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The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has spent years pursuing a complaint against Canada’s spy agency for monitoring environmental groups.

Tomorrow the association is set to release redacted Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents online on a website it has dubbed “The Protest Papers.” Here’s how we got here.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Timeline: The long fight to get CSIS' papers on environmental groups Back to video

November 2013

The Vancouver Observer obtains 140 pages of documents showing RCMP and CSIS monitored Indigenous and anti-pipeline groups and shared memos with the National Energy Board.

One senior RCMP intelligence officer wrote “Opposition is most notable in British Columbia, with protests focused on the: Enbridge Northern Gateway; Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion; the increasing use of hydraulic fracturing, and proposed LNG facilities.”

February 2014

Lawyers representing the association file complaints alleging CSIS and the RCMP “monitored and spied on the peaceful and democratic activities of community groups and First Nations opposed to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project.”