James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, at the Values Voter Summit in Washington on Oct. 12, 2019. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times
American journalist James O’Keefe travelled to Nova Scotia to attempt to receive a fine for defying the province’s ban on hiking in the woods, but was ultimately not charged.
O’Keefe, the founder of O’Keefe Media Group, said in an Aug. 26 video on X that he travelled to Sydney, N.S., to purposely try to receive a $25,000 fine after seeing Canadian Armed Forces veteran Jeff Evely receive a $28,872.50 ticket for hiking in the woods in the Sydney area. Evely had went against the provincial orders on Aug.8 in order to protest the law. After receiving the fine, he filed a legal challenge against the forest access ban, with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms representing him in court.
“I thought about doing this, but then I saw Jeff’s story, and then I figured, ‘hey, I should do that,’” O’Keefe said.
O’Keefe said Cape Breton Regional Police officers arrived at the trail after being informed via the province’s phone line that he was hiking on it, but left after around 10 minutes without finding and speaking with O’Keefe.
The video shows that while hiking on the trail, O’Keefe also spoke with a worker from the Department of Natural Resources who was driving an ATV. When O’Keefe asked the worker about the ban and said he wasn’t carrying anything that could start a fire, the worker responded, “If you want to break the law, talk to Trump,” referring to the U.S. president.
The Nova Scotia government implemented a ban on walking, hiking, camping, fishing, or picnicking in any wooded area of the province without a permit due to risks of wildfire. The ban, which was implemented on Aug. 5 and lasts until Oct. 15, can carry fines of up to $25,000.
The ban was implemented in response to forest fires impacting the region. According to Natural Resources Canada, Nova Scotia has experienced 138 wildfires so far in 2025, compared to 990 in Alberta and 919 in B.C.
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said when announcing the ban that while he understood that people wanted to enjoy summer activities, staying out of the woods was a “small price to pay right now to avoid the kind of devastation that we saw from the wildfires in 2023.” Nova Scotia also banned people from entering forests in 2023, when two wildfires were burning down homes in the suburbs of Halifax.
O’Keefe questioned Houston on X asking why he would “ban hiking” in the province, while also allowing workers to drive ATVs through forests that emit exhaust fumes and are “100 times more likely to start a fire.”
O’Keefe was previously with Project Veritas, an activist organization he founded that is known for its undercover journalism using hidden cameras.
The group became more widely known it was raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into the alleged theft of the diary of Ashley Biden, the daughter of then-president Joe Biden. O’Keefe said they had chosen not to publish the contents of the diary because they could not authenticate it, and they instead returned it to law enforcement.