Justin Brake, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Independent

The lawyers are standing around, casually talking to one another. A dozen or so people in the four rows of public seating quietly chatter to  each other. Then, a hefty, clean-shaven middle-aged man with short dark  brown hair and a suit enters the courtroom. The room goes quiet.

The man, whose tie is fastened to his shirt with a small golden pin  in the shape of handcuffs, sits down two rows directly in front of me,  his stiff gaze fixed on the judge’s bench as he tilts his head to the  right, and then the left, as if to crack his neck. 

John Brewer is the RCMP’s assistant commissioner for British  Columbia, and before that he was the top cop in a controversial special  unit created to crack down on Indigenous land defence actions and  protests. 

On this day, he’s set to testify in a lawsuit filed by  photojournalist Amber Bracken and digital outlet The Narwhal against the  RCMP. Back in 2021, Bracken was arrested while doing her job, and held  in prison for three days. It is perhaps the single most extreme example  of a pattern of behaviour that has already been found unlawful by courts  in two provinces and multiple oversight bodies. 

Last year, in response to a scathing oversight report, the RCMP  commissioner formally apologized to a different journalist (who was  detained for eight hours in a 2020 incident) and promised the force  would no longer interfere with the ability of journalists to report on  their actions. And yet, here in a Vancouver courtroom on an overcast  February day, a dozen government lawyers are fighting a somewhat  quixotic rearguard action to justify Bracken’s arrest. 

The judge enters the room a few minutes after Brewer, and the veteran  cop is called to the stand for examination by Crown attorneys  representing the RCMP and the Government of Canada. He stands up and  makes his way to the front, where he sits to Justice Diane MacDonald’s  left, facing the lawyers he’ll be taking questions from under oath.

It’s February 4, more than four years since Brewer led an operation  to remove land defenders from a remote area in unceded Wet’suwet’en  territory in northern BC. The land defenders, led by members of the  Wet’suwet’en Nation’s Gidim’ten House Clan, had reoccupied the area in  an effort to enforce an eviction notice from Wet’suwet’en hereditary  leaders and prevent construction of the controversial Coastal GasLink  pipeline.

Brewer, who tells the court he’s a member of the Lower Similkameen  Indian Band, is not here because he helped force First Nations people  from their land. He’s been summoned to the B.C. Supreme Court in  Vancouver because officers under his command arrested and jailed a  journalist as part of the Mounties’ November 2021 operation.

The actions of Brewer’s team that day are under scrutiny in a  landmark case that could go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada,  in the process codifying journalists’ and the public’s constitutional  right to press freedom.

A pattern of troubling behaviour

Since early February, several members of the RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) — rebranded  as the ‘Critical Response Unit’ in 2024 — have testified alongside  Brewer, offering an inside look at how the beleaguered regiment  conducted itself before, during and after arresting award-winning photojournalist Amber Bracken.

Bracken, whose work has been published in The New York Times,  National Geographic, The Globe and Mail, Wall Street Journal and  others, was on assignment for B.C.-based independent news outlet The  Narwhal when the RCMP arrested, detained and jailed her for four days  and three nights, alleging she had violated a B.C. Supreme Court  injunction intended to end the Indigenous land defence action.

A month later, on Christmas Eve, Coastal GasLink dropped the civil  contempt charges against Bracken and filmmaker Michael Toledano, who was  shooting a documentary for CBC and was jailed alongside Bracken. The  damage had been done, though. The police disrupted Bracken’s work,  preventing her from publishing photos and reporting on a story of major  public interest for days — and intensifying the chilling effect on  Canadian journalists who cover police enforcement of court injunctions. 

The arrest became a flashpoint in a growing pattern of troubling  behaviour by Canada’s national police force, which over the past decade  has arrested or interfered with numerous journalists documenting police  activities.

In February 2020, RCMP officers detained journalist Jerome Turner  for eight hours after holding him at gunpoint. Turner was on assignment  for Ricochet Media, covering the police enforcement of a Coastal  GasLink injunction in Wet’suwet’en territory. A day earlier, the cops  removed journalists Jesse Winter and Melissa Cox from the territory,  dropping them off and leaving them stranded in various locations; the  officers involved reportedly told each they would bring them to their  vehicle, which was parked along a service road in the woods.

In the spring and summer of 2021, police restricted media access  during enforcement of an injunction intended to end a mass protest  against logging in old-growth forests around Fairy Creek on Vancouver  Island. More than 1,100 people were arrested during the protests. A  coalition of media outlets and press freedom groups challenged the  RCMP’s use of “exclusion zones” to control media access to the site, and  in July of that year B.C. Supreme Court Justice Douglas Thompson ruled  that the force failed to justify its actions.

“[I]n making operational decisions and exercising its discretion  surrounding the removal and arrest of persons violating the order, the  RCMP will be reminded by the presence of this additional language to  keep in mind the media’s special role in a free and democratic society,  and the necessity of avoiding undue and unnecessary interference with  the journalistic function,” Thompson said.

Four months later, the RCMP disrupted Bracken’s work documenting an important story and put her behind bars.

“As Canada and its democratic and civic institutions contend with and  promise to redress their roles in the oppression and dispossession of  Indigenous people on their land, journalists have a unique and express  duty to bear witness to and comprehensively cover news events of  consequence,” the Canadian Association of Journalists wrote in an open letter to then federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, signed by more than 40 news outlets and press freedom advocacy groups.

“The RCMP must be held accountable for their repeated violations of the rights of media in Canada.”

When journalists have been criminalized for their work covering  protests, they’ve either won in court, or charges against them have been  dropped. In some cases, the RCMP has even temporarily detained  journalists without pressing charges. Regardless how each episode ended,  in every instance the police impeded media coverage likely to harm  their reputation. In all cases, the targeted journalists work for small  independent media outlets which typically don’t have the money or  resources to fight back in court.

Until now.

In February 2023, Bracken and The Narwhal announced they were suing the RCMP for damages related to Bracken’s wrongful arrest.

“Amber Bracken’s arrest and lengthy detention by the RCMP not only  defied logic, but we believe it broke the law,” Narwhal co-founder and  Editor-in-Chief Emma Gilchrist said at the time.

The plaintiffs are asking BC’s Supreme Court to rule on whether  Bracken’s liberty rights, and her and The Narwhal’s press freedom rights  — protected in Section 2(b) of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms —  were unjustifiably breached.

“In a democratic society, those in positions of authority must always  be held accountable for their actions. The arrest of Amber Bracken is  part of a troubling pattern of RCMP infringing on press freedom,”  Gilchrist said. “To not move forward with this case would be to turn our  backs on all of the important stories that happen in remote places  without the watchful eyes of journalists, due to the chilling effect of  arrests like these.”

Governments and corporations have long used the courts for injunctive  relief against Indigenous people who protect their land from unwanted  development, and police have often enforced those injunctions with  remarkable aggression. Late Secwepemc leader Arthur Manuel famously  called court injunctions Canada’s “legal billy club” when it came to suppressing Indigenous Peoples who defend their territories and assert their nations’ sovereignty.

In November 2021, miles up a service road in the woods, the RCMP’s  enforcement of a natural gas pipeline company’s injunction achieved  that, while also turning off the cameras belonging to the only  journalists there to provide eye-witness accounts.

The broad arguments

Back in the courtroom, Brewer fields questions from a Crown attorney  representing the Government of Canada. He positions himself as an  Indigenous person who has been adopted by an elder into another First  Nation, because of the good he did there in the course of his policing.  He also says he’s neutral when it comes to policing land defence actions  and other protests.

A C-IRG gold commander overseeing the operation in which Bracken was  arrested, Brewer tells the court the RCMP didn’t have a formal policy at  the time for dealing with media in a protest area, but that the force  had been accommodating journalists “to the extent possible.” He spoke  favourably of the media’s role in society. “The media exists to assist  with the public, so the public has a right to know,” he says. “I believe  that with all my heart.”

But testimony from Brewer and other RCMP members involved in the  operation, reveal the limitations of the Mounties’ interpretation of  press freedom.

The Crown’s defence rests in part on the RCMP’s argument that Bracken  “went beyond her role as a journalist,” as written in a response filed  with the BC Supreme Court in October 2023. By remaining with land  defenders inside a tiny house constructed to block the pipeline route,  the force says, Bracken became non-compliant with the injunction and  relinquished her status as a journalist.

The Narwhal, conversely, maintains Bracken never relinquished her  rights and acted professionally and appropriately in the course of her  work.

In its October 2023 court filing, the RCMP alleges Bracken was “not  engaged in apparent good faith newsgathering activities” at the time,  and that she was “aiding or abetting” the land defenders. The words  appear to be pulled straight from a 2019 Newfoundland and Labrador Court  of Appeal decision.

In that case, I was forced to defend my 2016 reporting from the  Indigenous-led occupation of the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project  site in Labrador. After being named on a Newfoundland and Labrador  Supreme Court injunction requested by the crown corporation building the  dam, I was forced to end my reporting and leave the site. Despite my  compliance with the order, I faced civil and criminal charges for  allegedly violating the injunction.

In that legal precedent, now often referred to as the ‘Brake decision,’  the province’s appeals court overturned the lower court’s decision that  I had no special standing as a journalist reporting on the event. A  three-judge panel declared that the presence of a journalist in an  injunction zone is a “material fact” which must be disclosed to the  court by a party applying for an injunction. Justice Derek Green, the  authoring judge, offered a “non-exhaustive” list of factors to help  determine whether a journalist’s presence constitutes a material fact.  Among them is the question of whether the person in question “is engaged  in apparent good faith in a news-gathering activity of a journalistic  nature.” Another stipulates they don’t act in such a way “that could  reasonably be considered as aiding or abetting the protestors in their  protest actions.”

The law is clear: If a journalist is covering a protest inside an  injunction zone, police can’t just interfere with them. My presence at  the occupied Muskrat Falls site in 2016, Green writes in the decision,  “was contingent on the continuation of the protest. If it dissipated, so  also would his trespassing have evaporated.

“To give the injunction order and the contempt umbrella a reach wider  than this unnecessarily risks impeding the media function for no good  reason with the result that the public would be deprived of access to information of public interest.”

Two and a half years later, how did the decision in my case factor  into the RCMP’s actions on the ground in Wet’suwet’en territory when  they arrested Bracken and Toledano?

Inside the operation

With the support of Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders a decade into their pipeline resistance — which at its peak included solidarity protests  and railway blockades — members of the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s Gidimt’en  Clan reoccupied land where the pipeline was slated to run beneath a  river westward toward its endpoint in Kitimat on B.C.’s north coast.

For shelter, the land defenders built a tiny house at what they named  “Coyote Camp.” Gidimt’en Clan members and supporters were there to  enforce the Wet’suwet’en leaders’ eviction notice against the pipeline  company. Attempts by the RCMP to negotiate their evacuation of the camp  had failed, Brewer testified, explaining the RCMP didn’t want a repeat  of the Fairy Creek protests in BC earlier that year. 

On November 15, the RCMP began building its resources for an  operation to enforce the injunction. That day, Brewer emailed C-IRG  Silver Commander Jim Elliott, saying he wanted to “try and negotiate the  road open,” while also preparing for the operation. “We start the  buildup for full Ops ASAP,” Brewer said. That email, and other  communications cited in this story, were entered into evidence in the  trial and obtained by Ricochet and The Independent through an  application to the B.C. Supreme Court. 

In the late afternoon of Nov. 17, the day before the operation began  and two days prior to Bracken’s arrest, 70 to 100 officers gathered for  an hour-and-a-half-long briefing at a camp on another forestry road in  the area. A powerpoint presentation from that meeting which was entered  into evidence includes a slide titled “Contingencies: ‘What if?’” and  states: “Journalists and persons from media outlets as defined by Brake  2019 NLCA,” before laying out the five factors in the Newfoundland and  Labrador Court of Appeal decision. There are no directives on how to  handle media in the powerpoint.

Officers involved in the operation testified that they were  instructed not to take notes at the briefings. One member did, however.  Of the November 17 briefing, a designated scribe named Sgt. Karen Bach  wrote in a notebook entered into evidence: “All parties to be arrested  for contempt. No options.” The notes also suggest members were  instructed to “arrest media and bring back for [Division Liaison Team]  to verify they are.” 

Brewer testified that he doesn’t recall these orders being given at  the meeting. He described testing his members’ knowledge of the NL Court  of Appeal’s 2019 decision.  “It’s my practice to walk around the  command and, in essence, test members. ‘Do you know what the Brake  decision is?’ For example, […] ‘What do you do if you arrest media?’ And  I would expect the answer to be that, ‘If I arrest media, it would be  passed up […] through command.”

Cst. Greg Carwithen, who joined the C-IRG in 2018, testified that he  was aware of the Brake decision but doesn’t remember if it was discussed  during briefings. 

On November 18, the day before Bracken’s arrest, the RCMP arrested  land defenders who were blockading a bridge on another part of the  forestry service road. Filmmaker Melissa Cox, who was gathering footage  for Toledano’s independent documentary Yintah,  was also detained. In footage played before the court, Carwithen  arrested Cox despite the fact she identified herself as a member of the  media, offered her credentials, and referenced the Brake decision. “The  media does not have the right to break the law,” Carwithen can be heard  saying in the video. “The media does not have the right to be wherever  they want. There are guidelines and you’re breaking them.” When Cox  cites the Fairy Creek ruling in the video, Carwithen says, “This is not  Fairy Creek.”

Carwithen testified that he doesn’t remember the events of that day,  but agreed he was the one in the video arresting Cox. Cox was released  later that day and the RCMP apologized to her. In an October 2024  affidavit, Brewer said he “made the decision to release Ms. Cox” because  he “was able to ascertain that the RCMP knew Ms. Cox was in the area.  She identified herself as media while being arrested.”

As news of Cox’s arrest spread, concern began to grow that the RCMP  was prepared to continue criminalizing journalism. In an open letter to  the force the following day, Canadian Association of Journalists  President Brent Jolly reminded them of Justice Thompson’s Fairy Creek  decision, “which ruled that the RCMP’s practice of employing vast  ‘exclusion zones’ [was] not legal,” Jolly wrote.

Jolly, who also emailed the letter to the RCMP, informed them that  Bracken and other journalists were on the ground in Wet’suwet’en  territory. “I’d like to emphasize that all journalists who are arriving  onsite have no intention of interfering with the work of the RCMP in any  way,” he wrote. “Canadian law protects the ability of journalists to  access and report on any matter of public interest as it is essential to  the proper functioning of democracy. It is my sincere hope that  journalists will be allowed to do their work, in accordance with the  law.”

The same day, November 18, The Narwhal also informed the RCMP of  Bracken’s presence. In an email to the force’s media relations team,  reporter Matt Simmons specifically told the RCMP that Bracken was at  Coyote Camp. “[S]he asked me to relay this information to you, to convey  to the officers on the ground,” he wrote. “Can you please do everything  you can to ensure that all of the units there are aware there is an  accredited journalist on location?”

In both cases, the emails were forwarded to Brewer and multiple other  operation commanders prior to the commencement of the Nov. 19  operation. “I can’t recall when I would’ve read them,” Brewer testified  in cross-examination by Bracken and The Narwhal’s lead attorney, Sean  Hern. “I don’t recall having any of that information prior to the arrest  of Ms. Bracken.” Brewer said he had no knowledge of Bracken being at  Coyote Camp, and that he believed, without evidence, she was at the  Unist’ot’en Healing Centre, which is in another part of Wet’suwet’en  territory. 

In the early morning hours of November 19, dozens of cops made their  way up a service road toward Coyote Camp. They eventually surrounded two  cabins, one of them the “tiny house” where Bracken and Toledano were  inside documenting Sleydo and the four other land defenders with her.  Brewer testified it was his understanding that at approximately 11:30  a.m. that day Insp. Ken Floyd, a bronze commander, read an arrest script  out loud to those inside the two cabins, and that multiple attempts had  been made to compel the occupants to come out.

Floyd was in Vancouver and scheduled to testify in mid-February. But  when the Tumbler Ridge shooting happened, he quickly returned to the  area, where he serves as north district commander. He is now scheduled  to testify in April during added trial dates.

After no one inside the cabin identified themselves or came out,  members of the RCMP’s Tactical Response Unit began breaking into the  tiny house, first using an axe, then a chainsaw, to bust through the  wooden door. A gun was then pointed through the door at the land  defenders and journalists as a police dog outside can be heard barking.  The dramatic scene was captured on film by Toledano. After the land  defenders are removed from the structure, Carwithen, who was also  responsible for Cox’s arrest, takes hold of the backpack on Bracken’s  back and starts guiding her toward the door, saying “You’re under  arrest.” Bracken immediately replies: “For the record, I’m a member of  the media and you were notified that I’m here.”

Carwithen continues leading Bracken to the door, then hands her off  to two officers who take Bracken away from the tiny house. Toledano is  then arrested while identifying himself as a member of the media making a  documentary for CBC.

Asked by Hern if Bracken and Toledano stating they are media changed  his perspective or his authority to arrest them, Carwithen said no. “ I  have instructions to arrest the people that are breaching the injunction  inside the tiny house,” he testified. “When I go into the tiny house, I  see the people that are in the tiny house breaching the injunction. So  there, I formulate my grounds to arrest them. I have zero ability to  verify even people’s names or their occupations or anything like that.

“In my opinion, they are arrestable for that offense,” he continued.  “If at a later date [it] is determined that yes, they had every right to  be in there or not, my belief is that the command triangle or something  will make that determination that yes, they actually had legal  authority to be in there, or they’re not gonna be charged with that.”

Brewer’s six factors

Brewer testified that Bracken’s status as a journalist was no longer a  factor in her arrest after she failed to identify or present herself to  police outside the tiny house that day. He testified on Feb. 10 that  the RCMP has struggled to incorporate the Brake decision into their  injunction enforcements. “ All we had was Brake. I admit it’s not great,  but that’s all we had,” he said. “And so […] police officers have to  determine, where is the breach? Where does it start? Where does it end?  What are those exact activities?”

In his affidavit, Brewer cited six factors the RCMP considered when  deciding whether to maintain Bracken’s arrest and detention, including  that she would have been aware of “media protocols” and the injunction.  Under cross-examination, he clarified he was referring to instances  “when we ask media to identify themselves and comply with directions  from police while we’re in the middle of an operation.” Pressed by Hern  on whether this “media protocol” was in any law or regulation, Brewer  said, “ I’m not aware of any. That’s why the Brake decision was the only  thing we could point to at the time.”

Earlier in his testimony, on February 4, Brewer said determining who  is and isn’t a journalist is problematic because, in “this day and age a  media person can have a cell phone and that’s all you see,” he said,  adding it’s “not our job to mediate who’s media or not.” Rather than  determining who is a journalist and who’s not, he testified, under his  command RCMP officers were instructed to judge their behaviour. “It’s  their actions,” he testified. “Whether they say they’re from one group  or another group is immaterial. To me it’s their actions. If they’re  acting like they’re there to get a story and are doing that, and are not  interfering with our work, or certainly are not, then, overtly  complicit with the protestors, such as locking arms with them, then  yelling at my police officers — […] If that doesn’t happen and they’re  not in our workspace, I’m fine to have them there.”

Bracken’s failure to comply with directions to leave the tiny house  was a second factor in maintaining her arrest and detention, Brewer  said. A third factor was Bracken’s alleged failure to identify herself  as media until after her arrest had been initiated. When pressed by Hern  on the contradiction that his decision to release Cox the day before  partly on the grounds that she identified herself as she was being  arrested, Brewer said the difference between the two was that Bracken  had “ample opportunity to, at any time, say through the door, ‘I am  media. Media is here.’ Her name. That was not done until after the door  is breached, and then after the arrest is affected.”

A fourth factor was the allegation that Bracken “was contributing to a  dangerous situation for herself,” Hern read from the affidavit. Asked  how Bracken endangered herself, Brewer said when breaching a blockaded  doorway, officers “must rapidly assess every single person in there for  what threat they may or may not pose,” and that “[t]he more people in  that room that are unknowns, the more dangerous that situation is.”  Pressed further and asked if Bracken was arrested for “ contributing to a  dangerous situation for the officers,” Brewer said she was not.

A fifth factor in maintaining Bracken’s arrest and detention stemmed  from a conversation Brewer had with Staff Sgt. Aaron Sproule, a bronze  commander in the operation for the RCMP’s Division Liaison Team. Brewer  testified that Sproule told him that Bracken had told Sproule her lawyer  had said the injunction didn’t apply to journalists.

“How do we release someone that states absolute contempt for the  injunction, that it does not apply to them? I would not as a police  officer release anybody that says to me, ‘Go ahead, release me,’” Brewer  testified. 

The sixth and final factor Brewer put forward to the court was an  alleged directive from Supreme Court Justice Marguerite Church, who  authorized the injunction, to the RCMP on November 18 or 19 that she  “wanted all the contemnors to be brought before her,” Brewer testified,  saying the information had been relayed to him by Sproule. “My  understanding was that Justice Church was becoming dissatisfied with the  fact that in the previous enforcement actions [Coastal GasLink] had not  brought many contemners to her and that she didn’t feel she had a sense  of what was going on with her injunction.”

Brewer said those six factors led him to believe that Bracken “was  not doing journalism at the time of the arrest,” and that she “was  involved in a breach of the injunction.”

Attitude of ‘disquiet and distrust’ towards media

“ I take it that you could not conceive that the only reason she was  in the tiny house was to do journalism,” Hern tells Brewer during  Brewer’s final day of testimony on February 11. “What I could not  conceive was that a journalist inside an enclosed area would not at  least identify themselves as being a journalist in that enclosed area,”  Brewer replied. 

“And yet the fact is that it was the only place that a journalist  could have been to document the newsworthy events of that day,” Hern  said, to which Brewer replied: “That is, in my estimation, incorrect,”  explaining Bracken could have joined other journalists in notifying the  RCMP of their desire to attend the injunction enforcement, then wait to  be escorted by police up the service road. “It had been our practice  before [to bring] people up to witness, as safely as possible, our  arrest and enforcement of peoples in breach of the injunction.”

Brewer then went on to say he wasn’t aware of any journalists who  made it to the access control point along the service road in time to be  escorted to the site. “Once you shut the road down and operations  commenced, there was no further opportunity,” Hern said. The operation  that day began at 7 a.m. and ended seven or eight hours later at  approximately 3 or 4 p.m., the court heard.

Following Justice Thompson’s Fairy Creek decision just a few months  earlier, Brewer said the RCMP had learned “lessons,” testifying that,  “if media show up, you know, we will if, if possible, get them access up  there. But again, we had to have the people to escort them up and  back,” he explained.

The B.C. Supreme Court isn’t the only authority to have reprimanded  the RCMP for its failure to respect journalists’ right to document  newsworthy events. In December 2024 the Civilian Review and Complaints  Commission (CRCC), an independent oversight body for the RCMP, issued a report  stemming from a complaint made by Jerome Turner and Ricochet Editor  Ethan Cox over the police force’s unlawful detention of Turner in 2020  and interference with his reporting.

“The RCMP approached Mr. Turner and other reporters with disquiet and  distrust, relying on coercive powers to exclude, control, and inhibit  them rather than take the constructive path of dialogue and mutual  respect between two different but equally hardworking groups with  equally important roles,” the CRCC writes in its report. “The police  always have the option to deal case by case with members of the press  where the police have even reasonable suspicion of specific wrongdoing,  but it is unreasonable to treat the media as potential adversaries in  blanket fashion.”

In response to the CRCC’s investigation, RCMP Commissioner Michael  Duheme wrote that he “fully support[s] the Commission’s recommendations  that the RCMP should grant freedom of movement to the media so long as  they remain outside a very modest buffer zone around things like  arrests, and that the RCMP escorts or liaisons (if needed) should not  interfere with the media’s freedom of movement unless to the minimum  extent necessary if there is an objectively reasonable operational  necessity.”

Shortly after the report’s release, the RCMP apologized to Cox and  Turner. But Turner, who lives near Vancouver and has attended several  days of the Bracken trial, says his acceptance of the apology is  contingent on the RCMP’s actions going forward. “ My response to them  was basically, I’ll accept the apology as long as they stopped putting  hands on journalists anywhere in Canada. I stand by that,” he said on  Feb. 6, standing outside the courthouse in Vancouver. “Unless [media  are] actually breaking a law or interfering with police, with literal  arrests, there should be no reason to tell us where to go, where to  stand. I really hope this case leads to something towards that effect.”

From the outset, The Narwhal has been clear that it initiated  litigation against the RCMP for the benefit not only of its own  reporters, but for journalists anywhere in Canada. Narwhal acting  Editor-in-Chief Carol Linnitt, who testified during the trial, told  Ricochet the case could lead to a “ more specific articulation of what  press freedom actually means, what media rights actually mean, what the  right to free press in Canada means — and that would be to the benefit  of journalists across the country.”

Linnitt also said the case represents an opportunity for  accountability from the RCMP. “We are asking for a determination and a  declaration that Amber’s arrest was unlawful, that it was illegal, it  was unjustified. That’s also something that would be a protective  measure for journalists who are reporting specifically in environments  that are controlled by the RCMP.”

Bracken, who has attended every day of the trial’s first five weeks,  says the ramifications of the case extend beyond the media. “We’re  talking about the freedom of the press and the [Section] 2(b) Charter  rights and the right to free expression,” she said, standing next to  Linnitt outside the courthouse. “These are not rights that are held in  the profession of journalism alone. The 2(b) rights apply to everybody  equally.

“It’s not about the journalist, it’s about the journalism. It’s about  the right to witness. It’s about the right to have a public record on  matters of public interest and public importance,” she continued. “So  this isn’t about a niche group seeking special protections. It’s about  protecting the right of all Canadians to know and understand and have  good information about what the matters of record are in our country.”

Editors’ note: Justin Brake travelled to  Vancouver in February, spending a week in court to cover The Narwhal and  Amber Bracken’s lawsuit against the RCMP for The Independent and  Ricochet Media. This article is co-published with Ricochet.

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