BC Civil Liberties Association – Legal Observers in Victoria have documented a number of RCMP practices designed to prevent the public from witnessing and documenting police actions. The organization has documented RCMP officers using tarps and other coverings to visually conceal arrests from media and legal observers. Legal Observers Victoria have also documented RCMP officers attempting to coral and contain media and legal observers in designated areas where they are unable to document RCMP enforcement. Several journalists and legal observers have been arrested and forcibly removed from the area for attempting to document police actions.

“Journalism cannot happen when journalists are excluded from the area of events they are meant to cover. That should be a simple and uncontroversial statement. Yet, over eight years and at least five situations across the country, police have sought to exclude journalists through the use of broad exclusion zones. The courts, in the Brake precedent, and the RCMP’s own oversight body, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, have both found it to be unlawful to use these restrictions to interfere with journalists.”

When, usually under threat of legal action, the RCMP do allow access, they impose conditions reminiscent of authoritarian regimes: media containment zones, chaperones, and arresting or detaining journalists for the crime of trying to do their job. This is not press freedom. We stand with industry groups like the Canadian Association of Journalists, and international press freedom groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists, in denouncing this overreach of policing power to interfere with the right of journalists to do their job, and most importantly, the right of the public to be well informed on issues of clear public interest.”- Ethan Cox, Ricochet Media