RCMP dashcam footage of the March arrest of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam shows an arriving officer jump-tackling the chief to the ground without warning, punching him in the head and putting him in a chokehold.
In the nearly 12-minute video obtained by CBC News, an agitated Adam swears repeatedly at the police officers, accuses the RCMP of harassing him and removes his jacket while appearing ready to fight one of the officers after RCMP pulled behind his idling truck outside a Fort McMurray, Alta., casino early in the morning of March 10.
RCMP had noticed Adam’s licence plate had expired.
“F–king leave us alone!” Adam shouts at an RCMP officer, moments after he pulled up behind his idling truck in the parking lot with the cruiser’s lights flashing.
“Don’t f–king stop behind us like you’re f–king watching us.”
At one point, Adam tells an officer to tell his sergeant that “Chief Adam f–king tells you, ‘I’m tired of being harassed by the RCMP.'”
The officer, who is still in his vehicle at that point, repeatedly tells Adam to return to his vehicle and that he will talk to him in a minute.
“You and I are going to have a f–king problem, right here, right f–king now,” Adam tells the officer.
Adam appears to become increasingly agitated and at one point storms past the rear of his truck while removing his jacket. A few moments later, he assumed a fighting stance while his wife appeared to try to calm him.
RCMP dashcam footage of the March arrest of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam shows an arriving officer jump-tackling the chief to the ground without warning, punching him in the head and putting him in a chokehold. (Court exhibit)
The video shows the officer briefly grabbing Adam’s wife as she stands at the rear passenger side door of the truck. Adam yells at the officer to not touch his wife.
About seven minutes into the incident, behind Adam’s truck, the officer tries to grab Adam’s left arm in what appears to be an attempt to arrest him.
At that moment, another officer runs up and jump-tackles Adam to the ground. The second officer punches Adam in the head as he continues to struggle and a few seconds later places him in a chokehold.
“F–k you, don’t resist arrest!” the officer yells, along with, “Don’t resist! Don’t resist!”
Adam’s face is bloody as officers lead him to their vehicle.
‘I struck the male’
An affidavit filed in court along with the video quotes the notes of Const. Simon Seguin.
“I charged at the male [Adam] with the intention of bringing him to the ground,” Seguin wrote in his notes.
“I struck the male as he tried to come up,” Seguin later wrote. “He turned on his right side. I struck him using my right hand on his right side of the face.
“I wrapped my hand [left arm] around his jaw and started squeezing.”
WATCH | Nearly 12-minute dashcam video of Chief Allan Adam’s arrest:
This RCMP dashcam shows the whole interaction between Chief Allan Adam and the RCMP outside a Fort McMurray casino in March. 11:47
Seguin said at one point, “I then wound up placing my left knee on the back of the male’s head and ‘cranked’ the male’s left arm up.”
“The male [Adam] was complaining of police brutality.”
Chief alleges officers assaulted him
Adam, through his lawyer Brian Beresh, declined an interview request. An RCMP spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
Beresh entered the video into the public court file Thursday as part of a motion seeking to have charges against Adam stayed. The RCMP had rejected Beresh’s call to publicly release it. The RCMP said they could not release it because it is evidence in the criminal case against Adam.
In an interview Thursday, Beresh said there is no way senior RCMP officers, after viewing the dashcam video, should have concluded the officers’ actions were appropriate.
“This was a false arrest; there was no basis for it, and it was excessive force used,” he said.
“We reject that totally. We will let the public look at the video and make a determination.”
At a news conference on June 6, Adam alleged Wood Buffalo RCMP officers assaulted him in a Fort McMurray, Alta., parking lot in March. (Jamie Malbeuf/CBC)
Beresh said he thinks Adam’s behaviour leading up to the arrest was “a reaction to the systemic racism that his people have suffered for a long time, and that is a part of what agitated him.”
“He, as the leader, feels that he has to stand up and make the statement,” Beresh said. “If you’re bothering me as the leader, what is happening to those people that have no voice?”
The incident occurred at about 2 a.m. MT on March 10 after Adam, his wife Freda Courtoreille and their niece left a casino in downtown Fort McMurray.
Adam said a police vehicle pulled up behind his truck while he was moving a child seat. He said he asked the officer why police were harassing him and told him who he was, and he said he told the officer he would raise the matter with his superior.
Adam said he made his way back into his truck where his wife was at the wheel, and that he told her that they weren’t allowed to go anywhere. He said she put the truck into drive, and then the officer began knocking on the window.
More officers arrived during the ensuing altercation, and Adam said one of the officers “just gave me a, what you would call in the wrestling world, a clothesline.”
During a news conference Monday, RCMP deputy commissioner Curtis Zablocki said he did not believe there was systemic racism in policing in Canada or in Alberta. (Michael Bell/The Canadian Press)
He said blood was gushing from his mouth and as he fought to maintain consciousness, he was being struck repeatedly on the back.
“Every time our people do wrong … [the RCMP] always seem to use excessive force and that has to stop,” Adam told reporters Saturday. “Enough is enough.”
Adam said that if he wasn’t a member of a minority group, he wouldn’t have been subjected to violence for an expired vehicle registration. He views the violent incident as part of a broader pattern of harassment by police of minorities across Canada.
Saturday’s news conference occurred amidst a paroxysm of mass demonstrations, some violent, across the United States, Canada and the world following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by police in Minneapolis.
Adam’s allegations of police brutality and the photo of his battered face have received widespread attention at anti-racism rallies, which attracted large crowds across the country.
RCMP says Adam resisted arrest
In an emailed statement Saturday, Wood Buffalo RCMP said officers had observed the expired licence plate on Adam’s truck and when he returned to the vehicle, a confrontation occurred. RCMP said Adam was placed under arrest, resisted the arrest, and officers “were required to use force to effect the arrest.”
A photo of the injuries sustained by Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam as shown in the affidavit filed in the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta on June 11, 2020. (Court exhibit)
RCMP charged Adam with one count each of resisting arrest and assaulting a peace officer. He is to appear in court July 2.
After reviewing the dashcam video of the incident, senior officers determined the arresting officers’ actions were reasonable “and did not meet the threshold for an external investigation.”
But Alberta’s director of law enforcement subsequently directed the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team to conduct an investigation since a criminal allegation had been made about police by Adam and his lawyer.
Trudeau ‘deeply alarmed’
On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was deeply troubled by Adam’s allegations and vowed to bring in “significant, concrete and rapid measures” to address systemic racism in policing.
“We have obviously all seen and been deeply alarmed by the pictures that Chief Adam shared,” Trudeau said.
The prime minister added his voice to concerns already raised by two other federal ministers, including Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, a former Toronto police chief, who said in a tweet that the government will be paying close attention to the independent inquiry into Adam’s allegations.
A photo of the injuries sustained by Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam as shown in the affidavit filed in the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta on June 11, 2020. (Court exhibit)
Also on Monday, the commanding officer of the RCMP in Alberta publicly denied there was systemic racism in policing in Canada.
Deputy Commissioner Curtis Zablocki told a news conference in Edmonton that he didn’t believe there was systemic racism in policing in Canada or in Alberta.
In a statement issued later, Zablocki walked back his claim, at least in part.
“We all acknowledge that racist individuals can be anywhere throughout our society and institutions — and we have acknowledged that organizationally in the RCMP.”
TORONTO – An Ontario judge says any outstanding issues regarding a proposed $32.5 billion settlement between three major tobacco companies and their creditors should be solvable in the coming months.
Ontario Superior Court Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz has released his reasons for approving a motion last week to have representatives for creditors review and vote on the proposal in December.
One of the companies, JTI-Macdonald Corp., said last week it objects to the plan in its current form and asked the court to postpone scheduling the vote until several issues were resolved.
The other two companies, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges and Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., didn’t oppose the motion but said they retained the right to contest the proposed plan down the line.
The proposal announced last month includes $24 billion for provinces and territories seeking to recover smoking-related health-care costs and about $6 billion for smokers across Canada and their loved ones.
If the proposed deal is accepted by a majority of creditors, it will then move on to the next step: a hearing to obtain the approval of the court, tentatively scheduled for early next year.
In a written decision released Monday, Morawetz said it was clear that not all issues had been resolved at this stage of the proceedings.
He pointed to “outstanding issues” between the companies regarding their respective shares of the total payout, as well as debate over the creditor status of one of JTI-Macdonald’s affiliate companies.
In order to have creditors vote on a proposal, the court must be satisfied the plan isn’t “doomed to fail” either at the creditors or court approval stages, court heard last week.
Lawyers representing plaintiffs in two Quebec class actions, those representing smokers in the rest of Canada, and 10 out of 13 provinces and territories have expressed their support for the proposal, the judge wrote in his ruling.
While JTI-Macdonald said its concerns have not been addressed, the company’s lawyer “acknowledged that the issues were solvable,” Morawetz wrote.
“At this stage, I am unable to conclude that the plans are doomed to fail,” he said.
“There are a number of outstanding issues as between the parties, but there are no issues that, in my view, cannot be solved,” he said.
The proposed settlement is the culmination of more than five years of negotiations in what Morawetz has called one of “the most complex insolvency proceedings in Canadian history.”
The companies sought creditor protection in Ontario in 2019 after Quebec’s top court upheld a landmark ruling ordering them to pay about $15 billion to plaintiffs in two class-action lawsuits.
All legal proceedings against the companies, including lawsuits filed by provincial governments, have been paused during the negotiations. That order has now been extended until the end of January 2025.
In total, the companies faced claims of more than $1 trillion, court documents show.
In October of last year, the court instructed the mediator in the case, former Chief Justice of Ontario Warren Winkler, and the monitors appointed to each company to develop a proposed plan for a global settlement, with input from the companies and creditors.
A year later, they proposed a plan that would involve upfront payments as well as annual ones based on the companies’ net after-tax income and any tax refunds, court documents show.
The monitors estimate it would take the companies about 20 years to pay the entire amount, the documents show.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed a bid by the Prince Edward Island Potato Board to overturn a 2021 decision by the federal agriculture minister to declare the entire province as “a place infested with potato wart.”
That order prohibited the export of seed potatoes from the Island to prevent the spread of the soil-borne fungus, which deforms potatoes and makes them impossible to sell.
The board had argued in Federal Court that the decision was unreasonable because there was insufficient evidence to establish that P.E.I. was infested with the fungus.
In April 2023, the Federal Court dismissed the board’s application for a judicial review, saying the order was reasonable because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said regulatory measures had failed to prevent the transmission of potato wart to unregulated fields.
On Tuesday, the Appeal Court dismissed the board’s appeal, saying the lower court had selected the correct reasonableness standard to review the minister’s order.
As well, it found the lower court was correct in accepting the minister’s view that the province was “infested” because the department had detected potato wart on 35 occasions in P.E.I.’s three counties since 2000.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick health officials are urging parents to get their children vaccinated against measles after the number of cases of the disease in a recent outbreak has more than doubled since Friday.
Sean Hatchard, spokesman for the Health Department, says measles cases in the Fredericton and the upper Saint John River Valley area have risen from five on Friday to 12 as of Tuesday morning.
Hatchard says other suspected cases are under investigation, but he did not say how and where the outbreak of the disease began.
He says data from the 2023-24 school year show that about 10 per cent of students were not completely immunized against the disease.
In response to the outbreak, Horizon Health Network is hosting measles vaccine clinics on Wednesday and Friday.
The measles virus is transmitted through the air or by direct contact with nasal or throat secretions of an infected person, and can be more severe in adults and infants.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
