RCMP C-IRG hired Vancouver-based intelligence company to spy on the online activities of Fairy Creek land defenders
Photo: “RCMP officers block the road leading to the Fairy Creek encampment on the day arrests began, May 17, 2021. Photo by Jimmy Thomson / Canada’s National Observer”
Canada’s National Observer reports: “The RCMP’s controversial C-IRG unit hired a third-party intelligence company to spy on the online activities of Fairy Creek activists, newly available documents show.”
Key excerpts from the article include:
“The contents of the intelligence report, authored partway through the protest movement, has been blocked from publication by a ban imposed by the B.C. Supreme Court since June 2022. But an invoice obtained through a federal Access to Information request, filed in May 2023, allows Canada’s National Observer to reveal its existence for the first time.
The officer in charge of the RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group, John Brewer, signed off on paying Human-i Intelligence Services Ltd. $9,975 for the report, according to the invoice. The invoice refers to the document as an “online intelligence report” on Fairy Creek.
[In February 2014] the B.C. Civil Liberties Association filed a complaint with the mounties’ sole oversight agency, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC), regarding the [surveillance of environmental protesters by the RCMP … during the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline hearings in 2013, when environmental groups were organizing to urge the National Energy Board to reject the pipeline].
The result of that complaint was a ruling that narrowed the RCMP’s leeway in determining how and when to spy on participants in peaceful environmental protests. The ruling did not address whether it would apply to a third-party intelligence company like Human-i, or whether it would apply to spying on internet activities.
Human-i Intelligence Services is a small private intelligence firm based in Vancouver and headed up by Julie Jones. …Jones also worked for the RCMP in the Wet’suwet’en protests. She testified at the trial of Chief Dtsa’hyl (Adam Gagnon) as a witness for the Crown: according to CBC’s coverage of the trial, the RCMP “hired Jones to download about a dozen web pages and video from public Facebook and Instagram accounts operated by opponents of Coastal GasLink’s pipeline.””
The full article can be read at: RCMP hired private spies to monitor Fairy Creek activists (Jimmy Thomson, Canada’s National Observer, August 9, 2024).
Peace Brigades International-Canada participates in the Abolish C-IRG coalition. We have also been following the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC) “systemic investigation” of the C-IRG launched seventeen months ago on March 9, 2023.
On March 22, 2023, PBI-Canada hand-delivered this letter from Abolish C-IRG to the CRCC office in Ottawa that stated: “Given the nature of the complaints and substantial evidence supporting them, we argue for the suspension of all C-IRG deployment in BC pending investigation and resolution of all complaints currently before the CRCC. The CRCC reviews can take years to complete, and it is irresponsible to have this unit continue operations during that time, enabling the continuation of unlawful use of force, arrests, detentions, and assaults that have sparked such an investigation.”
The CRCC has previously told PBI-Canada that it “strives to complete its systemic investigations within 12-18 months.” The 18-month timeline falls on September 9, 2024, about four week from now.
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