Community-Industry Response Group not welcome on Gitxsan lands, say chiefs
Gitxsan hereditary chiefs issued a notice this week prohibiting the RCMP’s ‘militarized squadron’ called the Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) from Gitxsan lands centred in the Hazelton area, effective immediately.
“While we embrace safety measures for our community, the militarized squadron of the RCMP [the C-IRG] funded to the tune of $50M, have been sent to terrorize our people at the barrel of a gun during peaceful protests and blockades,” the notice reads.
B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman will soon decide the fate of Enbridge’s Westcoast Connector Gas Transmission Project — and possibly his government. First approved in 2014, the 48-inch pipeline would carry fracked gas across a complex patchwork of sovereign territories to a new LNG terminal on the coast.
Last July, the city of Vancouver pledged $1 per resident to bring a class-action lawsuit against the largest oil companies, but those funds are nowhere to be found in the 2023 budget.
In 1988, scientists working for the oil giant Shell wrote in an internal memo that the burning of fossil fuels, if unchecked, would lead to changes to sea level and weather “larger than any that have occurred over the past 12,000 years.”