This motion, which followed SWN Resources Canada Inc v Claire, 2013 NBQB 328, was heard in the New Brunswick Court of Queen’s Bench, Trial Division.

This motion involved the protest of a company, the Applicant, SWN Resources, which did exploration work for oil and gas companies. Protestors, some of whom were Indigenous persons, had been preventing continued work at one of the Applicant’s compounds. In a previous court hearing, the Applicant had succeeded in getting an interlocutory injunction to prevent protestors from blocking its activities.

In this hearing, the issue before the Court was whether the existing interlocutory injunction could be varied or extended. The Applicant requested a variation of the original court order on the basis that RCMP officers on site were not enforcing the injunction, and the company wanted the Court to change the order so that it would require RCMP officers to enforce it. 

Instead, the Court ordered that the unaltered injunction be reprinted in local newspapers in French and English so that the public would have a greater awareness of it. The Court also extended the injunction on the basis that the facts that had given rise to the existing injunction had not changed.

This decision was subsequently appealed in SWN Resources Canada Inc v Claire, 2013 NBQB 346.

View the Decision on CanLII: www.canlii.org/en/nb/nbqb/doc/2013/2013nbqb342/2013nbqb342.html

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