Defence lawyers say the province’s decision to pursue criminal contempt charges against land defenders opposed to the Coastal GasLink pipeline could be tied to concerns that the integrity of the court is at risk
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“I’m really disappointed with the outcome, especially because three out of the four people that are now facing criminal charges are Indigenous people with a voice, the ones that have had a really strong voice,” Wickham told The Narwhal outside the Smithers, B.C., courthouse after the hearing. Sworn affidavits the Mounties filed with the court affirmed that on Nov. 18, 2021, “Inspector Ken Floyd read the injunction at the 44 kilometer [sic] marker of the Morice West” Forest Service Road and “reread the injunction a second time at the same location.
As for the issue of whether prosecution is in the public interest or not, Mahon called it a “nebulous concept” but suggested a driving factor is “the integrity of the court is being called into question.”Breach of the injunction is a civil matter, which means it’s between private parties, in this case between Coastal GasLink and the individuals alleged to have impeded construction. For civil contempt, the company’s legal team can choose whether or not to pursue charges.
Criminal contempt isn’t the same as a criminal charge for, say, theft or assault. Instead, it means the province believes “the accused knew … their conduct constituted a public defiance of a court order,” according to a B.C. Civil Liberties Association report. As the report notes, that public defiance can include breaching the terms of an injunction “in front of television cameras or on social media platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter.
If convicted, the individuals could serve up to 30 days of jail time, 150 hours of community service under the supervision of a probation officer or pay $3,000 in fines, according to sentencing positions filed with the courts.For Wickham, the escalation of charges from civil to criminal is in line with the history of colonization.
“These environmental disputes, these resource extraction cases that have been before the courts so often in the last 10 years, are a failure of government, and the failure of government is a result of people voting for these governments.”