British Columbia

A B.C. climate change scientist says he got an "intimidating" call from RCMP because he had taken pictures on Burnaby Mountain near the site of a proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline.

Tim Takaro, a health sciences professor at SFU, says he was having lunch in Tofino with his family on Wednesday when his daughter's cellphone rang.

When she answered it, she was told it was the Burnaby RCMP calling and they were looking for her father.

A White Paper released by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions last month argues that fossil fuel divestment campaigns are based on a set of unfounded assumptions. The authors, Hadi Dowlatabadi and Justin Ritchie of UBC, make some valuable contributions to the debate over divestment. But their criticisms of the divestment advocates’ core arguments are off-base.

OTTAWA — An internal RCMP report’s portrayal of northern B.C. as one of two Canadian regions most vulnerable to violent, anti-pipeline extremists working with aboriginal radicals to sabotage “critical infrastructure” is “absolutely bizarre,” one of B.C.’s most outspoken First Nations leaders said Wednesday.

Stewart Phillip, head of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, has long espoused civil disobedience to defend First Nations rights and was recently arrested during an anti-pipeline protest on Burnaby Mountain.

No records, no agenda, no minutes, no briefing notes. That's what Vancouver-based economist and former ICBC CEO Robyn Allan learned from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request on senior-level meetings between the federal government and Texas-based oil giant Kinder Morgan. 

"It's not just bad administration," said Allan. "It's a betrayal of public trust." 

Three of the meetings involved then-Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver. 

The Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) is the latest to speak out against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's proposed Anti-Terrorism Act.

Harper's Bill C-51 is meant to increase the power of RCMP and other bodies to combat terrorism and includes giving more power to security personnel, letting authorities detain possible terrorists for longer periods, and allowing authorities to remove terrorist propaganda from any Canadian-based website. However, critics have said that the bill will restrict Canadians' freedom.

One take on the upcoming referendum in Metro Vancouver:

A rally was held Feb 5 outside Ft. Langley on unceded Kwantlen Territory in response to Kinder Morgan drilling near the Salmon River @ 22926 Rawlison Crescent, home to endangered species, in preparation to build the proposed Trans Mountain Dilbit (Tar/Oil Sands Heavy Crude) Export Pipeline through the area.
A further march and rally is planned for Fort Langley, details TBA.

About 80 people took part in a roadside rally against the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion on Glover Road near the intersection with Rawlison Crescent in Fort Langley.

They carried signs that bore messages like "no Kinder Morgan surprises," "clean energy now" and "save the salmon."

The protest was near a test drilling site on Rawlison, where Kinder Morgan was doing geotechnical testing he week before.

One resident, who asked not to be named, told The Times that several large vehicles blocked off access to a community mailbox for five days.

Canada’s energy sector is more at risk from domestic environmental extremists than from religiously inspired terrorist organizations like Al Qaida, warns an RCMP report recently obtained via an Access of Information request.

“The Canadian law enforcement and security intelligence community have noted a growing radicalized faction of environmentalists who advocate the use of criminal activity to promote the protection of the natural environment,” alerts the document written by the RCMP’s infrastructure intelligence team. The 22-page report from 2011 was only recently released.

. . Drastic action needs to be taken to reduce human caused greenhouse gas emissions, which are the primary driver of increased global temperatures. An article in Nature, published Jan. 8, stated: “ ... globally, a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80 per cent of current coal reserves should remain unused from 2010-50 to meet the target of two degrees C”, a target identified by scientists to avoid the worst ravages of global warming.