119 Days in the Courtroom: Inside the Cohen Commission on Fraser River Sockeye

In the fall of 2010, thousands of people marched in the rain over the Burrard Street Bridge to protest the decline of Fraser River sockeye salmon. After the speeches, Scott Renyard walked a block to the Federal Court building to see what was happening inside the Cohen Commission of Inquiry. He sat in the back row of the gallery, thinking maybe he could grab a few shots of an empty courtroom for his film The Pristine Coast. By the end of the day, he had been given the only camera position in the courtroom to film the inquiry live. Over the next year, he would record 119 of 133 hearing days, witness governments lining up to defend industry against their own citizens, have his audio feed sabotaged during the most anticipated testimony, and produce two feature documentaries from the footage. One filmmaker. One camera. No budget. This is the story of how it happened.

This article is a part of our interview series with Scott Renyard, founder of The Green Channel. 

Read the first part here: From Revelstoke to The Green Channel and part two here: From the Chilliwack River to Climate Change: The Pristine Coast Story

Question: You ended up recording 119 days of the Cohen Inquiry hearings. That started as a side trip for footage for The Pristine Coast. How did you go from sitting in the back row of the gallery to becoming the only camera in the courtroom for an entire year?

Alexandra Morton and First Nations communities that relied on the Fraser River sockeye decided to hold another protest. This time, it was primarily a platoon of traditional canoes that paddled down the Fraser River from Hell’s Gate that ended in downtown Vancouver at the old Snauq village site near the mouth of False Creek. After speeches from several participants, over a thousand protestors walked in the pouring rain over the Burrard Street Bridge to the Vancouver Art Gallery. The crowd rallied around a number of speakers, including Alexandra Morton, condemning the lack of action to protect the Fraser River sockeye from the negative impacts from British Columbia’s fish farms.. Many participants feared that the Cohen Inquiry was merely a delay tactic and there was no intention by the Harper-led federal government to do anything to protect the sockeye. This protest was timed to land during the first days of the Cohen Inquiry hearings, which was underway a block away in the Federal Court building at the corner of Georgia and Granville Street.

At the end of the rally, I decided to go and attend the afternoon session of the Inquiry, which was a decision that would change my life for the next three years.

The Cohen Inquiry was being held in a courtroom on the fourth floor of the Federal Court building. I arrived just as the afternoon session was about to start. I sat in the back row of the gallery and thought at the time maybe I could tie the ending of my film, which I now called The Pristine Coast, to the Inquiry in some way. Even showing the audience the empty courtroom after the day was over would be an interesting visual. But then something unexpected happened. 

Moments later, the communications director, Carla S. Shore, sat two seats away from me with a badge identifying her role at the inquiry. At the mid-afternoon break, I asked her if I could film the courtroom for my documentary. She asked to meet after the last session, and I told her about my film and that I was interested in getting some footage of the inquiry. She said that I was welcome to film during the inquiry, and I could come the next morning. I had no idea this was a possibility. 

I arrived a half hour before the next day’s session, as instructed. I was told that I had to be set up and in the designated spot, which was at the front of the courtroom next to Commissioner Cohen. No leaving the spot during the hearings, so make sure to visit the bathroom before the session starts. By the end of the day, I learned that its pretty standard for Canadian inquiries to have at least one designated camera position for the media to record the goings on at an Inquiry. And it turned out that mainstream media, although set up to record, was not interested in following this inquiry. So, I got the spot.

The first day was thrilling as I watched each lawyer and participant exchange questions and answers. Since I was beside the Commissioner, all of the participants were facing the camera which provided the perfect angle to record all the participants’ testimony.  One hurdle that I needed to overcome was the lighting. On the first day, even though there were plenty of windows, it was a dark rainy day outside. The room was dark and not well lit. At the first break, Lennard Giles, the sergeant-at-arms for the proceedings, was very kind and asked if the lighting was ok for me.  I told him that it could be better for sure. He told me that it was ok for me to adjust the blinds, move the lamps on the desk and add light. It was a god send for the quality of the images I was able to capture. And as the days got brighter, I adjusted the window blinds to bring down the light on the participants so I could capture the best images.  

The one drawback of the terms of reference was only one camera was allowed at a time. So to capture the person speaking I had to quickly swing my camera from subject to subject. It became a version of whack-a-mole since it was important to me to be on the speaker for every sentence spoken. But there was no way to know when the speaker I was on would stop speaking and when the next person would start. As time went on though, I got pretty good at anticipating who to move to and to adjust focus while panning. In the end, the footage I captured with the motion added to the drama of the footage. 

I asked if I could come back the next day, and Ms. Shore told me I could come back as often as I wanted, as long as the spot was open. So I filmed the last few days until the Christmas break in December of 2010. By the last day, I had gotten to know the staff. So I let them know that I was interested in coming back after the break and record as many days as possible. 

Because of the many days needed to cover this event, I couldn’t afford to pay a cameraman to be at the Inquiry. So, I knew it was going to be me or nothing. So, over the Christmas break, I reorganized my life in a way that I could be there, still run my company, buy the necessary hard drives to store all of the footage, and be ready to film for up to 6 or 7 hours a day for as long as it would take. And it took most of 2011 before the Inquiry could call it a wrap on the hearings. 

A few protestors that knew me wanted me to blast out clips and criticize the Inquiry right from the get go. . But my goal was not to criticize the inquiry but to be able to record as much of the hearings as possible. I said there would be plenty of time to analyze if the Inquiry was effective or not. But in my mind, our wild sockeye populations were at stake and there was likely real value in knowing what all the stakeholder’s positions were and why . I also thought it was important that I record as much of this event as possible so that the stakeholder could see the footage, study it, and maybe, in the future, come to an understanding that would save our wild sockeye. The written word is great for researchers and those keen to study the issue. As well,  I hoped that this video library would find a broader audience. And if the public could see what everyone was fighting over, they could also weigh in and expect better from our governments. 

In the end, I was allowed to record as many days that I wanted with just a couple of exceptions when another broadcaster needed footage for the news. 

As the days at the inquiry passed, another documentary was beginning to brew in my mind. Stakeholders and experts called to share their views and expertise on a wide range of topics relating to the Fraser River sockeye populations. The testimony was a good mix of economic, social, and environmental impacts, with much of it new information, and some of the findings were extraordinary. The volume of this information was too much to include in The Pristine Coast. So I began to formulate a film structure, like a book with chapters, that stitched together these findings like a courtroom drama. But instead trying to uncover who-did-it in a murder trial. This film would be a who-dun-it about who or what was killing the salmon? The bonus was this inquiry was structured like a trial in the way evidence was being presented, which wasn’t typical of all Canadian Inquiries. The name of the film came to me one day when Len Giles stated his usual “All rise” just as Commissioner Cohen entered the courtroom , the title became “Trial of an Iconic Species”. 

Some of the evidence presented is as compelling as any courtroom drama, the question was, would anything come along that would disrupt my near exclusive access to the camera position in the courtroom? I mean to have a courtroom drama, I needed to record the ending. I was certainly concerned that another big broadcaster would come along and insist they have the camera position and I would get bumped at a critical moment and the footage would either be unavailable or shot in a style that was very different to the way I was filming the testimony. 

It wasn’t long before I discovered something else about inquiries in Canada. I had always assumed that our governments played a passive, information gathering role during Inquiries. And generally, information gathering is the purpose. What I didn’t expect was that the government would take an active public position and support one side. So I was initially and naively quite surprised when the Provincial Government of BC, Federal Government of Canada, and the Aquaculture Industry all stood up as a group to object to something or other. But after thinking about it for a moment, it made sense, governments would naturally take the side of industry when a source of tax revenue is threatened. Even if the industry’s net benefit to the country is questionable.

Two witnesses, Kristi Miller (a scientist at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who was being muzzled by the Harper government because of a paper she published in the peer reviewed journal Science) and Alexandra Morton (who as an independent biologist had been also publishing articles about open net pen fish farming impacts and leading legal challenges), were slated to testify in August and September of 2011. Both had been in the news about the impacts of disease and aquaculture respectively, and those were the most likely days other broadcasters would want footage. In order to preserve my style on those days, I asked to remain as the cameraman, and I would become the feed for other broadcasters during those emotionally charged days. The Inquiry agreed and other broadcasters were able to capture my footage using a line feed to a media room outside the courtroom. I was relieved to say the least. 

On the Miller and Morton days, the gallery filled up.  It was clear that a good portion of the general public believed that open net pen fish farms were the cause of wild salmon declines and they stirred with every moment during those days. The tension in the room was palpable. The Federal Government, of course, was controlled by the Harper conservatives at the time and they clearly wanted to put a lid on the controversy.

Throughout the inquiry, I had been given a line audio feed from the Inquiry sound board so I could get a quality audio recording. All participants, council and witnesses, spoke into microphones that sat on the desk in front of each one of them. On the Miller and Morton days, a new sound guy was suddenly at the board, and my line feed was just static. I introduced myself to the new guy and told him my feed was not working. He just looked at me and shrugged his shoulders and made no attempt to fix the issue. It looked to me that he was there to sabotage my audio feed. Luckily, I had anticipated that a disruption could happen and was recording the audio in two ways. But If my suspicion was true, it was a feeble and probably illegal attempt by someone within the Federal government to impair the proper reporting of goings on at the inquiry by the media. It didn’t work, of course, and a second film emerged from what happened during the Morton days.

Some would argue that Alexandra Morton was the instigating force that led to the need for an inquiry. Her work over the years raised public awareness about the problems associated with raising farmed fish in the ocean and subsequent decline in wild salmon populations. The dramatic decline in Fraser River sockeye populations gave the government little choice but to, at the very minimum, look to be doing something to stop them from going extinct. 

But the Federal government, instead of taking her concerns to heart and solving the issue, decided instead to try and intimidate her. So, looking back, it makes sense that someone from above knew what was coming during the Morton days and wanted to block this odd-ball independent filmmaker that was willing to stand in the court for a year for free to have a chance to record it.

Nothing could be so shocking as a group of powerful men trying to waste time during her testimony by going over her education, credentials, and her blog as a way to deflect or block or minimize what she might say. I wasn’t planning on this second film at all, but I thought this was clearly beneath what I thought Canada was all about. So, from what I saw, I needed to make this a stand alone piece. Morton’s two days on the stand became the documentary, “The Unofficial Trial of Alexandra Morton”. 

Instead of embracing the work of someone who was trying to alert the authorities to a problem that was going to affect the social, economic, and environmental fabric of British Columbia’s entire coast, the government of the day decided to just try and shut her up.

By the end of the inquiry, I had recorded 119 days of 133 days of testimony, and most of the missing days were at the beginning when I had no idea that I could participate in such a meaningful way. As part of my contribution, I decided to create a series of 395 episodes from the footage and it was divided by day and the corresponding hearing day segment: : early morning, late morning, early afternoon, late afternoon to match the official transcripts.. The inquiry had 2147 official exhibits by the time the hearings closed (although sometime during the writing of the report, two exhibits were disallowed, and the official number became 2145). I decided to call my video collection of the inquiry, Exhibit 2148: The Uncertain Future of Fraser River Sockeye. The unofficial last exhibit.

Throughout the inquiry, there would be days off due mostly to scheduling issues or perhaps to give the various council teams time to prepare for the next round of hearing days. During those breaks, I continued to work on The Pristine Coast by conducting interviews or going out into the field to gather background footage. 

One observation that came up during the hearings was that the Harrison River sockeye population(a subpopulation of the Fraser river system) was doing remarkably well compared to other Fraser River sockeye stocks. So, I thought footage of the Harrison River was an important location to cover. On my first scout out to the Harrison River with my camera, a man, Francois Perreault, came stomping across the beach towards me. This has happened fairly often when I’ve been out filming, and most of the time the people approaching me are friendly. But in this case, he looked angry. As he got closer, he said, “It’s about time someone came out here. Look at this, look at this!!” I had just arrived, and I asked, “what do you mean?” “Look at all the fish floating down the river! It’s a disaster!”

After talking with Francois for a few minutes, he told me it’s much worse up river. He had a boat and offered to take me up to the location, and he was right, thousands of sockeye salmon were dead. This footage not only made it into the film, it was a crucial finding that I was later able to explain in the film. Namely, that there was a ripple effect of different runs of fish up and down the BC coast that died off or crashed depending on which ones were exposed to the deadly viruses first. And those that were exposed likely became carriers of deadly viruses, which spread the diseases to other populations that weren’t as close to the farms. And once the virus took hold in the new population, it would experience a die-off. 

So, it’s likely that the Harrison River fish have a migration route that went around the south end of Vancouver Island or some other path that avoided the early fish farms on the east side of Vancouver Island. But then later encountered new farms on the west coast of Vancouver Island that became operational much later or suddenly were exposed to farms or a newly infected population that intermingled with the Harrison River fish.

After seeing what happened on the Harrison, I decided to go further up the Fraser River to see if I could see a similar die-off. One day, I pulled into a boat launch off of St. Elmo Road and saw First Nation fishermen out on the Fraser gillnetting sockeye. When they came to shore, I asked if I could see their catch and film their activities. The protocol was to consult with an elder, and someone was quickly dispatched to bring an elder down to the beach to meet with me. We had a lovely chat, and I explained that I was making a film about the decline of our wild salmon populations. They agreed to allow me to film their fishing activities, but the elder asked if I knew why the fish had “burn marks”. Upon inspecting their catch, sure enough, some of their sockeye appeared to have burn marks. After thinking about it, I told the elder, I believe the burn marks are actually scars from sea lice that bit these fish when they were juveniles. And as the fish grew, the scars got bigger and often they didn’t heal properly because the fish’s immune system was compromised. Little did I realize at the time that the sea lice bites were loaded with virulent viruses that also compromised the fish’s ability to heal.

Near the end of the hearings, I had lost a lot of weight. I thought it was because of the long hours and just simply doing too much. But then, one day, while walking across my backyard to retrieve the garbage cans from the lane, I passed out. When I awoke, I found myself on my back looking up at the sky. Something was wrong, so off I went to the emergency department. The first visit, I was sent home and told to relax, I was suffering from stress. But the next day, something still didn’t feel right, so I went back and insisted on a blood test. My white blood cell count came back very low. The emergency doctor told me to visit my doctor. My doctor at the time was Dr Jonn Matsen and he suggested I go see a new doctor, fresh out of school. After some testing, I discovered that I had lyme disease, and it was very advanced. 

It was a shock because I could not recall being bitten by a tick. I started off my recovery with antibiotics, and as soon as the infection started to die-off, I was very weak, and I was pretty much bed ridden for the first 6 to 8 months. My recovery took over 5 years. I’m able to report that I managed to get a full recovery and often help people with lyme disease on how to achieve a full cure. I thought it was a bit ironic that I would be stricken with a tick born illness while filming the ocean version of ocean tick like illnesses (sea lice are known as the ticks of the sea) for fish.

In spite of the disease, I turned my attention back to The Pristine Coast film. I was now armed with a much broader knowledge regarding Pacific salmon and the many issues around these fish. Slowly, over the next couple of years, I found my voice, or an investigative style that I felt would create a sense of urgency for an issue that was growing in scope as each day passed.

One morning, I was reading The Vancouver Sun, and there was an article about a young Phd student, Trisha Atwood, who had been studying the importance of predators in aquatic ecosystems. She found that when predators were removed, carbon dioxide emissions from the aquatic ecosystem increased by ninety-three percent. It’s rare to have an Ah-ha moment in a career, but I felt this was the third Ah-ha moment for this film. The first one was the realization that diseases amplified in fish farms were affecting all finfish populations right across the ocean. And the second was, the collapse of wild fish populations across the ocean. The third ah-ha was that the loss of wild fish on this scale was clearly a major contributor to global warming. I booked an interview with Ms. Atwood and quickly began to rewrite the ending of the film.

The Pristine Coast premiered at the 2014 Vancouver International Film Festival to 4 packed screenings. It was nominated for an Impact Award and won the 2015 prestigious Focal International Award in London for best use of archival footage. The audience reaction to the film was also interesting. A somewhat lengthy silence. Then, after a few minutes, as they thought about my findings, a robust and lengthy Q & A session about how such a serious problem had been allowed to go on for so long. 

At one screening, a fisheries biologist stood up during the Q & A and said, “I came to an earlier screening and thought that you were a nut, but I’m here to say that you are on to something here and we all need to pay attention”. It was great to hear that the connections I made in the film were beginning to resonate with academics.

Years later, November 3rd, 2021, I had a zoom meeting with Burnaby MP Terry Beech. This meeting was not about my films, but about transportation. You see, I also own a film truck rental company, and the Federal government was collecting information about problems in the transportation sector following the COVID pandemic. During our conversation, I said that I was all for shifting to emissions-free trucks, but the cost was unrealistic. For my small company, it would have easily cost more than 20 millions dollars to make the shift. And the cost of battery replacement was prohibitive and probably uninsurable. 

But to illustrate I was interested, I mentioned The Green Channel which is a streaming service I founded for environmental content and my film The Pristine Coast. Terry was very surprised that I was the same person who made the film and then told me that The Pristine Coast had a profound impact on the Federal government’s policy surrounding aquaculture. It was satisfying to hear that my work had an impact, even though shifting away from open net pen fish farms has been fraught with legal challenges from the industry.

I claim that the loss of fish in the ocean is not being caused by climate change, the loss of fish in the ocean is causing climate change.

Question: Two feature documentaries came out of the Cohen footage: Trial of an Iconic Species and The Unofficial Trial of Alexandra Morton. How did the Morton testimony become its own film?

When I first got permission to film during the hearings at the Cohen Inquiry, my goal was to acquire some footage for The Pristine Coast. But it wasn’t long before I began thinking about making a second documentary about the key science that could lead to the smoking gun. The inquiry’s mandate was not to find fault or find a smoking gun, but as an independent filmmaker, I could stitch together the best science on what was causing the Fraser River sockeye decline and see where it would lead. Little did I realize that I would be witness to some amazing courtroom exchanges and information that would be as compelling as any courtroom drama. I was also excited by the possibility that this film would be a first in Canada. I don’t believe a courtroom style documentary has ever been made using actual footage of a court proceeding in Canada.

As I mentioned before, two witnesses, Kristi Miller and Alexandra Morton, were scheduled to testify in August and September 2011. Dr. Kristi Miller, a scientist working for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, published an article in the journal Science which revealed that a virus from fish farms was killing wild salmon. She became a high-profile example of a policy of the Harper government to try and control the message by forbidding government employees from speaking to the press. Her work still got out into the press, and the muzzling of federal scientists became a huge controversy and, in the end, had the opposite effect and brought more attention to her work. The public wanted to know what the government was trying to hide.

Alexandra Morton, on the other hand, had been raising awareness since 1989, and her famous “Get Out Migration” and Paddle Protest down the Fraser River brought out thousands of people in support of wild salmon populations.

Both Morton and Miller packed the gallery. And for me, standing at the front of the courtroom, that for most days of the hearings was sparsely attended, was exciting to say the least. Miller was asked many probing questions, but her treatment on the stand was quite respectful even though there were testy moments, objections, and the like.

It was Alexandra Morton’s testimony that became the second documentary from the Cohen footage. I was expecting some fireworks, but I did not expect the Federal Government, Provincial Government, Aquaculture industry, and Aboriginal Aquaculture lawyers to go after a whistleblower like they did. And to be honest, I don’t think all of the lawyers thought this was a good idea. Just a hunch, but it felt like instructions from above carried the day and they were carrying out the wishes of their bosses. In my humble opinion, people like Alexandra Morton should receive the Order of Canada for her decades of dedication in trying to protect wild salmon.

After completing the film, I placed it with the educational distributor, Moving Images. I gave the film to the Executive Director at the time, Sylvia Jonescu Lisitza, late one afternoon. The next morning at 6:00 AM, I got a call from her, “Thanks a lot!” she said. “What? Sylvia?” I said as I was waking up. “Thanks a lot!” “Your damn movie kept me awake all night! I’m so bloody mad!” This is a movie that will make you mad. And it should.