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<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/07/17/trans-mountain-pipeline-tar-sands-canada-us-kinder-morgan/">https://theintercept.com/2018/07/17/trans-mountain-pipeline-tar-sands-canada-us-kinder-morgan/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">The U.S. and Canada Are Preparing for a
New Standing Rock Over the Trans Mountain Tar Sands Pipeline</h1>
<div class="PostByline-names"><a class="PostByline-link"
rel="author"
href="https://theintercept.com/staff/alleenbrown/"><span
itemprop="name">Alleen Brown</span></a>, <a
class="PostByline-link" rel="author"
href="https://theintercept.com/staff/will-parrish/"><span
itemprop="name">Will Parrish</span></a><span
class="PostByline-date"><span> - July 17 2018</span></span></div>
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block;">
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<p><u>In British Columbia’s</u> southern interior, on
unceded land of the Secwepemc Nation, Kanahus Manuel
stands alongside a 7-by-12-foot “tiny house” mounted
on a trailer. Her uncle screws a two-by-four into a
floor panel while her brother-in-law paints a mural on
the exterior walls depicting a moose, birds, forests,
and rivers — images of the terrain through which the
Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will pass, if it can
get through the Tiny House Warriors’ roving blockade.
The project would place a new pipeline alongside the
existing Trans Mountain line, tripling the system’s
capacity to 890,000 barrels of tar sands bitumen
flowing daily from Alberta through British Columbia to
an endpoint outside Vancouver.</p>
<p>On May 29, the Canadian government announced that it
would nationalize the Trans Mountain pipeline to
assure the expansion would be built, putting up 4.5
billion Canadian dollars ($3.5 billion) to acquire the
pipeline and other assets from the Texas-based energy
giant Kinder Morgan. The purchase has dramatically
raised the stakes of the fight for both the
administration of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and
pipeline opponents like Manuel.</p>
<p>Should construction begin as scheduled in August, the
Tiny House Warriors expect waves of allies from
Indigenous nations inside Canada and beyond to join
them as they wheel 10 of the houses into the
pipeline’s path. Near the pipeline’s terminus outside
Vancouver, members of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation have
constructed a traditional “watch house” from which to
monitor the progress of construction.</p>
<p>Resistance to the pipeline is already escalating: On
July 3, seven pipeline opponents rappelled from
Vancouver’s Ironworkers Memorial Bridge in a daylong
blockade of tanker traffic associated with the
existing Trans Mountain line. Last week, the Tiny
House Warriors wheeled the homes into a provincial
park that sits on the site of a historic village near
Clearwater, British Columbia, in an assertion of their
title to the land. On Saturday, the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police singled out and arrested Manuel, whose
<a
href="https://www.facebook.com/100012060671019/videos/474470766298275/">livestream</a>
of the incident has garnered more than 500,000 views
on Facebook. She was detained on a charge of “criminal
mischief” and released later that day. The struggle
against the expansion, Manuel told The Intercept,
could become “the Standing Rock of the north.”</p>
<p style="" class="readability-styled">That’s exactly
what law enforcement agencies on both sides of the
U.S.-Canada border fear. For more than a year, U.S.
and Canadian authorities have been girding for a
mobilization comparable to the 2016 resistance in
North Dakota, according to law enforcement
communications and government reports obtained by The
Intercept. In Canada, Trudeau received a Cabinet memo
discussing the implications of Standing Rock for Trans
Mountain one week after his administration approved
the pipeline expansion.</p>
<p>In Washington state, where a branch of the existing
Trans Mountain line feeds processed tar sands bitumen
to four refineries along Puget Sound, law enforcement
agencies are preparing for the anti-pipeline struggle
to spill over to the U.S. side of the border. The
sheriff’s office in Whatcom County monitored
activists’ plans to travel to British Columbia for a
recent Trans Mountain protest, and information
collected was shared with U.S. Customs and Border
Protection, the Washington State Patrol, and the
Washington State Fusion Center. The sheriff’s office
has arranged at least two multiagency law enforcement
trainings on protest response in the last year and a
half.</p>
<p>The documents underscore the heightened scrutiny and
surveillance Indigenous-led movements fighting
resource extraction have faced in the wake of the mass
mobilization at Standing Rock. The Trans Mountain
pipeline is part of a much bigger system whose
tendrils reach deep into the United States. Trudeau’s
bailout is the latest shot fired in a cross-border
battle over the fate of the oil sands, bringing the
Canadian fight to a head just as two oil sands
pipelines, Enbridge Line 3 and Keystone XL, receive
their own key approvals in the U.S. and move closer to
construction. Canadian government officials are
relying on completion of the three pipelines to
convince oil companies to continue expanding tar sands
production in Alberta.</p>
<p>In an era in which the climate crisis is rapidly
accelerating and scientists are predicting widespread
insecurity should political leaders fail to force a
dramatic shift away from fossil fuels, the leaders of
two of the world’s wealthiest countries are doubling
down on pipeline construction and oil production.
Meanwhile, managing the perceived security threat of
those who stand in the way has increasingly become a
priority for law enforcement.</p>
<p>“We take it very seriously,” said Manuel, who spent
months fighting the Dakota Access pipeline and has
long been involved in struggles for Indigenous
sovereignty. “We’ve seen so many of our people being
wrongfully convicted, being thrown in jail —
Indigenous land defenders being criminalized.”</p>
<p>As with other Indigenous people in British Columbia,
the Secwepemc have never relinquished their territory
by way of treaty, land sale, or surrender, and they
did not consent to the Trans Mountain expansion.
“Everything flows from the land,” Manuel said. “If the
land is destroyed, we are also destroyed. And that’s
why we’ll stand so fiercely in defense of this land.”</p>
<h3>Canada’s Global Energy Ambitions</h3>
<p>The Trans Mountain fight can be traced back to 2006,
when then-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
pledged that the country would become a global “energy
superpower” akin to Saudi Arabia. At the center of his
plan was the development of Alberta’s tar sands,
underground reserves of sand, clay, and oil, which has
involved laying waste to vast swaths of Canada’s
verdant boreal forests. To deliver the high
carbon-emitting crude to refineries and markets
abroad, energy companies proposed a series of new
pipelines, including Trans Mountain, Keystone XL,
Enbridge Line 3, Energy East, and Northern Gateway.</p>
<p>U.S. imports of Canadian oil have more than doubled
since 2005, with increased tar sands production
driving the bulk of the increase. But, along with a
precipitous drop in oil prices, pipeline opposition
movements have proved to be a genuine threat to
continued tar sands expansion. Two proposed pipelines
— Northern Gateway and Energy East — have been killed
in the last two years.</p>
<p>The remaining oil sands pipelines inching toward
construction face the promise of massive resistance.
After the Obama administration killed Keystone XL in
the wake of protests, it was brought back from the
dead by newly elected President Donald Trump and
received approval from Nebraska’s Public Service
Commission to build along an <a
href="https://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/controversial-keystone-xl-pipeline-route-across-nebraska-is-approved-but/article_58ad0982-cbe1-11e7-8db6-07270bf564b6.html">altered</a>
route. Last week, the pipeline company notified the
Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota that it
would begin preparing construction sites. “We will be
waiting,” tribal Chairman Harold Frazier replied in a
one-line <a
href="https://twitter.com/CRSTChairman/status/1017544831566921728">letter</a>. On
June 28, Enbridge Line 3 received a <a
href="http://www.startribune.com/state-regulators-approve-certificate-of-need-for-controversial-enbridge-pipeline-project/486845211/">key
approval</a> from the Minnesota Public Utilities
Commission. “Enbridge and Minnesota have their
Standing Rock,” Ojibwe activist Winona LaDuke <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/winona.laduke.5/posts/1798304950217435">posted</a>
on Facebook.</p>
<p>And in Canada, Kinder Morgan sparked a national
crisis in April when it halted all nonessential
spending on the Trans Mountain project pending a
guarantee from Trudeau’s government that the pipeline
would be completed.</p>
<p>At issue were “extraordinary political risks”
stemming from resistance on the part of British
Columbia’s provincial government, the company stated.
Half a dozen First Nations had filed legal challenges
to the pipeline, arguing that their land and waters
would be threatened in areas they never signed over to
the Canadian government, and Premier John Horgan <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-oil-britishcolumbia/british-columbia-edges-back-from-ban-on-increased-oil-shipments-idUSKCN1G62ZX">proposed</a>
a temporary ban on any increase in tar sands oil <a
href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-attempts-to-cool-alberta-trade-war-by-referring-pipeline-fight-to-courts/article38074486/">shipments</a>
out of the province’s ports while a panel studied the
potential consequences of a spill. In retaliation for
obstructing production, Alberta’s provincial
government prepared to cut off gasoline supplies to
British Columbia.</p>
<p>Trudeau, who campaigned on promises of carbon
emissions cuts and reconciliation with First Nations,
stepped in to buy the project — stating that the
pipeline was in the “national interest.”</p>
<p style="" class="readability-styled">A coalition of
Indigenous organizers labeled the purchase a
“declaration of war.” “We mean it literally. The
military will be called,” Manuel and other organizers
wrote in a <a
href="https://www.secwepemculecw.org/act-of-war">statement</a>.
“It is the national pattern to use criminalization,
civil action, and other penalties to repress
Indigenous resistance to these policies by bringing to
bear the weight of the law and police forces against
Indigenous individuals and communities.”
</p>
<p>Some boosters of Trans Mountain have also predicted
dire consequences for protesters. “There are some
people that are going to die in protesting
construction of this pipeline. We have to understand
that,” David Dodge, a former head of the Bank of
Canada who has served as an adviser to the Alberta
government on infrastructure projects, <a
href="https://edmontonjournal.com/business/energy/people-are-going-to-die-protesting-trans-mountain-pipeline-former-bank-of-canada-governor">stated</a> recently.</p>
<p>For the climate, construction of the pipeline could
be catastrophic. Numerous analysts have found that
continued tar sands expansion is incompatible with
efforts to avoid the worst effects of climate change,
and the pipeline stands in stark conflict with
Canada’s international emissions reduction
commitments. A 2016 <a
href="http://ceaa-acee.gc.ca/050/documents/p80061/116524E.pdf">report</a>
by the Canadian government’s environmental protection
agency estimated production and processing of Trans
Mountain’s oil would emit 13 to 15 million tons of
carbon dioxide a year.</p>
<p>Asked to comment on opposition to the project,
Mackenzie Radan, a spokesperson for Canada’s natural
resources minister, told The Intercept that 43
Indigenous communities along the Trans Mountain had
route signed mutual benefit agreements with Kinder
Morgan “worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
However, some leaders from those communities have <a
href="https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/ne9ayw/why-first-nation-chiefs-sign-trans-mountain-pipeline-deals">underlined</a>
that the agreements don’t equal consent so much as
lack of resources to put up a fight and perception of
the pipeline’s inevitability.</p>
<p>“This project was subject to the most exhaustive
review of any pipeline in Canadian history. Canadians
know that the environment and the economy go hand in
hand. They know you don’t have to make a choice
between growing the economy and protecting the
environment,” Radan added. “Together we’re leading the
way in the transition to a lower carbon future.”</p>
<h3>A Threat to the Safety of Property</h3>
<p>Canadian law enforcement and intelligence agencies
have frequently categorized pipeline opponents as
extremist, violent, and criminal. The government has
focused particularly on Indigenous activists, coining
terminology such as “<a
href="https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/mbxyw8/rcmp-files-say-violent-aboriginal-extremists-are-undermining-pipeline-plans">violent
aboriginal extremists</a>.”</p>
<p>Kanahus Manuel was born into Indigenous political
struggles; her father is the late Art Manuel, a
well-known activist and intellectual who spent his
life fighting for decolonization. She felt called to
go to Standing Rock as police repression escalated.
Law enforcement and private security agents <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/05/27/leaked-documents-reveal-security-firms-counterterrorism-tactics-at-standing-rock-to-defeat-pipeline-insurgencies/">responded
to protests</a> with dogs, <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/21/medics-describe-how-police-sprayed-standing-rock-demonstrators-with-tear-gas-and-water-cannons/">pepper
spray</a>, rubber bullets, mass arrests, and water
hoses sprayed in below-freezing temperatures. Quieter
was the sprawling <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/06/03/standing-rock-documents-expose-inner-workings-of-surveillance-industrial-complex/">intelligence-gathering
operation</a>, which included social media
monitoring, <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/12/11/standing-rock-dakota-access-pipeline-fbi-informant-red-fawn-fallis/">undercover
operatives</a> posing as protesters, <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/09/29/standing-rock-dakota-access-pipeline-dapl-no-fly-zone-drones-tigerswan/">aerial
videography</a>, and information-sharing that
crossed state, federal, and local jurisdictions and
included the oil company.</p>
<p>“Nothing really surprises me when it comes to the
colonial government. We’ve seen them work hand in hand
with corporations on every issue,” Manuel said. “And
it’s never anything new. Each time, it means we have
to fight harder.”</p>
<p>Indeed, the surveillance and police response at
Standing Rock was reminiscent of activities in Canada
in years prior. In 2014, the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police attempted to map out networks of Native
protesters under a program called Project SITKA, <a
href="http://aptnnews.ca/2016/11/08/rcmp-intelligence-centre-compiled-list-of-89-indigenous-rights-activists-considered-threats/">according
to</a> a <a
href="http://michaeltoledano.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/CSIS_117-2016-47_Project-Sitka.pdf">report</a>
obtained by Andrew Crosby and Jeffrey Monaghan, the
authors of “Policing Indigenous Movements: Dissent and
the Security State.” The police compiled “protester
profiles” of 89 individuals identified as posing a
“criminal threat” — the report noted that the events
most attended by these protesters were those “opposing
natural resource development, particularly pipeline
and shale gas expansion.”</p>
<p>Within a week of Trudeau’s November 2016 approval of
the Trans Mountain expansion, his Cabinet was
preparing him for a crisis on the scale of Standing
Rock, a document Crosby obtained via public
information request shows. The clerk of the Privy
Council, who acts as a deputy to the prime minister,
sent a <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599942-Memo-for-the-Prime-Minister-2016-12-06.html">memo</a>
to Trudeau, marked “secret,” titled “Approval Process
for the Dakota Access Pipeline.” “Following the recent
approval of the TransMountain Expansion Pipeline,” the
memo notes, “a number of Indigenous stakeholders have
drawn parallels to Standing Rock, indicating that
there would be similar protests if TMX goes ahead.”</p>
<p style="" class="readability-styled">The Canadian
Security Intelligence Service distributed its own<a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599938-CSIS-Intelligence-Assessment-2016-12-09.html">
assessment of Trans Mountain</a>, also obtained by
Crosby, which identified several U.S. developments
that had potential to impact Canada’s tar sands
ambitions. In a section marked “violent confrontations
and resource development,” the document references the
ongoing protests at Standing Rock, asserting that
“several violent confrontations between law
enforcement and pipeline opponents have flared up
since September resulting in hundreds of arrests and
millions of dollars of damage to corporate equipment.”</p>
<p>“While we cannot publicly disclose our
investigational interests or methodologies, we can say
that CSIS’s threat assessment for the energy sector
remains constant,” CSIS spokesperson Tahera Mufti told
The Intercept in a statement.</p>
<p>RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Janelle Shoihet told the
Intercept, “The RCMP is an impartial party in these
demonstrations, meaning that we monitor demonstrations
to ensure the safety of everyone and will take action
on a case-by-case basis, with a focus on enforcement
should there be any criminal activities that pose a
threat to the safety of individuals or property.”</p>
<p>The prime minister’s office forwarded a query about
the Privy Council document to Radan, the spokesperson
for Canada’s natural resources minister. “The right to
peaceful protest is at the foundation of our rights
and freedoms in Canada but we expect people to express
their views peacefully and in accordance with the
law,” Radan said.</p>
<p>To Monaghan, the focus on criminality is a red
herring intended to discredit resistance movements
that challenge the interests of the Canadian state.
“This has nothing to do with specific criminal
activity,” he said. “They might talk about it in terms
of TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures] or use
other jargon, but what worries them is actually that
these social movements are being extremely successful
at swaying public opinion and asserting Indigenous
land claims.”</p>
<div> <img
src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2018/07/5-final-1531496422.gif?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=1024&h=711"
alt="5-final-1531496422">
<p class="caption">Map: Soohee Cho</p>
</div>
<h3>Preparations in the Pacific Northwest</h3>
<p>If the Trans Mountain expansion is built, giant oil
tankers will carry a portion of the oil through the
hook-shaped Salish Sea, which separates Washington
state and Vancouver Island, and into the Pacific
Ocean. The area is home to an iconic pod of orcas,
whose <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/science/orcas-whales-endangered.html">dwindling
population</a> has been attributed in part to noisy
engines that make locating prey difficult. With the
pipeline, tanker traffic through the orcas’ habitat
could increase by a factor of seven. From there, some
boats may continue to Asia, while others will likely
head to California, home of the refineries best
equipped to handle the sludgy oil.</p>
<p>Another portion of the oil could travel via a branch
line known as the Puget Sound pipeline, which delivers
fuel along a 69-mile route to four refineries in
Ferndale and Anacortes, Washington. Financial
disclosure documents filed by Kinder Morgan indicate
there’s potential for the Puget Sound pipeline’s
capacity to be <a
href="https://sedar.com/CheckCode.do;jsessionid=00007X99H_PkEQMbqnTLo1HPuxo:188setvlh">expanded</a>
from 240,000 to 500,000 barrels a day. Environmental
organizations in Washington have pledged to resist any
expanded transport of tar sands oil through the
region.</p>
<p>A May 2017 field analysis <a
href="https://theintercept.com/document/2017/12/11/may-2017-field-analysis-report/">report</a>
prepared by the Department of Homeland Security Office
of Intelligence Analysis and seven fusion centers,
including the one in Washington, set the stage for
U.S.-based surveillance in the wake of Trans
Mountain’s approval. It singled out construction of
the pipeline as a development that could lead to “an
increased threat of violence in the coming months from
environmental rights extremists against
pipeline-related entities in the Midwest and Western
United States,” as well as “enhanced sharing of
violent TTPs between US and Canadian environmental
rights extremists.”</p>
<p style="" class="readability-styled">On March 8, John
Gargett, of the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office
Division of Emergency Management, distributed an
article published in the Bellingham Herald<a
href="https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/state/article204097869.html#storylink=cpy">
titled </a>“This Could Be Like Standing Rock,”
which described an upcoming protest against Trans
Mountain planned in British Columbia. In the<a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599944-Whatcom-County-Sheriff-s-Office-Emails-2018-03-08.html">
email</a>, sent to U.S. Customs and Border
Protection and sheriff’s department personnel, Gargett
wrote, “We should be aware that we do have the Kinder
Morgan pipeline, storage and stations here in our
county (as well as Skagit) that serve the refineries.”
</p>
<p>“The Sheriff’s Office has been tracking the event for
a few weeks now,” Lt. Steven Gatterman <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599944-Whatcom-County-Sheriff-s-Office-Emails-2018-03-08.html">replied</a>,
copying the Washington State Patrol. “Several
ride-sharing posts have appeared indicating people
will be traveling to BC from the Seattle and
Bellingham areas,” he added. “The biggest threat to
our area may be where these travelers land if they are
denied entry into Canada.”</p>
<p>Twenty sheriff’s deputies and 20 state troopers were
designated to respond to any protests that sprung up
along the border (none ever did). Gatterman added that
the Sheriff’s Crime Analysis Center was searching for
“intelligence information.”</p>
<p>“I find their actions outrageous, but I’m not
surprised,” said Jamie Sayegh, a water protector from
Bellingham who was part of a group that drove to the
protest in British Columbia. “The truth of the matter
is that our political system routinely allows
corporations to use the government to defend the
so-called rights of companies like Kinder Morgan to
destroy our lands, our water, our lives, and trample
the rights of Indigenous people.”</p>
<p>Gatterman also zeroed in on a group that had staged
an <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/01/14/facebook-warrant-pipeline-protest-whatcom-county-justice-department/">anti-pipeline
protest</a> in the area in February 2017 that
blocked traffic on Interstate 5. The group, Red Line
Salish Sea, formerly known as the Bellingham #NoDAPL
Coalition, is now organizing against Trans Mountain.
Gatterman’s email to state and federal law enforcement
inaccurately claimed the group was responsible for
vandalism to a Kinder Morgan facility in a neighboring
county in 2016. In an interview with The Intercept,
Gatterman acknowledged that his note might have been
mistaken and the incident he referenced was likely one
carried out by a separate group.</p>
<p>“We are working in solidarity with the tribal groups
and their nations that are standing against the
destruction of their homelands,” said Michelle
Vendiola, a Walker River Paiute tribal member from
Washington’s Lummi Reservation and a founder of Red
Line Salish Sea. “We have brought people up to British
Columbia whenever the call is put out that that’s
what’s needed.”</p>
<p>Vendiola is intimately familiar with Whatcom County
law enforcement officials’ monitoring of anti-pipeline
activists. Local prosecutors <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/01/14/facebook-warrant-pipeline-protest-whatcom-county-justice-department/">obtained</a>
a search warrant to collect private information from
the Facebook page of the Bellingham #NoDAPL Coalition
as part of an investigation into the I-5 blockade that
ultimately led to criminal charges against Vendiola
and six others.</p>
<p>“It’s crazy to think about how prepared they are
getting to try to quash dissent here in Washington,”
Vendiola said.</p>
<p>As March wore on, law enforcement’s efforts to
prepare for large protests continued. An email
Gatterman sent a few weeks after the Vancouver-area
protests provided <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599943-Role-Player-Training-2018-03-28.html">instructions
for around 50 role players</a> who would pretend to
be protesters during a joint training exercise at
Whatcom Community College involving around 30 officers
from the sheriff’s department and the Washington State
Patrol.</p>
<p>“Some of you will be carrying signs, some of you will
be locked together in what is called a ‘sleeping
dragon,’” Gatterman wrote. “We are looking for a few
role players to dress in all black to simulate an
anarchist group. This group also covers their faces
with masks or bandanas.”</p>
<p>Gatterman told The Intercept that the I-5 protest, as
well as another road blockade in May 2016 in protest
of a Trump rally, had motivated the department’s
response to the Trans Mountain mobilization and
inspired them to set up the training. He said the
sheriff’s office wanted to be sure officers knew how
to safely handle techniques like the sleeping dragon,
which were used in both protests.</p>
<p>After the I-5 protest, Gatterman said, his office had
also assembled a <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599939-Draft-Memo-Civil-Disturbance-Team-2017-02-27.html">special
team</a> to manage public demonstrations and had
requested that the Federal Emergency Management
Agency’s Center for Domestic Preparedness conduct a <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599940-FEMA-Field-Force-Operations-Training-Details.html">Field
Force Operations training</a> on how to police
protests. According to a roster for the FEMA training,
obtained via a public records request, roughly 40
state and local law enforcement officers participated,
as well as 19 CBP officers.</p>
<p>“There’s work on formations as far as how to execute
safe techniques — arrest techniques,” Gatterman said
of the FEMA training. “They show some examples of
things like tripods hanging from trees and overpasses,
just to get you awareness of the different things you
might encounter. There’s talk about throwing acid on
officers, urine, feces, things like that.” A <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4599941-FEMA-Field-Force-Operations-Training-Flyer.html">summary
of the training</a> obtained via records request
describes it as providing the “skills necessary to
prepare for and successfully mitigate threat incidents
involving civil disorder,” including through the “use
of riot control agents and less lethal munitions.”</p>
<p>Whatcom County’s records officer withheld a single
document in response to The Intercept’s records
requests, calling nondisclosure of it “essential to
effective law enforcement”: a May 11, 2017, email from
a county undersheriff to staff members concerning a
National Sheriffs’ Association webinar called “Protest
on the Prairie.” Cass County, North Dakota, Sheriff
Paul Laney led a webinar by the same name on May 7,
2017, in which he shared lessons with police across
the country on how North Dakota law enforcement dealt
with resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline, an <a
href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/07/20/emails-bush-iraq-war-pr-delve-off-the-record-strategies-dakota-access-pipeline">investigation</a>
by DeSmog and MuckRock revealed last year. “We viewed
the webinar for training and informational purposes,”
Whatcom Undersheriff Jeff Parks told The Intercept.</p>
<p>Gatterman said that outside of the British Columbia
protest, the sheriff’s department had not actively
monitored organizing against Trans Mountain. The
agency’s response to the March protest involved
examining what he described as “open source
information” including public-facing Facebook pages.</p>
<p>Kurt Boyle, director of Washington fusion center,
said that besides reviewing Gatterman’s emails
forwarded by the state patrol, the fusion center took
very little action in response to the Trans Mountain
protests. “The only time we would actually take a look
at it would be if there was the potential for some
violence or vandalism or some attack on equipment that
may cause danger to people or destroy things,” he
said. “We don’t monitor social media.”</p>
<p>“Due to our robust capabilities, U.S. Customs and
Border Protection frequently works with other federal,
state and local agencies on many different missions,”
CBP spokesperson Daniel Hetlage wrote in a statement
to The Intercept. The Washington State Patrol did not
respond to a request for comment.</p>
<h3>A Radically New Landscape</h3>
<p>Just as Standing Rock shifted public understanding of
the extremes to which governments would go to support
fossil fuel companies, so has the Trans Mountain
fight.</p>
<p>Clayton Thomas-Muller, who works with the climate
justice organization 350, has been involved in
fighting the tar sands for over a decade. “We’re in a
radically new landscape, with an entirely new campaign
that needs to emerge. The federal government of Canada
has demonstrated just complete hypocrisy in the
purchase of this pipeline using public funds,” he
said. “To paraphrase Vice President Bob Chamberlain of
the Union of BC Indian Chiefs … a foreign oil
corporation based in Houston gave the sovereign nation
of Canada an ultimatum, and Canada buckled.”</p>
<p>So far, one of the largest producers in the Alberta
tar sands region, Suncor, has <a
href="https://calgaryherald.com/commodities/energy/trans-mountain-deal-fails-to-change-suncor-position-on-canadian-competitiveness/wcm/1ca8d82c-21e0-42d9-8b1d-50215e6290fb">shrugged</a>
at Trudeau’s multibillion-dollar gamble, pointing out
that the “normal processes didn’t work very well.” The
company has declined to commit to any new investments.</p>
<p>The Canadian government is hoping to find another
buyer for the pipeline before its deal with Kinder
Morgan is finalized at the end of July. The government
has sweetened the deal by offering to indemnify any
buyer against losses caused by construction delays and
guarantee a rate of return if the project’s future
owner is unable to complete construction because of
legal decisions. Still, it’s unclear that they’ll be
successful in selling it until after the pipeline is
built.</p>
<p>If they don’t, then the Standing Rock of the north
will be a battle where the line between the interests
of the police and the pipeline owner will be virtually
indistinguishable.</p>
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