not added to the list.

Howe was involved in Mi'kmaq-led anti-shale gas protests in 2013, but was never convicted of any crimes connected to the demonstrations.

The RCMP said in a statement last week its national criminal intelligence sector no longer maintains the list.

"The RCMP does not currently maintain a list of protester profiles related to any type of public demonstration as part of its national criminal intelligence functions," said the statement.

"The RCMP collects and analyzes information as it relates to criminal activity, regardless of ethnicity, and prepares assessments to inform RCMP management and front-line police officers about emerging threats."

Project recommended maintaining activists list

Project Sitka had recommended that Indigenous rights protests be reclassified separately from their previous categorization under the terrorism-extremism umbrella because of their unique historical roots in unresolvedland claims and rights issues.

It also recommended that RCMP divisions maintain and feed into a central database of activists deemed potential criminal threats that would be available to front-line officers facing Indigenous rights protests.

The email traffic shows that the RCMP were dealing with Sitka on two tracks in November 2016, said Jeffery Monaghan, an associate professor of criminology at Carleton University who obtained the original Sitka report, along with researcher Andy Crosby, in 2016 under the Access to Information Act.

On one track, senior officers, including input from then-RCMP commissioner Robert Paulson, were drafting media lines in response to a news report about the project, trying to play down Sitka by emphasizing the project was over and that it did not target Indigenous people, he said.

On the other track,