The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police says that they’re “overwhelmed” and are being increasingly “victimized” by activists as officers struggle to respond to a rising number of protests.

At its annual summit in Halifax last month, Thomas Carrique, Ontario Provincial Police commissioner, who also serves as the national association’s president, said protests are surging across Canada, and that’s led to a rising number of assaults and increased online bullying of police. 

He said that “global events” have led to the increase in protests, and that has led to an “unsustainable” strain on police resources. In some cases, he said, officers have even been “doxxed” by activists.

The increase in protests is largely stemming from immigration, he said, specifically individuals coming to Canada from the Middle East — countries where “the use of violence is an acceptable vehicle for social change.” 

As a result, he said, the demonstrations and protests have also attracted “splinter groups” and “thugs,” who have escalated the events from peaceful demonstrations to more “high risk” situations.

“Through immigration, thousands of people, who may have had an orientation towards violence as a means of expression or activism, continue to arrive in Canada every year,” said Carrique. “Protests are an opportunity for the blending of other activist splinter groups, or simply thugs… with a goal to create disruption, often co-opting the original intent of a lawful assembly.” 

When pressed for further details about officers who have been doxxed, CACP spokesperson Natalie Wright did not have concrete answers. She said photos of officers have been posted on social media by activists at protests. “In the line of duty, assaults and injuries and even deaths for police officers have been on the rise, and this is of grave concern to your police leaders,” Carrique added.  

Ricochet also asked Carrique a question about police surveillance of Indigenous land defenders, but Carrique called that “classified information” and declined to comment, referring the question to the RCMP. 

After the press conference, this reporter, who is visibly Indigenous, was told to leave the event, and was walked toward the exit of the conference centre by volunteers. While doing another interview, Wright cut off further questions.

In her parting words, Wright told Ricochet that questions surrounding police treatment of land defenders can reflect poorly on all police, and that has contributed to “the way people are now reacting to police.” She added, “Don’t come tell me today that you guys are being mistreated, because sometimes you’re mistreating us,” seemingly referring to Indigenous people in general. 

She then said Canadian police are much less militarized than police in other countries. “In many countries, the law enforcement community are the warriors, and it’s more military-like, and here we’re more guardians. It’s more about protecting people and prevention.”

Later in a follow-up email to Ricochet, Wright said there’s heightened tension between police and activists right now because police are responding to more protests than ever before. However, Wright did not have any data to indicate what the spike looks like. “Many police services are currently analyzing information to quantify the impact the increase in the volume and harmful content of protests is having on police operations and budgets,” she wrote.

As an example, she said, Toronto Police responded to more than 1300 demonstrations since October 7, 2023, “related to the Middle East conflict,” which amounted to 272,000 hours at an estimated cost of $17.5 million. 

In the email, Wright states that police define doxxing as “the intentional revelation of a person’s private information online without their consent, often with malicious intent. This includes the sharing of phone numbers, home addresses, identification numbers and essentially any sensitive and previously private information such as personal photos that could make the victim identifiable and potentially exposed to further harassment, humiliation and real-life threats including stalking and unwanted encounters in person.”

She said, “this is a phenomenon affecting police officers across the country.” 

Wright sent Ricochet an academic article about police doxxing, as well as a number of screenshots and links to social media posts. Most appear to originate from a 2023 Rebel News doxxing campaign directed at one Vancouver Police officer. 

The CACP are now calling on the federal government to amend Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, to make it a criminal offense to “dox the police.”

Anna Willats, a founding member of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, said that the messages from CACP were “not surprising, but very alarming,” suggesting that police are “a special category of people that deserve extra protection,” which fails to acknowledge the increasingly disproportionate power that police have to surveil and infiltrate protest movements.

Willats looked at the information sent to Ricochet Media and said it appeared that CACP are trying to make a case by including “all sorts of information” that are “tangentially related,” as a diversion tactic.

She also said that the social media posts came from “very extremist groups of people,” such as trucker convoy protesters and followers of the far-right website Rebel News.

“I know many people who have been targeted [with doxxing or online harassment]. This isn’t something that police experience exclusively,” Willats said. 

“The one police officer, a woman at a Vancouver protest who was targeted by Rebel News and other right wing trolls, that is totally unpleasant and awful to go through, but, one case does not make it a widespread situation.”

Kevin Walby, a University of Winnipeg criminal justice professor and researcher, also questioned the validity of Carrique’s claim that increased protests have led to an increase in violence towards police by activists. “It’s all rhetorical. It’s all completely made up. He can’t point to one actual incident,” he said.

He also pointed out what he sees as blatant racism in Carrique’s comments.

Walby says Carrique is deliberately using language that paints coalitions of activist groups as somehow threatening. “He refers to activist groups as ‘splinter groups’ and that is explicitly anti-terrorism discourse or rhetoric… he refers to ‘thugs’ who are attaching themselves to the protests, and ‘thug’ is a racialized term, usually referring to Black gang-affiliated persons.”

In July, the CACP passed a resolution to lobby for the change to Bill C-63.  

However, lawyer Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, who is also director of the fundamental freedoms program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, doesn’t think that amending legislation to suit police interests is necessary or responsible.

“The situation can be addressed through already existing law,” she said. She said police already have tools to protect themselves from threats such as doxxing, adding that police could also request publication bans or press harassment charges.

McNicholl explained that everyone, including the police, have the right to security and privacy as protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, police “have a duty” to both protect public safety and facilitate the public’s fundamental right to protest, she said.

“They (the police) should keep that in mind when defining their role in our society,” she said.

Walby said that examples of police being victims of protesters has also not been documented in the news, whereas there are numerous examples of police hostility to activists and land defenders.

He called it just another tactic by police to steer more taxpayer money into police resources and grant more powers to police institutions through favorable legislation, such as changes to Bill C-63.

“They’re trying to deter people from engaging in protest or political action. They’re trying to suggest that political activity is somehow a bad thing,” Walby said. 

“If anyone’s ever been to a Palestinian solidarity rally, they would know that actually these are quite peaceful activities.”

Walby said the CACP is a lobby group advocating for increased institutional police power. He said “police are preying upon people’s fears,” to divert money from community-led safety initiatives.  

“The historic role of the police has also contributed to that, in terms of disappearing young Indigenous people, taking them away, sending them or coercing them into going to residential schools, or, as part of the 60s Scoop,” he said.

Before being escorted toward the exit, Ricochet was waiting for an interview with Bonnie Emerson, the co-chair of Policing with Indigenous Peoples Committee, and a superintendent of community engagement for the Winnipeg Police Service.

Ricochet asked Emerson about the two competing narratives coming from activists and land defenders regarding evidence of police brutality and surveillance, versus the police claim to be victims. 

“They don’t have to be competing. If there’s a complaint from any citizen, First Nation or non-First Nation, as far as their interaction with the police service, there are mechanisms for accountability to make sure that the police response is appropriate,” Emerson said.

She pointed out that there are Indigenous police officers also being doxxed by activists. 

“Some of the members across Canada that are First Nations are being doxxed,” she said. “But when you have that happen, and people in community call them out publicly on social media, that’s very difficult for those members to go through, so I’ve engaged with leadership nationally and locally to say, how do we support our First Nations members?”

Ricochet could not independently identify any instances of Indigenous officers being doxxed.

Willats said that CPAC’s claims of doxxing are concerning because it blankets “all protesters as the problem.” 

Protests are “a fact of life,” especially in big cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, she said. “Police need to accept that as part of the job they agreed to take on.” 

Instead, police chiefs have been deploying an increasingly militarized heavy presence at protests. “Demonstrations are over policed,” Willats said. 

Willats said that the TPAC believes the police role at protests could instead be done by volunteers as marshals, who act as peacekeepers trained to de-escalate and direct traffic, which would reduce police resources and instances of violence.

“When people’s right to assemble is thrown into doubt, then it gets heated and it escalates, and then the police will always respond to escalation with more escalation,” said Willats. “They’re heavily armed, they are uniformed, they are aggressive.” 

She said that the police are “architects of their own problem,” when it comes to their own sense of being victimized. 

“The answer is to focus on the people who the police have victimized. The answer is to focus on the system of power that put the police in that position in the first place, and that’s the leadership of police forces.”

Crystal Greene is the BIPOC Investigating Canada fellow for Ricochet, IndigiNews and Pivot Media, with support from Canadian Race Relations Foundation and Journalists for Human Rights.

Clarification: This story was updated to add that after being asked to leave, this reporter did another interview, which was cut short by Wright.