If, as the maxim goes, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” we ought to ask just why it is that good people so often do nothing.
Chief Lee Spahan from Coldwater Indian Band was happy to hear the news: the Federal Court of Appeal will hear his nation’s legal challenge against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.
In Nova Scotia, water protectors have fiercely opposed a gas company’s plans for a decade, helped by a celebrity supporter.
Michael Harris, a Tyee contributing editor, is a highly awarded journalist and documentary maker. Author of Party of One, the bestselling exposé of the Harper government, his investigations have sparked four commissions of inquiry.
[The federal government purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline and expansion project from Kinder Morgan in 2018, yet Ian Anderson continues to serve as Trans Mountain president and CEO and speak for the company.
What is the function of the federal government in all this? Is it restricted to being the bearer of financial risk?]
On August 16, climate activists Rita Wong and Will Offley were sentenced to jail for blocking the TransMountain site on Burnaby Mountain. Will was sentenced to 14 days in prison, and Rita to a shocking 28 days, the longest sentence yet in the more than 220 arrests of water and land protectors.
The federal cabinet’s re-approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline and Tanker Expansion Project (“TMX” or “the Project”) on June 18, 2019 was hardly shocking news. After all, federal cabinet ministers have been saying for years that ‘the pipeline will be built.’ They even spent $4.5 billion of public money to bail out the project when pipeline company Kinder Morgan decided to abandon it.
OTTAWA – Elections Canada is issuing a special warning to all advocacy groups that they should not issue any scientifically verifiable facts during the election that would interfere with Canada’s democracy.
The words may not have been explicit, but oilpatch contractor Matthew Linnitt says he read between the lines: lie on official documents about an incident that could have killed him, or someone would be fired.
The tacit threat, he alleges, was handed down by his supervisor at Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) after a close call with hydrogen sulfide on a northwestern Alberta well site on May 2, 2016.
