The RCMP's failure to protect Mi'kmaq fishers from intimidation, assault and destruction in Nova Scotia demonstrates how the Canadian state is all too ready to permit or perpetrate violence against Indigenous Peoples, say First Nations groups and B.C. politicians.
British Columbia is at the confluence of several crises: the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn; the ongoing housing, homelessness, and drug overdose crises; the climate and ecological crises; and the crisis of colonialism for indigenous peoples, which has been ongoing since the beginnings of settler society.
British Columbia is also in the throes of an election campaign. The election pits the BC NDP led by Premier John Horgan, against the BC Liberals led by Andrew Wilkinson, and the BC Green Party led by Sonia Furstenau.
On Oct. 15, members of the We, the Secwépemc Unity Camp to Stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline walked across Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and onto the Trans Mountain site. There, at least one protester, a woman, sat on an excavator and called for others opposed to the pipeline expansion project to help stop the work being done.
Several people were arrested on Thursday (Oct. 15) at the Trans Mountain construction site on Mission Flats in Kamloops.
"Ultimately, we believe it evident that the Trans Mountain Expansion project is economically unviable and environmentally precarious. For the federal government to continue to push through its construction during a global pandemic that has seen oil prices plunge into the negatives is foolhardy and unconscionable."
A seven-year dispute has ended in an agreement by Trans Mountain Pipeline to reroute its expansion project by building a bypass around a native rights sore spot in southern British Columbia (BC).
