RCMP C-IRG spent $11 million in 2022 patrolling the Morice Forest Service Road on Wet’suwet’en territory
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The Tyee reports: “The RCMP’s costs for patrolling a remote resource road on Wet’suwet’en territory to protect a pipeline project rose almost 60 per cent last year to $11 million, despite no significant police actions in the area.”
The article adds: “It’s the most the RCMP has spent on the Morice [Forest Service Road] in a single year since Wet’suwet’en opposition to the pipeline first boiled over in January 2019, and it brings total costs of policing the conflict to almost $37 million in just over four years.”
Notably, the article also highlights that while the Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) deployments involve officers from various detachments, “the first two full-time C-IRG officers were hired last November, internal RCMP records show.”
In January 2023, CBC journalist Brett Forester reported: “An RCMP squad charged with policing resistance to resource extraction in British Columbia spent nearly $50 million enforcing injunctions obtained by the petroleum and forestry sectors in its first five years, an internal accounting shows.”
Those figures showed the C-IRG had spent $27,645,711 between 2018-19 and July 31, 2022.
These public funds (70 per cent paid by the Government of British Columbia, 30 per cent by the Government of Canada) continue to be spent despite the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination first calling on Canada to remove the RCMP from Wet’suwet’en territory in December 2019.
Photo: PBI-Canada accompanies Dene youth on the Morice Forest Service Road on their way to the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre on Wet’suwet’en territory on November 20, 2021. The youth feared being stopped by the RCMP and asked to be accompanied.
On March 8, 2023, the federal Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC) launched a systemic investigation of the RCMP C-IRG unit. The Abolish C-IRG coalition has called for the activities of the C-IRG to be suspended during this investigation.
The full article by Amanda Follett Hosgood can be read at RCMP Spent Record Amount to Protect CGL Pipeline Last Year (The Tyee, September 11, 2023).
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