Fairy Creek injunction is back in place by order of the BC appeal court
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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The original injunction expired in October, but a temporary injunction has been active since
By Zoë Ducklow
January 27, 2022
The BC Court of Appeal has renewed the injunction at Fairy Creek until Sept. 26, 2022, overturning a lower court ruling from the fall. Logging company Teal-Jones, which successfully obtained an injunction in April 2021, had applied for the extension last fall, but at the time, Justice Douglas Thompson decided to let it expire.
Thompson cited two key reasons: first, that an injunction was an unnecessary overlap when there’s criminal activity. Police don’t need a court order to enforce criminal behaviour, he reasoned. Second, he said the... RCMP’s behaviour while carrying out the court’s injunction was damaging the court’s reputation—specifically the expansive exclusion zones, interference with media access, officers removing their own identification, and allowing “thin blue line” patches to be worn.
The three appeal judges—Justices Lauri Ann Fenlon, Bruce Butler, and Joyce DeWitt-Van Oosten—disagreed with Thompson and overruled his decision on Jan. 26. Criminal law does not negate the need for civil law, even when an issue is covered by both, they said. Just because there was criminal activity happening does not mean Teal-Jones can ensure its rights are protected; that’s why civil injunctions exist in the first place, they concluded. In fact, the “enforcement gap” argument “would lead inevitably to the conclusion that the more egregious the behaviour of the protesters, the less likely it is that an injunction will be granted—a principle entirely at odds with the court’s obligation to uphold the rule of law,” they wrote.
As for police conduct, which factored heavily in Thompson’s decision, the appeal judges disagreed that it affects the court’s reputation. “The administration of justice may be said to have been brought into disrepute by the police conduct, but that overarching systemic impact is not,” they wrote. Rather, if there is police misconduct, the court should hold police accountable.