Fairy Creek old-growth protesters celebrate as a slew of contempt charges are withdrawn

The B.C. Prosecution Service says it has withdrawn contempt charges against 11 old-growth logging protesters accused of breaching a court injunction during blockades at Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island.

Spokesperson Gordon Comer says prosecutors were in court Tuesday to enter the withdrawals, and the service is reviewing other cases in the wake of a ruling that acquitted protester Ryan Henderson earlier this year.

Comer says the Crown is reviewing the remaining cases that were impacted by the Henderson decision in February, which tossed out the charge of criminal contempt because of the RCMP's failure to properly read the injunction to people arrested during the protest.

A lawyer defending protesters says the Crown is expected to withdraw charges against as many as 150 people because police used a short-form script to inform people of the injunction instead of reading the whole text of the injunction, which RCMP were enforcing on behalf of logging company Teal Jones, to those accused of breaching it.

B.C. Civil Liberties Association president Karen Mirsky, who has several clients facing contempt charges for protests at Fairy Creek, says police didn't follow long-standing legal principles when they failed to read the full injunction.

"In the coming weeks, we're going to see more and more [charge] withdrawals," Mirsky told CBC News. "The law, as it stands, indicates that people who are being arrested for a criminal contempt of court need to have full notice of an injunction and its terms in order for them to be convicted."

Comer said in his statement that he could not immediately say how many charges would be withdrawn, and the withdrawals would be made on a case-by-case basis.

Mirsky says the RCMP spent millions of dollars during the protests on Vancouver Island, and the force's failure to properly enforce the injunction highlights how provinces should rethink the kinds of policing they're getting for their public dollars.

"I hope that the RCMP takes note of what has occurred and changes their behaviours, as well as pay some attention to what the law says in this country when it comes to enforcing court injunctions," the lawyer said. "They don't just act for themselves, they act as emissaries of the court system, and they should behave as such."

Crown's application to adjourn tossed out

The Fairy Creek old-growth logging protests on southern Vancouver Island have been called the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, with arrests numbering close to 1,200.

A five-month injunction to stop old-growth logging protesters from blockading logging access to the forest was first granted in April 2021 and then extended for a year after that.

Activist group, The Rainforest Flying Squad, says that more than 400 Fairy Creek arrestees were charged with criminal contempt following the extended protest, with 210 charges still before the courts.

However, the "not guilty" ruling in Henderson's case is likely to significantly impact those facing charges. The Crown intends to appeal the Henderson decision in the Supreme Court of Canada.

Given the potential weight of any Supreme Court decision, Crown prosecutors moved to adjourn many of the remaining contempt cases until after that case is heard.

However, Justice Douglas Thompson ruled on April 12 that any adjournment would take many months and would go against the right to a timely trial.

"I concluded that it is not in the interests of justice to further adjourn any of these trials," Thompson wrote in his ruling.

Mirsky said that Crown prosecutors decided to drop charges Tuesday after the motion to adjourn was quashed.

Thompson noted in his decision that a review of the RCMP's policing tactics at Fairy Creek is currently underway, especially of the Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG), the special unit that polices protests against resource extraction in British Columbia.

Rani Earnhart, a spokesperson for The Rainforest Flying Squad, said the prosecution had "collapsed" due to the recklessness of the C-IRG and the RCMP.

"The B.C. government should now turn the page in this regrettable chapter and move forward with protection of the remaining old-growth rainforest at Fairy Creek and throughout B.C.," she said in a statement.