Meeting between Trudeau and cabinet ministers to discuss how to handle anti-pipeline protest underway

Prime Minister is foregoing today’s planned trip to Barbados

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the Incident Response Group will talk about how to handle the protests against a natural gas pipeline that crosses Wet’suwet’en territory in northern British Columbia. (Thomas Kienzle/AFP via Getty Images)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is meeting with an emergency group Monday to discuss anti-pipeline blockades that have shut down swaths of the country’s train system.

Trudeau says the Incident Response Group will talk about how to handle the protests against a natural gas pipeline that crosses Wet’suwet’en territory in northern British Columbia.

Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs are opposed to the project.

The group was described upon its inception in 2018 as a “dedicated, emergency committee that will convene in the event of a national crisis or during incidents elsewhere that have major implications for Canada.”

Doug Ford asks for ‘immediate action’

Trudeau is foregoing today’s planned trip to Barbados, where he was slated to meet with Caribbean leaders to campaign for a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council.

He faced criticism last week over his presence in Africa and Europe as the protests were beginning, so Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne will represent Canada in Trudeau’s place.

There’s mounting political pressure for Trudeau to put an end to the blockades.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford spoke with Trudeau late Sunday and issued a statement urging the federal government to take action.

“Premier Ford asked the prime minister to take immediate action and provide detail on a clear plan to ensure an end to this national issue,” the statement read.

Scheer wants end to ‘illegal blockades’

Federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said last week that Trudeau should tell Public Safety Minister Bill Blair to use his authority under the RCMP Act to end what he called the “illegal blockades.”

But Trudeau shot back, arguing that Canada is not a country “where politicians get to tell the police what to do in operational matters.”

A protester stands between Mohawk Warrior Society flags at a rail blockade in Tyendinaga, near Belleville, Ont., on Sunday. The protest is in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs opposed to the LNG pipeline in northern British Columbia. (Lars Hagberg/The Canadian Press)

 

Thus far, the public-facing part of Trudeau’s plan appears to centre on discussions and negotiations, rather than police action.

Carolyn Bennett, the minister for Crown-Indigenous relations, is due to meet today with her British Columbia counterpart, Indigenous Relations Minister Scott Fraser. Bennett is also ready to meet with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, should they give the go-ahead.

‘Did we learn from Ipperwash?’

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller met with Mohawk Nation representatives for hours on Saturday and said they made “modest progress.” The focus of their talks, he said, was on the pipeline in northern B.C. rather than the blockade on Tyendinaga territory near Belleville, Ont., which was at that point in its 10th day.

In an appearance on CTV’s political show Question Period, Miller pointed to the Oka and Ipperwash crises as reasons why dialogue is preferable to police intervention.

• EXCLUSIVE

  Inside the meeting between Mohawks and Canada’s Indigenous services minister

• Indigenous pro-pipeline representative says he won’t tell Wet’suwet’en chiefs what to do

A police officer died during a police raid in 1990 when Mohawks at the Kahnawake reserve south of Montreal blocked the Mercier Bridge, which became the Oka crisis. Five years later at Ipperwash, Ont., one man was killed during a standoff over a land claim by Chippewa protesters outside a provincial park.

“Thirty years ago, police moved in in Kanesatake and someone died,” Miller said. “And did we learn from that? Did we learn from Ipperwash?”

But while Ontario Provincial Police have so far declined to enforce injunctions and remove protesters from that blockade, RCMP in B.C. have made more than two dozen arrests while enforcing similar injunctions near worksites for the pipeline at the centre of the dispute. SOURCE

 

Mohawks prepare to enter 6th day of railway shutdown in support of Wet’suwet’en

Rail service between Toronto and Montreal disrupted since Thursday

Tyendinaga Mohawk member Jacob Morris says the injunction, which was issued by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Saturday at the request of CN, won’t change the goal of demonstration. (CBC News)

The people staging a demonstration in support of Wet’suwet’en pipeline opponents that has led to a five-day shutdown of passenger and freight rail traffic through eastern Ontario say they won’t back down in the face of possible police action.

Tyendinaga Mohawk members say they won’t end their demonstration until the RCMP leaves the territory of the Wet’suwet’en.

• What you need to know about the Coastal GasLink pipeline conflict

RCMP began enforcing an court order against those blocking construction on the Coastal GasLink pipeline in Northern B.C. last Thursday.

Tyendinaga Mohawk member Jacob Morris said a court injunction that forbids any continued interference with the rail line under the threat of arrest, which was issued by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Friday at the request of CN, won’t change the goal of demonstration.

“It’s a piece of paper in our eyes, another tree cut down so you can hand it to us,” said Morris.

“I’m not worried one bit.”

Via Rail has said at least 92 trains have been cancelled since the demonstration began, affecting over 16,000 passengers on one of Canada’s busiest rail corridors connecting Toronto to Montreal. CN said dozens of freight trains have been stopped, stalling shipments of everything from propane to feedstock for factories.

The CN-owned rail tracks run just outside the reserve boundaries of Tyendinaga, but are within a land claim area that stretches up to Highway 2 just north of the crossing.

The purple Haudenosaunee flag is attached to a dump truck, fitted with a snowplow shovel, that is parked near but not on the rail lines. (CBC News)A makeshift camp has sprung up along the rail tracks that now includes a porta-potty, green canvas tents and a barrel fire. The three-track crossing is about 250 kilometres west of Ottawa.

The purple Haudenosaunee flag is attached to a dump truck, fitted with a snowplow shovel, that is parked near but not on the rail lines. (CBC News)

The demonstrators have not put any obstacles across the tracks. A dump truck with a snowplow shovel attached is parked facing the tracks. However, their proximity to the rails has led to the shutdown of train traffic since Thursday.

Tyendinaga Mohawk Police Chief Jason Brant approached the demonstration camp Monday afternoon with a message that a sheriff from the court would arrive Tuesday morning to read the injunction to everyone there.

Demonstrations have flared across the country since the RCMP began enforcing the injunction on Wet’suwet’en territiory. Rail blockades have sprung up in B.C. near New Hazelton, B.C, and in Kahnawake, just south of Montreal, along with Toronto.

• RCMP arrests in Wet’suwet’en territory spark protests nationwide

• RCMP arrests another 7 as Wet’suwet’en efforts wrap up

On Monday, demonstrators from Tyendinaga watched events unfolding in British Columbia over Twitter and Facebook as the RCMP conducted another operation against the Wet’suwet’en’s Unist’ot’en camp, and spoke with one of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs by phone.

Andrew Brant from Tyendinaga says the Mohawk are returning the support shown by First Nations in B.C. during the 1990 Oka crisis. (CBC News)

Andrew Brant from Tyendinaga said the Mohawk are returning the support shown by First Nations in B.C. during the 1990 Oka crisis when Mohawks of Kanesatake, Que., faced the Canadian military over the expansion of a golf course.

“They stood with us when there was Oka, so we are going to stand with them now,” said Brant.

“We’ve gotten driven out of so many places, this is all we have left. We can understand what they are going through.” SOURCE

 

Jody Wilson-Raybould and the paradox of reconciliation in Canada

Hayden King is Anishinaabe from Beausoleil First Nation on Gchi’mnissing in Huronia, Ontario. He is the Executive Director of Yellowhead Institute, based in the Faculty of Arts at Ryerson University.

…At the end of her meticulous recounting of what she called “inappropriate” pressure her colleagues applied in an effort to defer SNC-Lavalin’s prosecution, Ms. Wilson-Raybould linked these two threads: “my understanding of the rule of law has been shaped by my experience as an Indigenous person and leader. The history of Crown-Indigenous relations in this country includes a history of the rule of law not being respected … And I have seen the negative impacts for freedom, equality, and a just society this can have firsthand.”

Knowing these dynamics better than most, and despite any of her efforts, Ms. Wilson-Raybould has been a part of a government responsible for perpetuating lack of respect for the rule of law, in this case in relation to Indigenous issues. How can all of this be reconciled? MORE

Earlier this year, in response to widespread outrage, “rule of law” was official government messaging when the RCMP served a pipeline company’s injunction in Uni’stot’en territory, on lands the clan has not agreed to share in a treaty (what the Supreme Court calls “title” lands). From Oka, through Ipperwash, Caledonia, Elsipogtog, and two dozen other examples of conflict over land, the rule of law is a prime-ministerial invocation that twists the law.

On criminal justice, the Supreme Court has demanded that the over-incarceration of Indigenous peoples be addressed with unique sentencing protocols known as the Gladue Principle. The directive is overwhelmingly ignored by lower courts, provincial and federal officials, and incarceration rates continue to rise.

Law after law dating back to the Gradual Civilization Act in the mid-1850s have discriminated against Indigenous women. Canada has argued in court that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn’t apply to First Nation women. Indeed, there is still gender discrimination in the Indian Act.

Indigenous children are somehow invisible to the rule of law, too. Last week the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal issued its seventh non-compliance order against Canada for failing to fully and completely end discriminatory policies.

Late last year, in a speech to First Nation leaders in B.C., and on the eve of her demotion to Veterans Affairs, Ms. Wilson-Raybould called out those among us who have little faith in Canadian institutions and laws. These individuals, she said, “in the name of upholding Indigenous rights, critically oppose almost any effort to change [within the Canadian constitutional framework].” This is an apt characterization, though to be fair, the heretics have ample evidence of corrupt institutions on their side. MORE

RELATED:

Wilson-Raybould’s place in Liberal party at risk after SNC-Lavalin testimony