By Canadian Press

Lawyers for arrestees at B.C. old-growth logging protest seek stay in proceedings

Feb 9, 2022 | 2:58 PM

NANAIMO, B.C. — A lawyer for several people arrested for breaching an injunction during protests over old-growth logging on Vancouver Island wants the charges against her clients and others arrested to be stayed, alleging “systemic police misconduct.”

Lawyer Karen Mirsky told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Douglas Thompson in Nanaimo that allowing prosecutions to continue would be harmful to the integrity of justice and a stay is necessary to dissociate the court from police misconduct.

The RCMP have made close to 1,200 arrests while enforcing the injunction first granted last April against blockades set up over the last 18 months in the area known as Fairy Creek on southwestern Vancouver Island.

The protest group called the Rainforest Flying Squad filed an application last month asking that charges be stayed, claiming misconduct by RCMP officers amounts to an abuse of process.

Mirsky told the court that police used unreasonable force during arrests, including using pepper spray and punching protesters, and they seized and destroyed personal property, such as vehicles, food and shelters, without due process. 

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Lawyers for the Crown and logging company Teal Cedar Products Ltd. were expected to reply to the arguments in court later this week.

Mirsky says her clients aim to prove that their arrests and those of hundreds of others were “tainted by ongoing and systemic police misconduct” starting last May.

The original injunction expired last fall and Thompson had denied the forestry company’s application to extend it by one year, but the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned the lower-court ruling in a decision last month. 

Teal Jones said in a statement at the time of the Appeal Court’s decision that more than half of the old-growth forest in the area where it is logging is already protected.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 9, 2022.

The Canadian Press