[Phillips] I deserve to feel safe in my community.
[Reporter] For nearly four years
Shannon Phillips has been wondering who is watching her.
[Phillips] It was scary.
It's scary to have yourself surreptitiously photographed
[Reporter] A member of the Alberta legislature
minister of the environment in Alberta's former NDP government.
Targeted by some of the very people sworn to protect her.
Members of the Lethbridge Police Service.
[Phillips] These guys still don't understand
that there's a line between your personal feelings
and how you do your job as a law enforcement official.
[Reporter] Phillips story goes back to 2017
when the tranquillity of the castle region was shattered by a turbulent local disagreement.
[Reporter] At issue: 1,000 square kilometres of mountains and foothills
in the Castle Provincial Park.
Phillips was working on plans to phase out the use of off-highway motorized vehicles
on more than 100 kilometres of trails.
Many off-roaders didn't like it
and they weren't shy about letting her know.
[Phillips] People you know would call her [expletive] or cow
or you know [expletive] cow or [expletive]
[Reporter] Lisa Lambert, Phillips constituency assistant
was on the front lines of the insults aimed at her boss.
A daily email, phone call, visitors, social media
just a pretty daily dose of name-calling and
just kind of generalized yelly hate.
[Reporter] The vile often misogynistic rhetoric turned threatening enough
Phillips needed close protection services from the province at one point
but there were even more unsettling incidents to come
Stella's Diner is known for its home-cooked breakfast.
A perfect place for Shannon Phillips to meet with friends
including environmentalists Harvey Locke and his wife Marie-Eve Marchand.
I sit down and right behind me was a booth
and at the time I believed there were two uniformed officers
and I smiled at them I sit down
you know I acknowledge their presence
they acknowledge mine
[Reporter] Little did Phillips know
a Lethbridge police sergeant was snapping photos of the group.
Soon an on-duty constable arrived and took more pictures.
It was Lisa Lambert who first saw those photos later that day
in an anonymous social media post.
[Lambert] When I contacted her to let her know about it
she said well the only person that could have taken that was a
it was an officer in uniform
and when we realized that it was a uniformed officer who had taken this
and then would have had to share it
they were behind this?
Like that just was just unbelievable.
[Reporter] Lambert easily traced the anonymous post to one of the police officers.
I was just so sickened by
a thought that someone was out there taking photographs of her
using the power of the state
against a minister of the crown
like just
[Reporter] But a disciplinary investigation that Phillips was not even made aware of
revealed police went even further.
The constable followed Locke and Meharchand in his police cruiser for five blocks.
Running a police check on their license plate before losing their car at a red light.
Both officers were demoted.
Their misconduct found to be rooted in personal and political feelings against Phillips.
Having been cut out of that investigation left phillips wondering
if there could be more.
Then she started hearing the whispers.
So in August, Phillips filed a freedom of information request on herself and the Lethbridge Police Service
the answer would come back in 9,308 pages.
Curiously almost all of them were redacted.
Most completely blank
even though they pertained to Phillip's own files.
But there are startling new revelations in what little was released.
In 2018, months after the photo incident in the diner
Shannon Phillips was still very much on the mind of some people in the Lethbridge Police Service.
Phillip's name was often searched on the police database.
Some of the searches were legitimate and they said so.
Like that time her car was stolen.
But over the course of 2018
Phillip's name was searched eight times by five police officers.
One now retired
as well as one civilian employee.
And though files with highly-personal information were accessed
there was no investigative purpose recorded for any of the searches.
[Phillips] All of that is there
but if it was a fishing expedition
for reasons of snooping or
wanting to engage in gossip
there is no reason associated with the search in those records.
[Reporter] Emily Laidlaw is a cybersecurity legal expert
and associate professor at the University of Calgary.
She says if the searches are unauthorized
that could violate both privacy legislation
and possibly the criminal code.
So this is no different really than hacking.
It's just that they don't need to break into a system to gain access to the data
they actually have it available to them
and they're supposed to exercise you know self-restraint.
[Reporter] Had Phillips not requested her own records
the matter may well have stayed hidden forever
but now Alberta's serious incident response team is investigating all the searches.
Phillips lawyer Michael Bates is counting on ASIR to dig deep.
If they were for a personal reason, a non-law enforcement reason
what happened with the information?
Where was it spread?
How did it get used?
Those are really key important pieces to try and get to the bottom of.
[Reporter] The documents reveal yet another mystery.
This one happened before Phillips was photographed or her name searched.
In 2016, an unknown person went to the Lethbridge police
complaining they'd been drugged at a local bar six days prior.
The complaint alleges the intended victim
was none other than Shannon Phillips.
That came as a shock to Phillips.
So this was March of 2016 that this evidently happened
I'm listed as a witness in the police report
and I find out about it on December 8th 2020.
The question that comes up in my mind is
what decisions were made as to why that would not be information that would be shared
with a person who is named as an intended target?
[Reporter] The document suggests the incident was never investigated.
The Lethbridge Police Service declined an interview
and refused to answer any questions or provide any information.
Only after Alberta's Serious Incident Response team announced its investigation into the database searches
did the police service respond to say it would be inappropriate to comment on that
before the investigation was complete.
Shannon Phillips knows there could be more unsettling news to come from investigations
and in hearings
but she says it's necessary for her hometown police force to regain its position of trust.
If you cannot find it in you
to prosecute those duties in a way that leaves aside your uh feelings
uh and your little political tantrums
if you cannot do that you do not deserve the gun and the badge and the uniform.
Carolyn Dunn, CBC News
Lethbridge, Alberta.