For the past week, as the final round of NEB hearings for the Kinder Morgan pipeline were about to start, hundreds of people took action to enforce the People’s Injunction.
This government campaigned against broken pipeline reviews, yet they are letting the Kinder Morgan and Energy East reviews move forward -- without including impacts on climate change, without listening to communities, and without respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
A months-long dispute is heating up between BC Hydro and a small group of First Nations and landowners who are protesting the construction of the $9-billion Site C dam.
The power utility has filed a notice of civil claim in B.C. Supreme Court, seeking an injunction that will prevent protesters from stopping work in and around an area on the south bank of the Peace River near Fort St. John, B.C.
On the final day of the UN summit (COP21) held in Paris in December 2015, thousands of people defied a ban on public gatherings by converging at a boulevard leading to the business district in La Défense to denounce the new climate agreement that government negotiators were about to sign and celebrate at the conference venue in Le Bourget, 20 kilometres away. Hoping to counter governments’ attempts to control the narrative regarding the summit, they gathered behind giant inflatable ‘cobblestones’ and a red banner proclaiming “System change not climate change!”
Lower Nicola Indian Band (LNIB) chief Aaron Sam was in the Lower Mainland earlier this week, boycotting what he calls a “flawed” environmental assessment process done by the federal government’s National Energy Board (NEB).
“We feel that what the government is going to do is a foregone conclusion,” Aaron told the Heraldin a phone interview.
They have been reviled as vandals, hooligans and lunatics. But to me, these people are heroes. The 13 women and men on trial this week for cutting through the perimeter fence around Heathrow airport and chaining themselves together on a runway were excoriated by police, passengers and politicians. (One of the defendants in the case is a member of the cooperative society that rents my house.) If convicted, they all face a possible prison sentence.
Please forward widely, especially to contacts in the lower mainland, BC.
Sisters, Brothers, and Friends,
Yesterday’s warm-up protest against the Kinder Morgan National Energy Board hearings in Burnaby previews an equally energetic but much larger protest this coming Saturday, 1 p.m., at 4331 Dominion St.
“Trudeau, Keep Your Promises!” said one banner hanging from the Trans-Canada Highway overpass. Another read, “Re-Do Kinder Morgan Review!”
BC Hydro is taking legal action against campers blocking Site C dam construction on the south bank of the Peace River.
The Crown utility filed a civil claim in B.C. Supreme Court Tuesday against a number of individuals camped at the Rocky Mountain Fort.
"On Tuesday of this week, we filed a civil claim in relation to a small number of individuals who have been preventing contractors from safely undertaking some clearing work on the south bank of the Site C dam site," BC Hydro CEO Jessica McDonald told the Alaska Highway News Wednesday.
Katzie Nation Chief Susan Miller and her sister Debbie Miller of Katzie First Nation say they stand to lose everything if the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is approved.
Chief Miller said the continued expansion of pipeline projects and shrinking of Indigenous territories represents the ongoing assault on First Nations culture that started with the residential school system.
