Wet’suwet’en land defender Sleydo’ highlights liberation struggle, CRCC systemic investigation of RCMP C-IRG reaches two-year point
Photo: Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) C-IRG officers during the November 2021 raid on Wet’suwet’en territory. Photo by Michael Toledano.
Our questions: What is the current status of the CRCC systemic investigation of the C-IRG? What can be expected from it? What are key dates that have passed? What do Indigenous land defenders have to say about colonial processes?
The Ottawa-based Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP (CRCC) announced its “systemic investigation” of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) on March 9, 2023.
Three months later, on June 7, 2023, a spokesperson with the CRCC told PBI-Canada via e-mail: “The CRCC strives to complete its systemic investigations within 12-18 months; however, the timely provision of requested information and access to RCMP personnel will largely determine when the CRCC’s report will be available.”
The first “Investigation Update” was posted on their website on November 23, 2023. That update highlights: “Recently, the CRCC met with the RCMP to express concerns about the delays, and a way forward was agreed to, including bi-weekly meetings with the C-IRG Officer in Charge to provide updates on the status of CRCC requests. Since that meeting, the CRCC received more than 400 files. Significant amounts of materials remain outstanding but are expected to be received in the coming weeks.”
That update further notes: “The CRCC is monitoring progress closely and will provide an investigation status update in the new year.”
The CRCC then released in its Annual Report 2023-2024, on October 23, 2024, a two-point “Status of the Investigation” section that noted: “While delays in receiving relevant materials persisted throughout 2023, improvements in this regard are notable and the investigation is progressing.“ It added: “To date, the CRCC has received and is analysing thousands of documents as well as more than 17,000 videos and images.”
That Annual Report also noted: “The CRCC hired an Indigenous owned law firm to interview individuals and groups who have had interactions with C-IRG. Information derived from the interviews will be compiled into a report and may be used to exemplify the CRCC’s findings and inform any recommendations.”
The “CRCC Truth Gathering/Truth Sharing” webpage of Richmond, BC-based Turtle Island Law LLP notes: “The nature of our work for the CRCC will involve us conducting interviews with impacted individuals in a decolonial, Indigenized, and trauma-informed manner. …Your narrative will inform a public report that we will be drafting which brings to light the nature of the interactions between you and the C-IRG.”
Most recently, on February 21, 2025, the CRCC told PBI-Canada by e-mail: “The investigation continues and most of the material collected by the CRCC has been reviewed. Currently, investigators are analyzing this material and conducting interviews with RCMP members. CRCC investigations consider all relevant information to make findings and recommendations, including applicable jurisprudence. Since this investigation is ongoing at this time, we would not speculate on the contents of our final report or when it will be available.”
“Applicable jurisprudence”
The mention of “applicable jurisprudence” in the CRCC email to PBI-Canada most likely refers to the recent abuse of process ruling.
On February 18, 2025, BC Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen ruled that “multiple offensive and discriminatory comments [against Indigenous land defenders] made by multiple officers in the wake of Nov. 18 and 19, 2021, arrests that is potentially a sign of a systemic attitudinal issue within the C-IRG.”
That said, Justice Tammen further commented that there was “no evidence” that this “attitudinal issue” extended into the higher ranks of the C-IRG unit or the RCMP and found “nothing inherently flawed” in the C-IRG’s heavily armed raid, arrest and removal of land defenders from Wet’suwet’en territory.
“Systemic investigation recommendations can include…”
Now that we are 24 months into a systemic investigation that the CRCC has said it normally “strives to complete” within 12-18 months, it may also be useful to consider what we might see in the report when it is released.
The CRCC Annual Report 2023-2024 highlighted that systemic investigation recommendations can include: “That the RCMP implement more widely a method, procedure or protocol worthy of emulating; That RCMP policies, procedures, or guidelines be developed, clarified or amended; That the RCMP develop, amend or modify training for members.”
The demands of land defenders
We contrast these types of recommendations with those asserted in this letter that was signed by land and environmental defenders and multiple organizations just after the CRCC systemic investigation began: “There is no set of reforms that would make it acceptable for Canada to have a paramilitary force designed specifically to manage the assertion of inherent and constitutionally-protected Indigenous rights in the face of unwanted development. The C-IRG should not exist, and it needs to be disbanded entirely.”
“Together we are achieving liberation”
Among the signatories of this letter was Sleydo’, a Wing Chief of Cas Yikh, a house group of the Gidimt’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation.
Last month, on the afternoon of February 18, just after Justice Tammen’s ruling, Sleydo’ stated: “My hope is that this decision will signal to the RCMP that they can no longer violate their own laws, and they cannot act with impunity.”
“However, we will never see justice from the courts for the amount of violence that we have experienced over the last specifically six years of repression by the state.”
“I celebrate the yintah [territory] for her resiliency throughout all of the destruction and for continuing to provide for us and our movement and for keeping us safe. I celebrate every single person who has stood with us, who went to jail, who lost their livelihoods, who continue to be harassed and intimidated by the state, and who are still in this colonial legal process. Together we are achieving liberation.”
Sleydo’ concluded: “Justice for us looks like RCMP off the yintah. CGL off the yintah. And the freedom to live self-determined lives as Indigenous people on our own lands. And we know that with all of the support and everybody who stood with us and the continued eye of the world watching what has been happening on Wet’suwet’en territory and to Indigenous people all over the globe that we will achieve that.”
Having responded to Sleydo’s video appeal on September 25, 2021, to come to the yintah, Peace Brigades International-Canada continues to follow this.
Photo: PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson drives on the Morice Forest Service Road on Wet’suwet’en territory, November 20, 2021.
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