brake case

In his Nov. 20 email to Commissioner Lucki and other top RCMP management, Brewer wrote that his unit was following standards to identify journalists, as described in the Newfoundland and Labrador court ruling regarding Justin Brake.

Brewer also claimed, through an email sent to The Narwhal by an RCMP spokesperson, that he could say “with certainty” that “every police officer was briefed on the Brake decision prior to commencing enforcement.”

Audio recordings captured in the moments following Bracken’s arrest suggest otherwise.

One officer told Bracken: “If you are accredited media, we will deal with that. But everybody’s been arrested here for breach of that civil injunction. You had the option to leave and should have left. If you’re any credible media person, they would have left. I’ve dealt with hundreds, thousands of media people in my service, okay?”

Bracken later asked a second officer whether he knew about the case, to which he responded: “Am I aware of the ruling? No. Want to explain it to me?”

Bracken explained how Brake, whose first name she misstated as “Jason,” not Justin, had followed a group of land defenders protesting the hydroelectric project. She told The Narwhal she may have misstated Brake’s first name due to the stress of being arrested.

But she went on to explain to the officer how the court ruled that journalists could be present in such circumstances and not face arrest as long as they were not directly participating.

A third officer then appeared to respond by saying it would be “up to the judge to decide” her fate. Asked whether he was aware of the Brake case, he said. “I’m not aware of that.”

Brewer later said, through an RCMP spokesperson’s email, that he had “no knowledge” of these interactions between Bracken and the officers.

The RCMP told The Narwhal in its written responses that it arrested the journalists for staying inside the tiny house to capture images and video footage after police informed the pipeline opponents they were violating the injunction and asked them to leave. The RCMP declined to provide further details about how the presence of journalists was interfering with the operation.

But their explanations for the arrests also appeared to shift in response to questions from The Narwhal.

Carol Linnitt, The Narwhal’s executive editor, notified the RCMP in advance of Bracken’s reporting trip and that she was assigned to be on site.

The RCMP confirmed they were aware of the assignment but noted they had urged Bracken to identify herself at the first available opportunity.

“Given the dynamic nature of the incident, it would not be appropriate for the officer to debate with arrested persons,” wrote RCMP media relations on April 25 in response to a question sent to Brewer. 

“I would add that the Brake decision allows a reporter to be there to report however they are required to identify themselves, and cannot participate in the protest. In this instance, there were repeated opportunities for those inside the structure to identify themselves and leave, only upon arrest did they identify themselves as media.”

Contrary to the RCMP’s claims, the Brake decision does not actually specify how or when a journalist is required to identify themselves. Instead, it states that someone performing journalist duties such as taking notes, capturing images, reporting, live-blogging or broadcasting should not be arrested, as long as they aren’t actively participating in a protest or interfering with police operations.

When asked about this, the RCMP offered a new explanation.

“The journalists were not arrested simply because they did not identify themselves, but because they, along with everyone in those structures, were given the option to exit and leave or face arrest,” wrote Sgt. Manseau in an email on April 29.

The RCMP spokesperson then appeared to question the relevance of the court decision’s definition of a journalist, and contradict previous statements that RCMP officers were following the court’s standard.

“Your question about whether we consider the journalists to be assisting or advocating for other people on site is irrelevant to their arrest,” Manseau wrote.

The RCMP also said that it would have allowed Bracken and Toledano to continue documenting the arrests if they had left the tiny house at the first opportunity, although it was not clear whether the journalists would have been allowed to stay close enough to observe and record the interactions.

Bracken has covered other arrests of Coastal GasLink opponents, and said the RCMP did not allow journalists to get close enough to adequately observe the operations. She said that in previous years, the RCMP set up exclusion zones that prevented media from accessing locations where arrests were taking place.

Bracken said that she didn’t speak up during communications between RCMP outside the structure and land defenders inside, in order to avoid influencing the events, as per ethical standards and guidelines that require journalists to avoid interfering.

She added the tiny house was surrounded by heavily armed police — opening the door was not an option and climbing out the window did not feel safe.

In addition to The Narwhal giving prior notice about Bracken’s assignment, the photojournalist was wearing identification badges to identify herself as a member of the press.

Brewer, who used quotation marks when referring to Bracken and Toledano as “journalists” in his email, also summarized the incident using language that was similar to a federal government briefing note about the arrests of journalists, prepared for Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino a few days later and dated Nov. 25, 2021. Both his email and the briefing note mentioned derogatory comments in response to police.

Video footage released by Toledano shows that neither he nor Bracken interfered with or insulted police officers in any way. The footage also shows that pipeline opponents asked police if they had search or arrest warrants and were told RCMP would be seeking those.

When asked why Brewer included the statement about derogatory comments in an email that described the arrests of journalists, the RCMP declined to say, suggesting they had not made “any assumptions” about who made the remarks.

RCMP access to information analyst couldn’t reach John Brewer for two months  

Brewer’s unit and other federal surveillance projects monitoring the activities of Indigenous groups have prompted numerous public complaints and investigations over the years. Critics of the force have alleged that the RCMP is too cozy with energy companies and is being used as a private security force for the industry.

The RCMP told The Narwhal that it engages with all stakeholders when needing to discuss issues, and does so in-person, over the phone or virtually, depending on availability.

But questions remain about whether the RCMP is transparent about all of these interactions.

Through Canada’s Access to Information Act, The Narwhal requested all correspondence between Brewer’s unit and TC Energy/Coastal GasLink from November. But the RCMP failed to locate a letter dated Nov. 2 that was sent by TC Energy to Brewer and Commissioner Lucki. Instead, The Narwhal obtained uncensored versions of the internal emails about the journalists and the RCMP correspondence with the pipeline company through a separate freedom of information request filed under provincial legislation to the B.C. ministry responsible for public safety.

The private correspondence revealed how TC Energy pressured Brewer and the RCMP commissioner in early November to crack down on opponents seeking to thwart construction of the Coastal GasLink project. The pipeline company also criticized the RCMP in the letter for not doing enough to enforce an injunction and stop “blockaders.”

In another email released to The Narwhal, Brewer told RCMP colleagues in November that someone from Coastal GasLink had told him that the “mood” at a work camp was deteriorating due to the actions of pipeline opponents.

An analyst working on the request told The Narwhal she asked Brewer about it in an email in February and a few times after that about whether he had additional records of his correspondence with TC Energy. But two months later, the access to information office of the RCMP said Brewer had still not responded to their requests to locate any files.

In addition, the RCMP censored another email sent by Brewer that described his communications with TC Energy and the unfolding situation on Wet’suwet’en territory, prior to releasing it through access to information legislation.

The B.C. government released an uncensored version of this email under the provincial freedom of information legislation.

The federal transparency law states that federal officials must release their records upon request to any Canadian who pays a $5 fee, unless there is a valid reason to refuse. Anyone who intentionally obstructs someone’s right of access to government records can face up to two years in prison and fines of up to $10,000, but police rarely investigate alleged violations.

Federal information commissioners have twice called out the RCMP over the past decade for failing to respect access to information legislation.

Most recently, the RCMP acknowledged that it was having “challenges” fulfilling its obligations under the legislation, Global News reported after the latest investigation by the information watchdog in November 2020.

When asked about its heavy censorship of correspondence related to the November arrests that were released without redactions by the B.C. government, and its failure to locate the TC Energy letter, the RCMP said it prioritized access to information requests and was complying with the law. An RCMP spokesperson also sent a written response on behalf of Brewer, stating that he was respecting the transparency law.

Updated May 9, 2022, at 11:10 a.m. PT: This article was updated to clarify that filmmaker Michael Toledano was restrained with handcuffs after being detained by RCMP on Nov. 19, 2021. He was not initially restrained with zip ties. But he told The Narwhal that police added zip ties to reinforce the restraints after a key broke off in the handcuffs.

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Charges have been dropped against journalists Amber Bracken and Michael Toledano, who were arrested and detained for three nights on civil contempt charges while reporting on militarized police raids on Wet’suwet’en territory in northwest B.C. on Nov. 19. 

Their arrests drew international media attention and marked an escalation in an ongoing battle between journalists and the RCMP over the right to report from within injunction zones without risking arrest.

The plaintiff, Coastal GasLink pipeline, owned by TC Energy, filed earlier this week to discontinue proceedings against the two journalists on charges of civil contempt of court. Bracken and Toledano have also been relieved of the terms of their release, which included agreement to appear in court on Feb. 14, 2022, and to obey a Coastal GasLink injunction. 

Bracken, who was on assignment for The Narwhal at the time of her arrest, said she’s relieved the charges have been dropped, but the fundamental issue hasn’t been resolved. 

“I should never have been arrested or charged, let alone detained, in the first place,” Bracken said. “I can’t get those days of my life and work back. Nothing in these proceedings provides any feedback to RCMP for their gross interference with journalists, so what’s stopping police from just doing it again?”

As The Narwhal reported at the time of Bracken’s arrest, the RCMP were tracking her and Toledano in a database of police investigations, a practice which raises questions about the RCMP’s characterization of journalists who report on social conflict or within injunction zones. At the time of their arrests, the RCMP seized recording devices and professional equipment from both journalists, actions that prevented the public from witnessing police conduct during the raid where more than a dozen land defenders were also arrested.

Although the charges against Bracken and Toledano have been dropped, The Narwhal, the Canadian Association of Journalists and other news organizations are exploring other legal avenues to hold the RCMP accountable and ensure arrests of journalists don’t continue happening. 

“It’s a huge relief that sanity has prevailed, and that the erroneous charges against journalists Amber Bracken and Michael Toledano have been dropped,” said Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists. “We hope this moment serves as a reminder that the right to report freely, and without interference, is a legal right that will never be subject to negotiation.” 

In August, The Narwhal, the Canadian Association of Journalists and a coalition of media filed a successful legal challenge against the RCMP, which asked the courts to remind law enforcement of the rights of media to report on the Fairy Creek logging blockades. 

In two scathing written rulings, B.C. Supreme Court’s Justice Douglas Thompson determined that the vast exclusion zones, affiliated checkpoints and media restrictions set up by RCMP officers at the injunction area are unlawful and “seriously and substantially” impacted important liberties. 

Justice Thompson refused to extend the injunction when he issued his second decision in September, stating the way the RCMP continued to violate charter rights when enforcing the injunction was causing a “depreciation” of the court’s reputation. 

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All at once, RCMP officers came out of their hiding spots to fill the courtyard surrounding a tiny house at a site known as Coyote Camp in Wet’suwet’en territory. Police wore both regular blue uniforms and a militarized green version, the latter laden with assault rifles and tactical equipment. The scene has already become known across Canada — police dogs barking and whining as officers used an axe and a chainsaw to enter the small structure to arrest seven unarmed and peaceful individuals. 

Soon they would take my cameras from me. After that, my rights.

Some of the first advice I was given as a baby journalist was: “Don’t get arrested. You can’t make any pictures from the back of a police car.” This maxim has served me well most of my career, which has taken me into zones of conflict and protest across North America.

But covering the Wet’suwet’en pipeline opposition last month, I realized its limit: I could not both do my job as a journalist and avoid arrest. On Nov. 19, the RCMP made that impossible for me.

Being a photojournalist stripped of my gear in a moment of profound national importance heightened my senses. 

As I’m escorted away from the camp along the main access road, I began to register all the photos I couldn’t make: the mountain forest road lined with Coastal GasLink trucks, heavy machinery and workers. As we drive by, a worker waves to the RCMP officers. 

A Gitxsan woman holds her cedar headpiece in her hands, a discordant echo of the two tighter circles of the steel handcuffs on her wrists. In the back of a police van, strained faces turned to joy at the news that arrestees Jocey Alec, daughter of Chief Woos, and Teka’tsihasere (Corey Jocko), Haudenosaunee supporter of the Coastal GasLink opposition, were newly engaged, the big question being popped on the eve of RCMP enforcement. 

At the Houston detachment where we are processed, Gidimt’en spokesperson Sleydo’ (Molly Wickham) places her hand on a wall of thick glass brick, reaching towards a distorted view of her mother’s hand on the other side. Eyes peer through food slots and cheeks press against the floor, straining to see and hear past heavy metal doors. 

These are all images I couldn’t capture after I was arrested on the  second day of an RCMP raid of opponents to the Coastal GasLink pipeline that saw 30 arrests. I have been reporting on this national story for over three years, but that day, I was forced to become part of it. I watched in agony as so many poignant moments slipped by, only recorded in my memory. I felt kidnapped. Having never been arrested before, it is the best word I can think of to describe being taken so abruptly out of my life and work, in violation of Canadian Charter rights protecting freedom of the press.  

That day I was documenting as Sleydo’ and her supporters locked themselves inside a tiny house adjacent to the pipeline right of way. Next to me in the cramped space was freelance reporter Michael Toledano, filming a documentary for the CBC. After RCMP arrived by helicopter, they surrounded the building, cut all communications, then broke down the door. Chunks of wood flew across the small space, before they switched to a chainsaw. As soon as there was a big enough hole, they pointed weapons at the unarmed group standing inside with hands raised. I kept photographing but adrenaline vibrated my entire body as I contemplated but decided against the risk of turning my back to the door, officer and gun. 

Just outside, a police dog barked incessantly as police arrested everyone — including me. I clearly said “I’m a member of the media,” but one police officer responded, “well you’re under arrest right now, so step out. You’re under arrest.” 

It also didn’t matter that The Narwhal had notified the RCMP ahead of time I would be on site, that I was displaying a Narwhal press pass, or that the RCMP had been tracking me as a journalist. They knew exactly what I was doing there. My arrest, and the arrest of other media covering Wet’suwet’en, is part of a pattern of police interference with reporting on Indigenous resistance movements. 

Most of those arrested that day were treated worse than I was — officers cut a medicine bag and ripped cedar regalia from Sleydo’, a hereditary wing chief. She says it was the only time she cried during the whole experience. Afterwards, they put her in a cell alone to worry about her kids, since they had also arrested her husband. Two racialized trans women were asked invasive questions about their bodies, denied important medication several times, put into the men’s side of prison and addressed by male pronouns.

We were all detained for days in cold cells. If the charges had been criminal, rather than the less serious civil breach of injunction, we would have been afforded the right to see a judge within 24 hours — I could have signed release conditions and regained my freedom. They took most of our clothes, denied us soap and toothbrushes, and only allowed us to speak to our lawyers. We all listened as Wet’suwet’en, Gitxsan and traditional struggle songs reverberated through the metal and concrete halls, their rounds of harmony transforming the cell blocks into cathedrals of the human spirit. 

When I was released, headlines across the world celebrated my freedom, even as Sleydo’, the two trans women and several other supporters still sat in the Prince George correctional centre. 

One of my first freedom calls was from a good friend, who is Indigenous. She was proud of me for following the story, but joked “so, how does it feel to be treated like a native?” Her point was clear — Indigenous people are criminalized every day. 

My experience of jail is not unique, but RCMP efforts to suppress press freedom — especially around stories that focus on Indigenous issues — is critically important in this moment.

The police prevented me from doing my job. I should have been documenting as the RCMP arrested the other land defenders. I should have been there to photograph as police and industry workers dismantled Coyote Camp and burned another cabin to the ground. I should have been present to capture the Gitxsan nation organizing solidarity actions, militarized police patrolling them, and as supporters gathered on roadsides and at the jails to sing.

Instead, my camera sat in lockup. I sat on cinder block benches and was transported between detachments in metal boxes. 

The public record of what happens in Wet’suwet’en territory should be beyond police interference. The arrest of Indigenous Peoples on their land concerns every single person in Canada as we wrestle with our collective history and future. 

The Wet’suwet’en Nation has never signed a treaty or ceded their territory, a vast area of 22,000 square kilometres, roughly the size of New Jersey. In the 1997 Delgamuukw decision, a case brought by Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan hereditary chiefs, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed both nations’ Aboriginal Rights and Title are intact and that the nation’s territory had never been ceded to the Crown. In the Delgamuukw case the hereditary chiefs established that the Wet’suwet’en have a system of Indigenous law that existed before the creation of elected band councils enacted under the Indian Act. ​​​​​​Within Wet’suwet’en law, hereditary chiefs hold responsibility for territorial lands. These hereditary chiefs are the forces leading the opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

At the time of the Delgamuukw decision the Supreme Court also said that a second case would be needed to define the territory’s exact boundaries, but the nation’s claim was clear enough that the B.C. government and various industries began scrambling to try and extinguish that title to create more certainty for development. Although much has been made of the Wet’suwet’en elected chiefs who vocally support the pipeline project and the benefit agreements they’ve signed, the question of whether or not the project’s approval is in violation of Wet’suwet’en rights has not been resolved in the courts. The hereditary chiefs maintain, however, that the pipeline being forced through their territory is in violation of Wet’suwet’en law. 

The elected system was imposed along with the Indian Act and reservations, while the hereditary system predates colonization. Elected Wet’suwet’en chiefs fulfill a crucial role for their respective communities on multiple reserves. But the Coastal GasLink pipeline route doesn’t cross Wet’suwet’en reserve land, it crosses traditional territory where it’s hereditary chiefs who are tasked with ancient responsibilities, and where they have been recognized as stakeholders by B.C.’s Supreme Court. 

Despite the staunch opposition of the hereditary chiefs, the government has permitted a project through the most intact portion of Wet’suwet’en territory without consent — and the RCMP has been directed by the courts to suppress pipeline opposition, a task they’ve taken on with paramilitary force.

Regardless of who has a right to consent to the project, the show of force against Wet’suwet’en occupation camps — and the suppression of related coverage — is in itself worth talking about. 

The North-West Mounted Police formed in 1873 “to bring Canadian authority” to present day Alberta and Saskatchewan. Later they would be renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and gain national jurisdiction. This paramilitary force was instrumental in pushing Indigenous people from their land to make way for settlers and the railway. 

On Wet’suwet’en territory 150 years later, RCMP are back in military formation, with guns in hand, to remove people from the land. Over the last three years, police with authority to use lethal force have arrested more than 60 people on behalf of Coastal GasLink. 

This reality, especially images of militarized officers wielding advanced weapons, is an uncomfortable one for both the RCMP and governments in an era enamoured with the concept of reconciliation. British Columbia recently passed its two-year anniversary of codifying Indigenous rights in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. In June Canada implemented the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which calls for free, prior and informed consent of natural resource and development projects on Indigenous lands. With Canada’s minister of Crown-Indigenous relations acknowledging “it’s time to give land back,” it’s no wonder Canadians and Indigenous Peoples are experiencing a kind of reconciliation disorientation. 

Stories that fit the comfortable reconciliation narrative are much easier for reporters to tell. I’ve never seen tactical weapons at a press conference announcing a benefits agreement between an industry company and a First Nation. I’ve never been arrested reporting on new federal funding for Indigenous protected areas, or when politicians are included in First Nations’ ceremonies. 

Coastal GasLink, operated by TC Energy, formerly TransCanada, also runs a sophisticated press strategy. Its narrative — of economic benefit for all, including nearby First Nations — gets coverage in the regular news grind, often generated by industry-supplied press releases. It’s much more difficult to tell the untold sides of the pipeline story. I’ve talked to journalists from multiple outlets who have also been frustrated by half answers or no answer at all to questions about the pipeline from company spokespeople. And forget about any unsupervised conversation with workers or a chance to get a close look at what’s actually unfolding on project sites and in construction zones.

For a full understanding of this issue, what actually happens to Indigenous people who assert land rights or challenge official narratives, it’s critical every Canadian has the opportunity to see and viscerally understand what’s happening on the ground. 

I was eventually released from Prince George, some four and a half hours from where I had been arrested. I had to literally dig my personal belongings out of the wreckage from Coyote Camp, which had been scooped up with heavy machinery and dumped along with ice, rocks and mud at the bottom of the mountain. Now that I’m safely back home, I’m finally catching up with the notes of concern and notes of solidarity from other journalists in Canada who have been through similar experiences. The following are just a few notable examples. 

The most famous photograph of a standoff between Canadian force and Indigenous land defenders — the young military man facing off with an Ojibwe warrior at Oka, Quebec, in 1990 — was taken by a photographer named Shani Komulainen, but not many people realize she was arrested, strip searched and detained for five hours as she left the scene. Army operatives tried their best to discredit Komulainen and the other journalists who ventured inside the razor wire. Officers were annoyed at contradictions to their official account. They spied on journalists. They ordered reporters to leave. They blocked supplies and the outflow of stories and film. They denied members of the media re-entry if they left the protest zone. 

Months after her arrest, Komulainen was charged with possession of a weapon or an imitation of a weapon, threatening and interfering with the work of a peace agent and participating in a riot. It cost The Canadian Press and its members over $100,000 to defend Komulainen, but the charges against her were eventually dropped. Komulainen says she had so much pent up emotion from the months of the trial (and her recovery from a terrible car accident) that she surprised herself by bawling, instead of celebrating, when the ‘not guilty’ verdict was read.

At the 1995 Gustafsen Lake standoff, a dispute over land rights for a Secwepemc Sun Dance ceremony, RCMP responded to the group of 24 with at least 400 heavily armed officers. No media was present when, on Sept. 11, the situation culminated in a 45 minute firefight, where police deployed land mines and thousands of rounds of ammunition. RCMP are alleged to have prevented media from speaking to Indigenous leaders during the standoff. At trial, a video was entered into evidence showing RCMP officers discussing “a disinformation or a smear campaign.” RCMP would later disavow it as “a joke.” Despite the incredible show of militarized police force and continued calls for an official inquiry, there is no public record of that day. Gustafsen Lake remains one of the most obscured Indigenous land rights disputes in Canada.

Much more recently, in 2016, Justin Brake, working as a freelancer for The Independent, followed a group of Inuit and their supporters into the Muskrat Falls dam site, and spent several days inside as the occupation stopped work on the project. When an injunction named and accused him of trespassing, Brake had to decide if he would face arrest in order to cover the story. He decided to leave before police enforced the injunction, but was still burdened with both civil and criminal charges.

It took four long years, but again, all of the charges against Brake were dismissed. When the civil charges were dismissed in 2019 in the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal, the ruling definitively affirmed the rights of journalists in Canada to report from within injunction zones, like I did. In his judgement, Justice Derek Green outlined specific parameters that apply to journalists following newsworthy stories. Notably, he emphasized that “particular consideration should be given to protests involving Aboriginal issues.” 

When I speak to police officers, I bring up the Brake decision all of the time — very few have even a peripheral awareness of the case. 

In the summer of 2020, Ontario police waited until Oneida journalist Karl Dockstader had already returned home before telling him to turn himself in after he covered LandBack Lane. Dockstader was arrested and charged with mischief and failure to comply with a court order, again for reporting from within another injunction zone. His charges were also dropped months later, along with charges against 24 other people.

Since 2018, Jesse Winter, Jerome Turner (who is Gitxsan), Melissa Cox, Dan Loan and at least two other filmmakers have all been corralled, detained, removed from the area or arrested while covering the Wet’suwet’en reoccupation camps. Media have routinely been denied access to RCMP “exclusion zones.” In 2020, I was threatened with arrest for having stepped on a blocked road as I documented police apprehending Howilhkat (Freda Huson), her family and supporters. I believe I was only saved from that set of handcuffs because of scrutiny on RCMP at the time, who were being criticized for their deployment of illegal media exclusion tactics and vocal threats of media arrests. 

And most recently, over this past spring, the ongoing protest against old-growth logging at Fairy Creek, became notorious for RCMP harassing and unreasonably restricting journalists. One reporter, Paul Johnson of Global News, compared the situation to his experience in China and other repressive countries. 

The situation was so bad that a coalition of media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists and The Narwhal, launched a successful legal challenge against the RCMP’s illegal suppression of press freedoms at Fairy Creek. 

On July 20, 2021, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Douglas Thompson addressed the RCMP practice of creating vast exclusion zones and media access points, stating the “geographically extensive” areas weren’t necessary for police operations. He also reminded the RCMP of “the media’s special role in a free and democratic society, and the necessity of avoiding undue and unnecessary interference with the journalistic function.” This was a way past due affirmation of press freedoms in Canada and journalists were collectively pretty excited.

But less than a month later, on August 10, 2021, Victoria Buzz photojournalist Colin Smith was arrested at Fairy Creek. He was detained in the back of a prisoner transport in the hot sun. As he became claustrophobic, feeling faint, sweaty and visibly shaking, Smith says an officer advised him to take deep breaths but didn’t open the doors. Eventually Smith was released without charges but the experience left a mark — he says that when he went back to the site his fear of the police and the looming threat of being put back in the metal wagon interfered with his ability to document what was going on. At least two other independent media photographers were also arrested and detained at Fairy Creek, and many more have been threatened or severely limited.

Mere months after Thompson’s decision, and two years after Green’s decision on considerations for journalists covering Indigenous protest in injunction zones, the state of press freedom in Canada is worse than ever. 

On the first day of enforcement of the Coastal GasLink injunction in November, filmmaker Melissa Cox was the first person arrested at another Wet’suwet’en camp. Her footage wasn’t released until days later and as a result those 15 arrests, that included Wet’suwet’en Elders, legal observers and some people who were hit with clubs, punched, thrown on the ground and contorted, did not see as much coverage.

For two days in a row during the enforcement, APTN journalist Lee Wilson’s attempts to report on the situation were blocked by RCMP. The first day, the officers on the ground told him “no,” he couldn’t go up the access road, such decisions were left up to the local detachment. The next day he was told “no” by the local detachment, because the decision had to come from officers on the ground. Those officers finally gave him a flat “no” — he would absolutely not be getting access to the area. 

Wilson had found himself in a similar situation in 2020: the only difference was that now, instead of explicitly calling the area “an exclusion zone” or an “injunction zone,” RCMP were now conscientiously using the term “police checkpoint.” 

It seems the only thing the RCMP have learned from Fairy Creek is to police their language. 

Hours after Wilson was prevented from doing his job, an officer told me that if I was “any credible media person [I] would have left.” 

The threat of arrest does have a dampening effect on reporting. Karyn Pugliese, now at the CBC, was at APTN when she jumped in to support Justin Brake back in 2016. In an interview with Canadaland, Pugliese spoke about her anxieties as an assigning editor, forced to contend with escalating police tactics as she sends journalists into the field: “What if she ends up in jail? I’m responsible for that. What if I can’t protect her? And that’s where you start creeping into this police state.”

Police use exclusion zones, arrest and the threat of arrest to control media access to newsworthy places: places where Indigenous people and land defenders are resisting industry, government and corporate mandates on their territories, and where the RCMP or the OPP are spending millions in militarized response. No one in Canada should tolerate police efforts to intimidate journalists or limit news coverage.  

There is no doubt in my mind that my arrest was intended to frighten, humiliate and deter me from continuing to cover this story. Both Toledano and I faced police interference with our ability to report. We both now face civil charges. 

One of the more surreal moments of this experience was at the Prince George courthouse. When it was my turn to see the judge, sheriffs escorted me in socked feet down a series of institutional hallways and up a narrow staircase. At the end a door abruptly opened from the echoing gloom onto a bright room hushed by thick red carpet, upholstery and courtroom protocol. By that point, I had been wearing my now filthy nylon-thin leggings and sweatshirt for days. They had taken my glasses, my hair tie and my bra. I wouldn’t have opened the door for a delivery driver dressed like that — I felt indecent. The oak-panelled room held very few observers, including Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs Woos and Madeek. Everyone else was fully clothed, as were the sheriffs and the court reporter. Madam Justice Marguerite Church presided from the raised bench in her black judge’s robes, as I sat barely dressed and cold in the prisoners box. I was supposed to feel small. 

But my arrest actually makes me a big part of a national reckoning with press freedoms, and what reconciliation means for journalism. I know I am not alone in doing this work or in dealing with the fallout. So many media friends and colleagues have rallied behind us. I am eternally grateful. 

Many more have said it — “truth before reconciliation” but that can’t happen if journalists are routinely criminalized in pursuit of this truth. 

Our courts affirm the rights of journalists to access and report on these issues, Indigenous people are shouting to be heard and yet we let police be the arbiters of this crucial conversation. Let this be the last time. 

Police put me in handcuffs when I should have been doing my job. I wanted to be doing my job. And I am furious.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.