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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Canada Steps Up Surveillance Of Indigenous Peoples To Push Pipelines<br></h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By Nick Cunningham, DeSmog - June 19, 2022<br></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_l4mu21ee0" alt="image.png" width="460" height="259"><br><br><p>Above Photo: RCMP conducting a “site inspection” of a Wet’suwet’en village site. Gidimt’en Checkpoint.</p>
<h2>An international human rights body condemned Canada’s treatment of
Indigenous communities opposing two major oil and gas pipelines.</h2>
<p>Canadian police and security forces have intensified their
surveillance and harassment of Indigenous people in recent months in an
effort to clear the way for the construction of two long-distance oil
and gas pipelines in British Columbia, earning the condemnation of
international human rights observers.</p>
<p>“The Governments of Canada and of the Province of British Columbia
have escalated their use of force, surveillance, and criminalization of
land defenders and peaceful protesters to intimidate, remove and
forcibly evict Secwepemc and Wet’suwet’en Nations from their traditional
lands,” the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD) wrote in an April 29 <a href="https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/CAN/INT_CERD_ALE_CAN_9554_E.pdf">letter</a>.</p>
<p>It was the third time the international body reproached the Canadian
federal and provincial governments for their treatment of Indigenous
communities in relation to the construction of the two fossil fuel
projects. The Tiny House Warriors, a group of Secwepemc people, are <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2020/08/14/canada-trans-mountain-pipeline-tiny-house-warriors/">opposing</a> the
Trans Mountain expansion pipeline, a long-distance oil pipeline that is
under construction and would run from Alberta’s tar sands to the
Pacific Coast, ending near Vancouver. And Wet’suwet’en land defenders
are opposing the Coastal GasLink pipeline, a fossil gas pipeline that
would feed an LNG export terminal in northern British Columbia.</p>
<p>A 1997 Supreme Court <a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1569/index.do">decision</a> affirmed
Aboriginal rights to land, and both Indigenous movements fighting the
two fossil fuel projects state that their physical presence on their
pre-colonial lands is a way of exercising their rights. The Tiny House
Warriors have constructed small mobile homes on their ancestral lands,
in the path of the Trans Mountain pipeline. The Gidimt’en clan of the
Wet’suwet’en has also occupied their traditional territory, building
permanent homes and spiritual buildings in a heavily forested area south
of the small town of Houston.</p>
<p>Both communities have been targeted by RCMP and private security
forces, and the clashes intensified last year. In July, Trans Mountain
dismantled barricades erected by Tiny House Warriors, and the company <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/KanahusFreedom/status/1425959178041008128">set up</a> surveillance towers as it sought to expand a man camp for pipeline workers. In September and October, the Wet’suwet’en <a href="https://thenarwhal.ca/wetsuweten-coastal-gaslink-explainer/">set up</a> <a href="https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/10/04/Pipeline-Standoff-Wetsuweten-Block-Effort-Tunnel-Morice-River/">blockades</a> on
access roads, as Coastal GasLink prepared to drill beneath Wedzin Kwa
(Morice River), which both is a source of food and holds spiritual
significance to the Wet’suwet’en. The standoff reached a climax in
November, with a <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/rcmp-continue-arrests-friday-in-wetsuweten-pipeline-dispute-in-northern-b-c/">militarized crackdown</a> by the RCMP, arresting more than two dozen people.</p>
<p>In recent months, the surveillance and police presence have dramatically escalated yet again. According to <a href="https://fb.watch/dyfQCgZnZl/">Gidimt’en Clan</a> of
the Wet’suwet’en, the RCMP has conducted more than 225 “site
inspections” since March 2022 at one of their village encampments. The
Wet’suwet’en land defenders say they have been constantly surveilled,
followed, and harassed. Some of the incursions happen at odd hours.</p>
<p>“Visits would range from one to five times within a 24 hour period.
Sometimes in the middle of night,” Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, a spokesperson
for the Gidimt’en Checkpoint, one of the villages on Wet’suwet’en
territory, told DeSmog.</p>
<p>“They’ve followed me to my home. There’s also private security
sitting outside Gidimt’en Checkpoint, surveilling the comings and goings
of myself, my children, my family…anybody who is coming or going to the
village site,” she said.</p>
<p>The encampments are in remote locations, down narrow forest roads,
far from any urban population. “So, it’s not like these neighborhood
cops just doing a patrol and checking in,” Eugene Kung, a staff attorney
with West Coast Environmental Law, told DeSmog. “In order to get there,
you have to deliberately want to be there.”</p>
<p>CERD again called for the removal of RCMP and private security from
Indigenous land, the halting of construction on both projects, and a
return to consultations between the governments and Indigenous nations.</p>
<p>“When I first read the letter, I nearly cried. Because it was
validation of what we already know and what we already feel,” Sleydo’
said. “The fact that the government and industry are working so closely
together to oppress us on our own territories and diminish our title and
our rights, and violate basic human rights, has been an overwhelming
experience. It was such a relief to hear this international body condemn
those practices.”</p>
<p>The letter noted that Canada has signed the United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into law,
which, among other things, requires the free, prior, and informed
consent of Indigenous peoples on all new energy projects. Coastal
GasLink has the support of elected band leaders of the Wet’suwet’en, a
system created in the 19th century by the Canadian settler government.
But the project is opposed by the hereditary chiefs, and they point to
the 1997 Supreme Court decision that backs up their land title. In
short, the clans that oppose Coastal GasLink say that both Indigenous
and Canadian law are on their side.</p>
<p>“Although Canada has enshrined the UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), they most certainly are not upholding it.
They continue their tactics implemented since contact, just different
wording and language,” Chief Na’Moks, the highest-ranking hereditary
chief of the Tsayu (Beaver Clan) of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, said in a
statement. “To truly uphold UNDRIP, they must show the honor of the
Crown. There is no honor in their continued use of force when Indigenous
Nations do not agree with their decisions.”</p>
<p>But Canada appears to be ignoring the calls from the international
human rights body. “It is significant and concerning that Canada would
not respond substantively to these letters,” Kung said, referring to the
CERD documents. “Canada has signed and ratified the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,
which is where this CERD body comes from. In terms of international law
and domestic law, ratification of an international treaty is basically
as formal as it gets.”</p>
<p>In response to questions from DeSmog, the Permanent Representative of
Canada to the United Nations Office in Geneva, to whom the CERD letter
was addressed, referred questions to the Department of Canadian
Heritage, who did not respond. The provincial government of British
Columbia also did not respond.</p>
<h3>Injunctions and ‘Counterinsurgency’</h3>
<p>In early June, BC provincial prosecutors said they would <a href="https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/06/01/news/15-criminal-contempt-charges-lcoastal-gaslink-pipeline-protest">move forward</a> with
criminal charges against 15 of the 27 individuals arrested last fall,
including during the November 2021 raid on Wet’suwet’en territory. The <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/11/22/canadian-police-arrest-indigenous-coastal-gaslink-pipeline-journalists/">arrested</a> included
Indigenous land defenders, as well as legal observers and journalists,
although the charges against the journalists were dropped. In July,
prosecutors are expected to decide on further criminal charges against
another 10 people.</p>
<p>One of the main legal tools that Coastal GasLink and Trans Mountain
Corporation have been using against Indigenous land defenders is the
injunction, a court order that results in a geographic exclusion zone
around the construction project. Once the company has an injunction in
hand, then it can turn to the RCMP to arrest land defenders for
violating the order.</p>
<p>But Indigenous people and other experts say the injunction is
weaponized against land defenders and is being used to remove them from
their unceded traditional territory to allow oil and gas projects to
proceed there.</p>
<p>A 2019 <a href="https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/injunction-infographics.pdf">study</a> by
the Yellowhead Institute, an Indigenous-led think tank, found evidence
to back that up. The group reviewed more than 100 injunctions spanning
several decades in Canada, nearly all of which related to resource
extraction. Who was filing the injunction often predicted its success.
Courts granted more than 80 percent of injunctions filed by corporations
against First Nations. However, when the circumstances were reversed —
when a First Nation filed an injunction against a corporation — more
than 80 percent were denied.</p>
<p>“[T]he courts expect First Nations to commit to lengthy, costly
litigation to secure protection for their lands and waters. But
companies can more or less get injunctions if there is any whiff of
economic loss,” a 2019 Yellowhead Institute <a href="https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/red-paper-report-final.pdf">report</a> on
Indigenous land dispossession stated. The late Arthur Manuel, a
prominent Secwepemc leader and international Indigenous rights activist,
once referred to the use of injunctions as a “legal billy club.”</p>
<p>“The injunction has proved to be a moveable feast for corporations
seeking to remove Indigenous people from their homelands,” Shiri
Pasternak, one of the researchers on the Yellowhead Institute report and
now an assistant professor of criminology at Toronto Metropolitan
University, told DeSmog. Corporations are able to use this legal tool
wherever and whenever they find themselves on Indigenous land, she said.</p>
<p>Ahead of the November 2021 raid that resulted in the <a href="https://thenarwhal.ca/rcmp-arrests-wetsuweten-media-photos/">arrest</a> of
more than dozen people, TC Energy, apparently unsatisfied with the
RCMP’s enforcement of the injunction around the Coastal GasLink site,
sent emails to RCMP leadership, according to <a href="https://thenarwhal.ca/rcmp-tc-energy-documents/">The Narwhal</a>. The company warned that it would go to court to compel the RCMP to act if the police force didn’t take stronger action.</p>
<p>“This is demonstrably a high-level coordination effort between the
federal and provincial governments, the pipeline company, and the RCMP,”
Pasternak said.</p>
<p>The approach by the RCMP and the Canadian governments towards
Indigenous people opposing oil and gas pipelines should be viewed
through a “counterinsurgency” lens, Miles Howe, an assistant professor
at Ontario-based Brock University, told DeSmog.</p>
<p>Howe co-authored a peer-reviewed <a href="https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/cjs/index.php/CJS/article/view/29397/21432">paper</a> published
in the Canadian Journal of Sociology in 2018 that revealed a secret
database and investigation run by the RCMP in response to Idle No More,
an Indigenous rights movement that swept the country in 2013, as well as
to anti-fracking protests in Canada’s maritime provinces of Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick the same year. The RCMP intelligence program, dubbed
“Project Sitka,” included a socio-psychological profiling matrix that
plugged in data on individuals, ranking them in terms of their potential
threat level.</p>
<p>“What was very interesting was almost none of the risk factors were
related to aspects of potential future criminality,” Howe said,
referring to the metrics used by the RCMP program. Instead, individuals
were deemed to be bigger threats if they were “successful” at spreading
their message and building support for their cause.</p>
<p>“If you’re telegenic, if you looked good on camera, if you had social
media acumen, if you had a lot of followers, if the issue was something
where you could break it down into slogans…those would get you scored,”
Howe said. The metrics used to rank threat level were “not criminal,”
he said, but instead seemed aimed at identifying people who might pose
obstacles to projects backed by the state, which mostly related to
resource extraction.</p>
<p>Howe said it was a kind of “pre-crime” program that resulted in
surveillance of Indigenous people and anti-fracking protesters. He found
that the RCMP flagged more than 300 people initially, and then whittled
it down to 89, of which 45 were anti-fracking protesters that were from
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where some of the high-profile protests
occurred.</p>
<p>Howe saw a lot of overlap from his research on the RCMP program from
several years ago and the surveillance and intimidation of the
Wet’suwet’en and Secwepemc land defenders today. Indeed, the CBC <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/rcmp-project-sitka-list-1.5422152">reported</a> that
the RCMP reactivated Project Sitka just days before Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau approved the Trans Mountain expansion in November 2016.</p>
<p>“The Maritimes got quiet, Wet’suwet’en got hot,” Howe said. “There’s nothing to say that this list is not still active.”</p>
<p>An in-depth investigation from APTN News <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/ourstories/cirg/">published</a> on
June 16 reveals details on the secret unit of the RCMP, the
Community-Industry Response Group(C-IRG), set up years ago with the aim
of surveilling opposition to the Trans Mountain expansion and Coastal
GasLink.</p>
<p>Turning back to the counterinsurgency concept, Howe said much of the
work to neutralize Indigenous rights movements goes beyond violent
raids, which understandably grab much of the attention. “It’s a bunch of
moving pieces. It’s media, it’s politicians, it’s academics, it is the
state security bodies. But it’s not just the police,” Howe said.
“There’s a whole lot of effort going into justifying what the police
will then have to do to ‘restore order’ or whatever the narrative is.”</p>
<p>Pasternak saw it in similar terms. She said that the surveillance and
harassment of Indigenous people should be thought of as part of
Canada’s long history of colonial settlement. “This is the blueprint of
Canada, so much so that sometimes I think of Canada sometimes more as a
company than a country,” she said.</p>
<p>The constant RCMP presence is “pure harrassment and psychological
intimidation,” Sleydo’ said. “They are creating the conditions where
it’s unbearable to live on our territories.”</p>
<p>The RCMP did not respond to questions from DeSmog.</p>
<h3>Pipeline Expansion Incompatible with Climate Goals</h3>
<p>The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion was nationalized by the
Canadian government in order to keep it alive in 2018, after Kinder
Morgan, the former owner, moved to cancel it due to ballooning costs and
legal uncertainty around conflict with First Nations. Since then, costs
have exploded to new heights. Earlier this year, Trans Mountain <a href="https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/trans-mountain-says-pipeline-expansion-cost-surges-to-21-4-billion">said</a> the
price tag could reach C$21.4 billion, nearly double the cost expected
two years earlier and a several-fold increase over the original
estimate.</p>
<p>The boondoggle has increasingly become a political liability, and the
federal government said it would not offer further public funding for
the pipeline. However, the government <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/10/trudeau-cabinet-approves-c-10b-loan-guarantee-for-tmx-00031522">provided</a> a $10 billion loan guarantee in order to enlist Canada’s <a href="https://www.stand.earth/latest/climate-finance/rbc-and-fossil-fuels/royal-bank-canada-td-scotia-cibc-bmo-national-bank-front">largest banks</a> into funding another tranche of capital, allowing construction to continue.</p>
<p>For years, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has championed both
Coastal GasLink and the Trans Mountain expansion — and his government
directly owns Trans Mountain — and there is little evidence that the
CERD letter will cause the federal or provincial governments to change
course.</p>
<p>It’s not clear what impact the international human rights body’s
letter will have, but it “puts pressure on Canada because Canada likes
to project itself as a great human rights advocate and protector around
the world. And Canada’s reputation has been harmed in recent years,”
Pasternak of Toronto Metropolitan University said. “They know that even
though they are denying Indigenous rights domestically, that
international human rights recognizes Indigenous rights to
self-determination.”</p>
<p>On June 6, fifty-seven civil society organizations sent a <a href="https://climateactionnetwork.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Letter-from-CSOs-Third-letter-from-the-United-Nations-Committee-on-the-Elimination-of-Racial-Discrimination-CERD-and-the-Secwepemc-and-Wetsuweten-communities-1.pdf">letter</a> to
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and BC Premier John Horgan,
calling on them to remove police and RCMP forces from the Indigenous
territories through which the two pipelines are being built.</p>
<p>“Both the federal and British Columbia governments regularly express
their dedication to both climate action and reconciliation, yet
undermine both by condoning the ongoing violence against Indigenous land
defenders,” the letter states. “Climate action cannot be separated from
the broader project of Indigenous self-determination and
decolonization.”</p>
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