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The Trudeau government says Canada’s national police force respects the right to peaceful demonstrations by indigenous activists, after it was revealed the RCMP compiled a list and distributed profiles of indigenous protesters it deemed “threats” who it determined were potentially willing and capable of criminal activities.

Dubbed Project SITKA, the RCMP began soliciting information on indigenous activists who could be perceived “to have committed or commit” crimes from all of its divisions and local police departments across the country in March 2014.

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Using the information it received and data collected from social media, the Mounties identified 313 activists — attendees of protests on issues ranging from natural resource development to missing and murdered indigenous women — who potentially posed a “criminal threat to Aboriginal public order events.”

The RCMP then narrowed that list to 89 individuals it said met “the criteria for criminality” and created unique profiles for each one. These profiles were then made available to front-line officers, analysts and other law enforcement agencies through two police databases, the RCMP’s Automated Intelligence Information System and the Police Reporting and Occurrence System.