Excessive court docket received’t study B.C. old-growth logging protester’s acquittal

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OTTAWA — Canada’s highest court docket has refused to listen to an attraction of a British Columbia Supreme Courtroom resolution that acquitted a demonstrator of felony contempt for collaborating in a blockade of old-growth logging on Vancouver Island.

In its resolution, the Supreme Courtroom of Canada has dismissed the attraction software from the B.C. Crown and awarded prices to the demonstrator who now makes use of the identify Emily Henderson.

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As is customary, the excessive court docket didn’t present causes for its ruling.

Henderson was cleared of contempt in February when B.C. Supreme Courtroom Justice Douglas Thompson discovered RCMP officers solely learn a shortened model of an injunction to lots of of protesters, together with Henderson, who have been arrested on the Fairy Creek logging blockade on southern Vancouver Island.

Thompson dominated the abbreviated script utilized by the officers didn’t include sufficient data to offer protesters “precise information” of the injunction contents and show they have been “wilfully blind” to its phrases.

Henderson’s acquittal prompted the B.C. Prosecution Service to withdraw contempt prices in opposition to eleven old-growth logging protesters in April, whereas many comparable circumstances stay earlier than the court docket.

The Fairy Creek protest started after logging permits have been granted in 2020 permitting Teal Cedar Merchandise to chop timber, together with old-growth timber, in areas together with the Fairy Creek watershed northeast of Port Renfrew.

Protest camps have been arrange near the chopping website in August 2020 and injunctions geared toward stopping interference with logging or forestry crews adopted the following yr.