N.W.T. Green Party candidate appeals 51-day sentence for Fairy Creek protests to Supreme Court of Canada

CBC News

· Posted: Apr 10, 2025 8:17 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 minutes ago

The Green Party's national campaigner for the Northwest Territories is appealing to the Supreme Court of Canada aft being handed a 51-day jailhouse condemnation by the B.C. Court of Appeal this week.

Angela Davidson, besides known arsenic Rainbow Eyes, had primitively appealed a 60-day condemnation for repeatedly disobeying tribunal orders erstwhile she protested a logging cognition astatine Fairy Creek connected Vancouver Island successful 2021 and 2022. She was hoping to get the 60-day condemnation reduced to a conditional condemnation — which would person meant nary jailhouse time.

The Fairy Creek protests saw much than 1,100 radical arrested for defying tribunal orders starting successful the summertime of 2021. Davidson was convicted of 7 offences betwixt May 2021 and January 2022 wherever she violated assorted tribunal and bail orders. 

In a determination Wednesday, the entreaty tribunal agreed the sentencing justice had erred, but said jailhouse clip was indispensable to denounce Davidson's intentional breach of tribunal orders and to discourage others from doing the same.

In a papers laying retired the court's reasons for the decision, Justice Joyce DeWitt-Van Oosten wrote that "criminal contempt has agelong been recognized arsenic an offence that 'strikes astatine the bosom of the regularisation of law.'"

"I bash not question the sincerity of the appellant's beliefs, her committedness to her community, the genuine passionateness she brings to her assorted roles, and the value of her continued advocacy successful enactment of reconciliation betwixt Indigenous people, non-Indigenous people, and the Crown," DeWitt-Van Oosten wrote.

Still, she wrote, quoting a antithetic tribunal decision, "voluntary choices travel with consequences."

DeWitt-Van Oosten wrote that she agreed with 1 of Davidson's arguments, that the sentencing justice had misapplied a rule that aims to debar discouraging rehabilitation of radical who perpetrate aggregate offences.

That misapplication was capable for the tribunal to trim her condemnation from 60 to 51 days.

Davidson is present appealing the reduced condemnation to the Supreme Court of Canada. She was released connected bail Thursday pending that appeal.

In an interrogation Thursday afternoon, Davidson called the Court of Appeal's ruling "a tiny win," since it lessened her sentence.

"The full crushed wherefore we're doing this — and I accidental 'we,' because it was Canada's largest enactment of civilian disobedience — is we stood unneurotic for the forest, for Mother Earth, for Indigenous sovereignty. And we did it for our ancestors and the adjacent 7 generations, truthful it feels truly bully to bash this work," she said.

She said she wasn't definite if she would inactive beryllium coming up to the N.W.T. during the national predetermination campaign.

Her lawyer, Benjamin Isitt, told CBC bail conditions don't prohibit her from travelling to the territory. They necessitate Davidson to support the bid and beryllium of bully behaviour, to study by telephone to her bail supervisor, and, if she engages successful immoderate protest, that they indispensable beryllium lawful and safe.

Isitt said their entreaty to the Supreme Court of Canada volition reason the entreaty tribunal did not springiness capable value to the Gladue factors that person played a relation successful her beingness and her relation arsenic a onshore guardian.

In a quality merchandise Thursday, the Green Party said it is lasting by Davidson.

"As Rainbow Eyes is simply a nominated campaigner for the Northwest Territories, the Green Party of Canada is honoured to person a courageous Indigenous onshore defender arsenic lawman leader," the quality merchandise stated.

"Rainbow Eyes stands with Martin Luther King jr, Gandhi and each figures of quality past who thatch america to honour and prioritize the eternal laws, and however the rules made by men, rather literally, indispensable reflector thing greater."