Photojournalist Amber Bracken’s arrest at B.C. pipeline standoff weakens democracy, lawyer argues in civil trial

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A civil trial launched by The Narwhal and a photojournalist against the RCMP began with both sides fighting over whether her high-profile arrest at the 2021 Wet’suwet’en pipeline standoff was part of a concerted campaign to limit press freedom.

Amber Bracken and the British Columbia-based news outlet are seeking a declaration that her detention at a remote protest camp against the Coastal GasLink pipeline in the northwestern part of the province violated her and her employer’s constitutional rights to freedom of the press.

They also want Justice Diane MacDonald to award general, aggravated, special and punitive damages against the defendants − the RCMP and the B.C. and Canadian governments.

Sean Hern, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said Monday in his statement to open the five-week trial in B.C. Supreme Court that denying journalists access can have a chilling effect and weakens democracy.

Without the presence of people such as Ms. Bracken, he said, arrests at protests would be hidden and the public would be left to piece together what happened from press releases.

2023: RCMP sued by The Narwhal and photojournalist Amber Bracken for arrest during Wet’suwet’en pipeline standoff

“There would have been a total absence of reliable, impartial and timely information available to the public, and democracy requires more,” Mr. Hern said.

“Reliable information gathered and transmitted to the public by members of the press is a pillar of a functioning democracy.”

Craig Cameron, lead lawyer for the defendants, countered in his opening remarks that the scope of proceedings must be narrowed so that how the RCMP treats the wider media when it enforces injunctions is not on trial.

“That whole debate cannot and should not be imported into this very tight, very narrow and very specific claim,” he told the small courtroom filled with Narwhal employees and reporters from other outlets.

Mr. Cameron requested a private hearing with the judge and the plaintiffs to adjudicate his request to remove a number of journalists the other side intends to have testify. He said only one of the witnesses was detained by the RCMP during that period so the majority of them do not have material evidence related to Ms. Bracken’s arrest.

2023: RCMP has no national policy on policing media at protest sites: FOI

He said the trial should hinge on this main question: “Did the RCMP have reasonable and probable grounds to arrest and detain Amber Bracken for breaching a court injunction on Nov. 19, 2021?”

“We say of course the evidence in the trial will demonstrate ‘yes.’”

The arrest of Ms. Bracken and documentary filmmaker Michael Toledano, who is also slated to testify, sparked an outcry over press freedom and heavy-handedness by the RCMP.

At the time, the Mounties said in a statement that officers were enforcing a court injunction granted to Coastal GasLink by the B.C. Supreme Court, which prohibits protesters from stopping pipeline workers from using the road. Police said, at the time, they arrived to find “additional obstructions, blockades” and “two building-like structures” near the drilling site.

Ms. Bracken, who won the 2022 World Press Photo of the Year for her image of a memorial on Tk’emlups te Secwepemc land, is expected to testify Tuesday.

The suit states Ms. Bracken stationed herself inside a tiny cabin inside the “exclusion zone” of the area covered by a court injunction so that she could photograph the handful of Wet’suwet’en protesters as police closed in to end the standoff.

RCMP tried to get photojournalist Amber Bracken charged and detained without bail, documents show

The suit alleges RCMP leadership knew she was on assignment for The Narwhal and yet Mounties did not verify her repeated claims she was a journalist as they were arresting her. Ms. Bracken was held in detention for three days after her arrest and the charges against her were eventually dropped.

The Narwhal’s acting editor-in-chief Carol Linnitt said in a statement before the trial started on Monday that injunction zones allow the RCMP alone to “determine what journalism is, who performs it, where and how.”

“Whatever form of freedom of press we can say we have in this country will utterly wither under these circumstances,” she said.

The written police and government response to the lawsuit says Ms. Bracken and several pipeline opponents had occupied a cabin that was barricaded from the inside.

“The occupation of this cabin was intended to, and did, interfere with the construction of the pipeline,” they say, and Ms. Bracken was arrested “on reasonable and probable grounds that she breached the injunction order.”

Mr. Hern said it was wrong to label Ms. Bracken as an “occupier,” suggesting the role of a journalist is more akin to a visitor, with the job to “observe the occupation and document it for the public.”

With reports from The Canadian Press