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“Hold on a minute, who is this?”

I could feel the words light up every synapse inside my skull. It was real.

When you’ve been a reporter for long enough, you learn to practise an Irish-Catholic level of pessimism. You might think you have all the evidence in the world, but you’re probably wrong. Someone somewhere definitely misunderstood something at some point and passed along some bad information.

But now I knew it was real.

I’d first heard of the private investigator about a month earlier. After the union representing Quebec’s provincial police learned that six of their members were being investigated for alleged acts of sexual and physical abuse against Indigenous women, it hired a detective to investigate … the women?

Read the full story here, published today on Ricochet. And if you’re not yet a paid subscriber, join us — today only, save $15 off a year’s subscription!

Some context: In October 2015, Radio-Canada aired an hour-long investigative report alleging these acts of abuse against women in Val-d’Or. The report triggered a Montreal police investigation into the provincial police. The Montreal police handed their findings to Quebec’s Crown prosecutor, who determined there wasn’t enough evidence to press charges.

Once it was announced that none of the men would be indicted, the union representing them and thousands of other provincial police officers decided to sue Radio-Canada for defamation. In the course of this lawsuit, they enlisted the help of a private investigator to look into the journalist and her sources.

I’d heard that story and didn’t quite believe it. So I started asking around. A surprising number of people relayed the same story to me in remarkable detail. Six people, in fact. Most of them didn't know each other.

Then I started digging through court records and there it was, in black and white, in a legal document filed by Radio-Canada’s lawyers from a sworn statement by journalist Josée Dupuis.

The detective had a name: Robert Demers.

According to Dupuis’ affidavit, Demers asked one of the women quoted in the Radio-Canada report if she’d been paid for her testimony and if she could help find Dupuis’ other sources. The woman also said he presented himself as a current or former agent of the RCMP. She told Dupuis she assumed she was the target of a criminal investigation.

Radio-Canada’s lawyer claims this was an act of intimidation by the police union who had hired Demers.

So I called Demers to ask if any of this was true.

“Hi, I’m a reporter with Ricochet Media investigating the police lawsuit against Radio-Canada. Did the police union hire you to investigate Josée Dupuis and her sources?”

There was a pause.

“Hold on a minute, who is this?” he said.

That’s when I realized there is no turning back. We’re all in.

I repeated myself and he confirmed that he did, in fact, conduct “an investigation” for the union that represents Quebec’s provincial police. He couldn’t say anything else, as the matter is before the court. Neither could the police union, for the same reasons.

You can’t print the kind of information contained in those legal documents until you give the other parties a chance to explain their side of things. After Demers and the union said their piece, we were good to go with our story.

This doesn’t mean anyone is guilty of anything and it doesn’t mean the police union or Demers did anything illegal.

But it does raise a series of ethical questions and it does explain the enormous pressure these women came under for speaking out. Both the Crown prosecutors and the independent auditor who oversaw the Montreal police’s investigation said these women’s statements were credible.

And the Montreal police detectives who conducted the investigation found them at least credible enough to forward to the prosecutor’s office.

The $2.5-million lawsuit filed against Radio-Canada is probably the last pending legal matter related to the Val-d’Or investigation. Right now, a judge is looking over the police union’s claim to determine whether to even hear the case in court.

Whatever the decision, it will say a lot about the state of press freedom in Quebec, so stay tuned.

This has been an exceptionally exhausting week but it’s reaffirmed my commitment to the project and my gratitude to the people who’ve supported it. So thank you. Very much.

While I have you here, I also wanted to share some exciting news.

Yesterday was my birthday (that’s not the exciting part), and to celebrate we’re doing a one-day-only flash sale. Save $15 on an annual subscription to The Rover, and help fund my journalism.

In addition to almost 600 paid subscribers, we have several thousand free subscribers who only get occasional newsletters, like this one. If you’ve been thinking of upgrading to the full ARMY OF CHAMPIONS experience, today is the day to do it.

Feel free to forward this email to your friends, or just share this link with them: rover.substack.com/flash.

You can also be a total mensch, and get that special someone a gift subscription. There’s really no better way to say I love you in this, the year of our lord 2020, than to sign them up for an email newsletter.

As an added incentive, if we get 25 new subscribers today, I will jump into the St. Laurence river, film it and send you all the video. In October. It’s going to be chilly, but there’s nothing I won’t do to get this project fully funded. Are you with me?