As a tense court case resumed Friday morning, the Trudeau government extended an olive branch to a First Nation that accused the federal government of failing to consult them on Kinder Morgan's controversial Trans Mountain pipeline.
The Tsleil-Waututh First Nation also argued in court that the National Energy Board (NEB) erred when it failed to adequately assess the impact of increased tanker traffic, which the nation argues will inevitably lead to a devastating oil spill.
The same imperialism that has caused so much damage to the Global South today continues expanding and threatening the whole planet. Consequently, the struggle for climate justice has converted into a struggle for the liberation of all workers, peasants, indigenous and ecosystems. The struggle against Empire is a struggle to save life on Earth.
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.
