On Monday, BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) released thousands of pages of heavily-redacted documents previously disclosed by Canada’s spy agency Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
According to BCCLA, those documents suggest the CSIS has been illegally spying on the peaceful protests activities of Indegenious groups and environmentalists opposed to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline as far back as 2014.
The Northern Gateway pipeline project was approved by the federal government in June 2014.
However, after being elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau imposed a ban on oil tanker traffic on the north coast of British Columbia and officially rejected plans for the pipeline.
Searchable on the website “Protest Papers”, the documents outline a complaint filed by the BCCLA in 2014 alleging that spying activity “was deterring individuals from associating with environmental groups and expressing their opinions, through actions such as protesting, or signing petitions.”

Those groups being monitored include the Dogwood Initiative, ForestEthics (now Stand.earth), Sierra Club BC, Leadnow.ca (who were opposed to the Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal), and the Indigenous #Idlenomore movement and sharing this information with the National Energy Board (NEB) and petroleum industry companies.
“CSIS was investigating “targets” who were opposed to pipelines and also that “ancillary information” on other non-targets may have been gathered ‘incidentally’,” stated the BCCLA in a release.