The trial for three people charged with criminal contempt in relation to blockading the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline project in northeastern BC began in a Smithers courtroom Monday.Three so-called ‘land defenders’ with ties to the Wet'suwet'en First Nation appeared in BC Supreme Court to face charges of breaching a court injunction to stay away from CGL worksites in November of 2021.Among the accused is Molly Wickham, also known as ‘Sleydo', who was the public face of protests on behalf of Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs that culminated in a series of blockades along the CGL route starting in 2019.Those are separate from, but ultimately related to, a series of incidents of vandalism at CGL work sites for which nobody has been charged.Wickham is standing trial alongside Shaylynn Sampson, a Gitxsan woman with Wet'suwet'en family ties and Corey Jocko, a Mohawk member of the Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy from Ontario. All have pled not guilty..Coastal GasLink, which stretches some 670 kilometres across northern BC to Kitimat, will ship natural gas for export to Asia when the massive LNG Canada project comes on stream later this year. The pipeline itself was mechanically complete this fall.Although the company had signed benefit agreements with nearly two dozen elected band councils along the route, it was opposed by hereditary leaders who refused to allow the pipeline to cross their territory.A series of violent protests resulted in an injunction in the winter of 2019 barring protesters from blocking construction.Nonetheless, all three were arrested — along with 20 others — on November 19, 2021 for doing just that.The Crown is expected to call seven witnesses over the course of the two-week trail and on Monday heard from a private investigator hired by the RCMP to collect information on various protestor groups. A second witness, James Lank, was a former RCMP officer who was a security advisor at the time of the protests.It’s the second trail in relation to the incident thus far. In November a fourth protestor, Sabina Dennis was acquitted on a single contempt charge.
