The Department of Public Safety is accusing the media of omitting crucial information regarding recent RCMP arrests of protestors targeting the BC Coastal GasLink LNG pipeline, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
The accusations involve videos uploaded to YouTube by CBC freelancer Michael Toledano depicting an RCMP raid on a cabin in northern BC.
Footage of the raid shows armed RCMP officers surrounding the cabin and cutting their way in with a chainsaw. The filmmakers alongside activists were then escorted out by police wearing full body armour and placed under arrest.
According to reports obtained by Blacklock’s, the media opted to accuse the Mounties of misconduct despite facts showing otherwise.
“The RCMP has maintained a measured approach to avoid escalation,” wrote a Department of Public Safety Memo. “On November 25, a journalist released a video showing the arrests. However the video does not show what occurred preceding the RCMP members’ breach of the structures.”
“I was arrested at gunpoint for filming RCMP tactical teams,” said Toledano. “My arrest and incarceration were punitive and a blatant attempt to repress images of police violence against Indigenous people in Canada.”
Toledano accused the RCMP of “never (reading) the injunction” before making the arrests although clips filmed by him prior to the raid were never released.
“RCMP officers read the injunction at each structure and made several calls over the course of more than an hour for occupants to exit the structure,” said the federal memo. “The only responses from inside the structures were derogatory in nature and refusals. It was not until RCMP officers entered the structures and arrested the individuals that they identified themselves as journalists.”
Toledano is among the crew hired to produce the CBC “viewpoint documentary” Yintah. As exclusively reported by True North, the CBC also partnered with radical anarchist activist and filmmaker Franklin López to create the film.
According to the CBC, López has been an anarchist activist for over 20 years and is the founder of the media company sub.Media. López’ company has produced films with titles such as “Oil Pipelines Are Easy To Shut Down” and “How to Paralyze a Country”.
His films have also been fan-favourites of extreme far-left websites that have instructed followers on how to commit criminal acts and even to construct incendiary devices such as molotov cocktails.
When True North confronted the CBC with these facts about López, the public broadcaster stated that – following an initial comment – they had nothing else to say.
