RCMP hired private spies to monitor Fairy Creek activists

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.

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.

The Fairy Creek blockade has fizzled after two years of heavy policing and more than 1,000 arrests, but it presented a major challenge to the RCMP. The force was successfully sued by a coalition of media sources (disclosure: I was among the plaintiffs) after illegally denying media access to the area of the arrests.

The RCMP came under heavy scrutiny for its use of force — including pepper spraying a crowd and then misleading the public about its justification for doing so — and was rebuked by a B.C. Supreme Court judge for its officers wearing Thin Blue Line patches, against the RCMP’s own rules. One officer quit the task force in protest, and hundreds of convictions were thrown out because of police actions.

The protests also presented a political challenge for the B.C. NDP, which worked behind the scenes to manage the political fallout, other reporting and documents have shown.

A history of spying on environmental protests

The RCMP has previously come under national scrutiny for gathering intelligence on environmental protesters, most recently in the protests against the Coastal GasLink pipeline through Wet’suwet’en territory. A 2023 Amnesty International report documented numerous tactics the RCMP used to surveil protesters and members of the First Nation — and even Amnesty International staff — including tailing, photographing and filming people in the remote area and in nearby cities. Amnesty called the RCMP’s actions a “disproportionate use of police powers aimed at intimidating Wet’suwet’en land defenders and preventing their land defence activities.”

Surveillance of environmental protesters by the RCMP also came under intense scrutiny 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 RCMP sent plainclothes police officers to monitor those organizing activities, recording car license plates (and anti-fracking bumper stickers) in church parking lots and infiltrating meetings on the advice of its national security team. People who were never suspected of criminal activities of any kind had their information gathered and retained by the police, linking them to their protest activities.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association filed a complaint with the mounties’ sole oversight agency, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC), regarding that spying.

“We specifically pointed out the chilling effect that that kind of police behavior would have on people exercising their freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of assembly,” says Vibert Jack, litigation director for the civil liberties group. “People would be less likely to [participate in public hearings] if they know that the police are then going to be spying on them for their activities.”

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.

“The underlying problem here is that the RCMP is presuming that a person who is engaged in environmental activism, necessarily, is a higher risk for engaging in criminal behaviour — that somehow, that you're voicing dissent, that you pose a risk of criminality,” Jack said, “and that that gives the police the authority to be investigating you, following you, collecting information about you.”

While a court-ordered injunction prohibited protesters from blocking the forestry activities in Fairy Creek, it did not prohibit people from being in the area, or participating in online activism related to the blockades.

Operational secrecy

Human-i Intelligence Services is a small private intelligence firm based in Vancouver and headed up by Julie Jones. She describes herself on the Human-i website as a former police officer and “a sought-after public speaker, best-selling author of How To Become A World-Class Investigator, and a regular cast member on the long-running, award-winning factual drama TV show, Hunted.”

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.”

Jones did not respond to a request for comment.

A civil lawsuit launched by Teal Cedar against some of the Fairy Creek protesters is ongoing. A BC Prosecution Service media representative declined to provide the number of prosecutions it has successfully pursued, or the number that have resulted in jail time, related to Fairy Creek.

A formal request for the intelligence report itself was denied in its entirety by the RCMP — but it was obtained separately through a leak in early 2022. The Mounties quickly filed an injunction with the BC Supreme Court to prevent its disclosure, leading to two days in court and a ruling against the document’s publication.

“Why are they so worried about this document?” Jack mused. “It's part of the story — the lengths that they go to to get away from transparency.”