A U.S. court on Friday dismissed Canadian logging industry giant Resolute Forest Products’ defamation lawsuit against Greenpeace. This decision closes a legal series of nearly a decade which took root in particular in Quebec, in the question of the protection of the caribou.
In a statement released Thursday, Greenpeace Canada welcomed the decision. “This monumental victory comes nearly a decade after logging giant Resolute launched a series of lawsuits to silence Greenpeace Canada, Greenpeace USA, individual activists and its own independent auditors. about its activities in the boreal forest and their impact on threatened woodland caribou herds,” the environmental organization said.
According to Greenpeace, “the goal of these SLAPPs is to silence public interest groups and squander their financial resources instead of addressing the company’s impact on the environment.” Another Resolute lawsuit against Greenpeace is pending in Ontario.
For its part, the Resolute company told La Presse that it was studying the decision of the Court of the Northern District of California. “It would be premature to comment on it at this stage,” Seth Kursman, vice president of corporate communications, sustainability and government affairs, said in an email.
An investigation by La Presse recently reported the closeness between the forestry company Resolute and the elected officials of the Boreal Forest Alliance, an organization funded by taxpayers on the North Shore and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean. The Boreal Forest Alliance was founded in 2014, in the wake of the campaign led in particular by Greenpeace. This campaign ended up costing Resolute its Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for sound forest management.
In early March, Resolute was acquired by Paper Excellence, which in turn became one of the largest logging companies in Canada.
“The Resolute lawsuits show how far some companies are willing to go to profit from the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of the natural world,” Priyanka Vittal, legal counsel for Greenpeace Canada, said in a statement. […] It is time for the new owner of Resolute — that is, Paper Excellence — to end these pointless lawsuits and rethink its operational activities. »
