B.C. pipeline protests continue to halt Ontario trains for 5th day in a row
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I never understood the attraction to Annette , she was a star though . M I C KE Y . Lol long time ago .
NP View: The barricade frenzy has reached a fever pitch
The ludicrous level that the crisis over Indigenous rail blockades has reached was made eminently clear in a kerfuffle involving Conservative leadership candidate Peter MacKay this week.
MacKay posted a tweet indicating he was pleased to see a blockade in Edmonton peacefully dismantled by “a couple of Albertans with a pickup truck,” while the federal government continued to struggle to find a wider resolution.
Predictably, the former justice minister came under immediate fire. The CBC, quoting a single historian, alleged that he faced a “backlash,” in an article that included the heading “critics denounce vigilantism.” Andrew Coyne and Evan Solomon, both respected journalists, wondered whether MacKay was advocating citizens taking the law into their own hands.
“Isn’t it also illegal to be on the tracks and take down the barricades?” wondered Solomon. Gee, who knows … is it illegal to dismantle an illegal barrier? Is it a crime to step on train tracks, even if they’re non-operative because masked people piled barriers on them? MacKay duly deleted the tweet and replaced it with one noting that, “I do not, nor will I ever support acts of vigilantism. Which is actually what these blockades are.”
Let’s examine this more closely. The blockade in Edmonton was mounted before dawn by a group calling itself Cuzzins for Wet’suwet’en. Videos of the scene show a small group of people obscuring their faces with balaclavas and scarves, while holding signs declaring that “Reconciliation is Dead” and “We Protect Us.”
Some time later, several men who make no effort to disguise themselves show up, behave politely and begin to dismantle the barricades. While a local broadcaster suggests there was “tension,” there’s no sign of violence. There’s also no evidence that any of the protesters are from the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, or how many are even Indigenous, a matter complicated by their refusal to show
So, who are they and why are they labelled “protesters,” while the others are called “vigilantes?” The apparent leader of the clean-up group wore a Blue Jays ball cap and happily gave his name. If this is what passes for a threat to society in Canada, we are indeed a blessed country. It is, however, eminently reflective of the illogic that permeates the ongoing dispute.
All evidence indicates that the gas pipeline at the centre of the controversy has the support of the majority of the Indigenous communities it will affect, including most members of the Wet’suwet’en. Elected band councils have repeatedly backed it. Elders have spoken against the protests. The process by which it was approved was meticulous and passed all legal requirements. The main opponents are a small handful of unelected hereditary leaders, with considerable support from activists with other agendas who see the opportunity as a chance to press their claims against fossil fuels in general. Some are Indigenous; many are not.
The government is paralyzed by the fear that any attempt to dismantle the barricades will result in violence. It is appealing for dialogue, but the hereditary chiefs refuse to meet. The prime minister and his most senior cabinet members have put themselves at the whim of a few men who claim their power to impose their will by right of birth. The police refuse to act and citizens who peacefully and politely intervene to dismantle a blockade are immediately labelled as vigilantes who are endangering the safety of the community.
No one has a clue how to solve this conflict. You can’t hold a dialogue with people who refuse to meet. You can’t reconcile with strangers in balaclavas who are putting up barricades thousands of kilometres from the project in question and show little interest in any resolution other than having their demands unconditionally met. The RCMP has offered to withdraw from Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia and the minister of public safety says he hopes “that will satisfy the concerns that were raised.” But who knows — it’s up to a few unelected chiefs, right?
Two weeks into this crisis, the prime minister can’t show any sign or progress, or offer details of a coherent plan beyond appealing for calm and waiting for the phone to ring. Those of us in the media have no better ideas about how to resolve the situation, but reserve the right to criticize those whose job it is to try. A single “critic” is enough to justify another rebuke, and thanks to social media and the hothouse of acrimony that is Twitter, there is an endless supply of critics to tap. Many websites claiming journalistic credentials no longer feel the need even to identify complainers; it’s enough to say that an act, comment or interview “sparked online debates,” as if any twig falling from a tree doesn’t spark online debate these days.
Canada’s Indigenous people need to solve this problem for themselves — and fast — because appeals for calm won’t hold for long against an economy grinding to a halt, people being thrown out of work and ordinary citizens being penalized for a situation they didn’t cause and have little ability to resolve. If a government as outwardly devoted to reconciliation as this one finds itself helpless and humiliated by the very people it hopes to help, it’s unlikely that any future administration will show much interest in the issue. That can only hurt Canada’s Native peoples, who are fumbling away a chance for real progress.
nationalpost.com/opinion/np-view-the-barricade-frenzy-has-reached-a-fever-pitch
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It might of been , remember her as the movie green at the beach . She always got her guy in the end .
Quebec rail blockade abandoned by protesters after riot police arrive to enforce injunction
BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: FEB 21, 2020
ST-LAMBERT, Que. — A blockade south of Montreal that halted rail traffic and frayed nerves since Wednesday was abandoned late Friday after riot police arrived to enforce a court injunction.
The roughly two dozen protesters, acting in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs contesting a British Columbia natural gas pipeline, had begun dismantling the encampment earlier in the evening following discussions with police.
They took downs tents and carried items such as sleeping bags, pots, propane tanks and a wood stove to the edge of a security perimeter established earlier in the day by Longueuil municipal police.
BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: FEB 21, 2020
ST-LAMBERT, Que. — A blockade south of Montreal that halted rail traffic and frayed nerves since Wednesday was abandoned late Friday after riot police arrived to enforce a court injunction.
The roughly two dozen protesters, acting in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs contesting a British Columbia natural gas pipeline, had begun dismantling the encampment earlier in the evening following discussions with police.
They took downs tents and carried items such as sleeping bags, pots, propane tanks and a wood stove to the edge of a security perimeter established earlier in the day by Longueuil municipal police.
But all the others in her movies filled the bikinis, unlike Annette who couldn’t wear one .
Just need to buy a share or two in the Wet'suwet'en society corporation and your in, easy peasy Groper squeezy
A few minutes ago I googled "consequences to blockade protests Canada" and though I got 1,440,000 hits....none of them seem to be relevant to the search. Weird. It appears that there aren't any consequences to these illegal blockades, so what's the deterrent to the current & future illegal actions to hold Canada for ransom?
I thought, maybe it's my search that's flawed, so I tried " deterrent to blockade protests Canada" and though I now got 292,000 hits....most had the word deterrent crossed out, and it boiled down to part of one sentence being, "... the deterrent effect of the law has been removed for these protesters."
How can a society function when there are no consequences to illegal actions? I know that the consequence of my driving 35km/h in a school zone is a good chance of receiving a $300 fine in my mailbox via photo-radar for my lawlessness, and I know the consequence of not shoveling and salting my sidewalk in the winter can result in my not receiving my mail for not accepting my obligation to not create a hazard for my Postie, and I know that if a criminal gang-tags my garage and I don't remove their graffiti in a timely manner the city will do it for me and add a large bill to me taxes for their services.
Why do some people have legal & or civil consequences to their actions, but not others?
I thought, maybe it's my search that's flawed, so I tried " deterrent to blockade protests Canada" and though I now got 292,000 hits....most had the word deterrent crossed out, and it boiled down to part of one sentence being, "... the deterrent effect of the law has been removed for these protesters."
How can a society function when there are no consequences to illegal actions? I know that the consequence of my driving 35km/h in a school zone is a good chance of receiving a $300 fine in my mailbox via photo-radar for my lawlessness, and I know the consequence of not shoveling and salting my sidewalk in the winter can result in my not receiving my mail for not accepting my obligation to not create a hazard for my Postie, and I know that if a criminal gang-tags my garage and I don't remove their graffiti in a timely manner the city will do it for me and add a large bill to me taxes for their services.
Why do some people have legal & or civil consequences to their actions, but not others?
This piece of crap we call our prime mistake of Khanuckistan is out to break this country, and de industrialize it with he help of the UN and George Soros. The punk got all his commie training from his commie old man who loved his, thank gawd the commie is dead, Castro. This idiot also has said that he admires communist China. What does that tell us about where this commie stands? You are so right when you say that this buffoon is trying to tear this country apart. Both Trudeaus have done their job well. They both have pretty much bankrupted Canada with all of their socialist programs and agendas like multiculturalism and massive 3rd world immigration.
Trudeau is now relying on the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from the many non traditional British/European countries as it once was done. He has their vote. It takes only three bloody ridiculous years to become a Canadian citizen, and this is why and who Trudeau is counting on for votes in the next election. This buffoon could be the king of Canada forever.
Might as well leave the leader of the opposition party out anyway because he is not really any kind of an opposition. The conservative party is just another liberal party. Scheer would do nothing to try and change anything. He has become too politically correct himself. Thanks to the clueless dumb downed fools that voted for Trudeau in the last election are now going to not only make themselves broke and much more poorer but will take the rest of us down with them.
For all the things that Trudeau committed as far as ethics violations goes, scandals, and lies galore, those voters appeared that it was not enough for them. they want more, the dumb bunch of chits. As the years go by, Canada will become and start looking more and more like a third world hell hole country. Trudeau's dream. Pathetic.
Matt Gurney: It's past time to end the blockades, Canada cannot function without its rails
It will take days to restart the trains and clear the ports. That's why claims there was no need to impose a deadline to clear the barricades were so ludicrous
As a blockade near Belleville, Ont., brought CN’s trains to a halt throughout eastern Canada, City of Toronto officials said local water purification wouldn’t be affected. The chlorine comes by truck.
Good to know. But where do the trucks pick up the chlorine? And how does it get there?
There’s an old truism about military studies — “Amateurs talk strategy, but professionals study logistics.” Millions of us may soon have good reason to be talking logistics. As the rail blockade of CN’s line moves well into its third week, cracks are starting to appear in Canada’s logistics network. While the railroad looms large in Canadians’ understanding of their early history, its place in our notion of travel has been bumped out of the public’s eye by the car, the truck and the jet. But railways remain essential — the country cannot function without its rails.
In a series of interviews this week, the National Post tried to determine the extent of the blockade’s impact. Much of the coverage has focused purely on economic metrics — the value of undelivered commodities, costs incurred by CN, the number of layoffs. But CN moves everything, or at least moves the stuff needed to build, package and distribute everything. The entire economy relies on billions of moving parts. They can’t be inventoried.
Still, one thing is clear: for a variety of reasons, including a dispersed population and a transportation network that’s more reliant on a few key arteries, Atlantic Canada will feel the pain first. Ontario and Quebec, with their larger and more complex transportation networks, have more ways to adapt to disruptions.
As has been widely reported, propane is one such problem. Propane is widely used for home heating in the Maritimes, where natural gas networks are more limited than in Ontario and Quebec. Propane also heats barns to prevent livestock from freezing to death. But the local demand far outstrips supply, which is met by rail delivery. On Friday, Quebec ordered rationing of propane, and the Canadian Propane Association reported that the situation in Atlantic Canada was critical, with supplies at record lows. Trucks were being sent to Sarnia, Ont., to supply Atlantic Canada, but that’s not sustainable, the association warned.
Another concern is food. Much of the food stocked in supermarkets is delivered by truck. Trucks, though more expensive than trains, are faster and more flexible, and well suited to deliveries of fresh meat, dairy and produce. But rail is a vital link in the supply chain for grocery stories. In an interview with the National Post, Karl Littler, of the Retail Council of Canada, described the country’s food distribution network as a tree. “Trucks are the branches,” he said. “They reach out in all directions, delivering food to distribution centres and then onto your local grocery store. But the trunk of the tree is rail. That’s where the heavy volumes are moved.” There isn’t a good understanding precisely how much of country’s food is moved by rail vs. truck, he said, and noted that between this blockade and the threat of a CN rail strike last year, that’s something the food industry needs to pay more attention to.
“But it’s big,” Littler said. “It can get complicated because of how intermodal logistics has become — cargo goes from ship to truck to train to truck to van, so do you count that as rail or truck? — but the rail contribution to our food supply is big. I don’t have an exact number, but as much as 50 per cent wouldn’t surprise me.”
“DCs — distribution centres — always have some stock on hand, in case of inclement weather or a traffic jam,” Littler added. “But the food industry has moved more to just-in-time delivery. If you’re near a source of food production, or a border crossing, or if you have good local trucking assets, you’ll hold out longer. But that’s not everywhere in the country. Atlantic Canada has particular supply challenges.”
There’s a further wrinkle. As noted above, setting aside the complexities of a fully intermodal system, rail and trucks move different types of food. Littler stressed that it was not a bright, stark division, but in general terms, fresh foods are moved by truck, but processed, frozen and dry bulk foods are moved by rail.
And that poses a very specific challenge. Sylvain Charlebois is a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax and an expert in food production, distribution and security. The kinds of processed, frozen and dry bulk foods moved largely by rail, he noted, are the most affordable food. Wealthier Canadians can enjoy the benefits of a diet rich in fresh meat, produce and dairy. Those on lower incomes buy more processed, frozen and bulk foods. The effects of the blockade will hit them first and hardest.
It’s already started, Charlebois believes. “I’ve already noticed some items missing from shelves” in Atlantic Canada, Charlebois said in an interview. “I can’t definitely link them to the blockades because the distribution system is complex. But why are we running out of ketchup in February? What’s causing this?”
He stressed that this is actually a good time of year for these kinds of disruptions. Right now much of the actual food supply is coming from warmer climates, so the problem is distribution, not production. And February is a relative low point during the year for grocery sales. “December, around Christmas, and during the summer, that’s when sales are high,” he explained.
“February is slower. Diesel is cheap, the Canadian dollar is stable — this is letting us absorb some of the impact. But food prices could still spike 30-50 per cent. This is a food security issue for low-income families.”
Asked how long the CN disruption could last before it became a food security issue for all of us, with shortages causing an actual emergency, he sighed. “I don’t think we’re there yet,” he said. “But in another two weeks? This will hit a critical point.”
A major challenge are the secondary effects of the blockade. The idling of much of CN’s network in eastern Canada means that containers that arrive in our major eastern ports of Montreal and Halifax can’t be moved out. That’s congested the ports. In a statement to the Post, a spokeswoman for the Port of Montreal said that distribution to destinations in Quebec are largely unaffected, as that relies on trucks. But distribution to Ontario is a huge problem, and 4,000 containers are immobilized. Lane Farguson, of the Port of Halifax, told the National Post that shipping containers are accumulating there, and while the situation is manageable, it’s becoming more challenging. Halifax moves 60 per cent of its cargo out via rail. Some shipping lines have begun diverting to U.S. ports to unload their cargo. The trucking fleet, meanwhile, is also trying to adapt, but there simply isn’t the surge capacity to replace the hundreds of millions of tonnes CN rail moves each year.
Some adaptation is possible. CN has already got some trains moving in Ontario on other tracks. Some essential goods can shift from rails to roads. Propane is already being rationed in the Atlantic; food could be, too, though it would be interesting to see a government that can’t figure out how to pay its own employees impose a rationing system on short notice.
But there are limits to how much can be shifted, and each shift has a cost. Every truck shipping baby formula to Moncton, N.B., isn’t hauling trade goods to export markets. And even after the blockade has ended, it will take days — no one knows exactly how many — to restart the trains and clear the ports. Resolving this the day before the propane and food supply is exhausted isn’t good enough.
That’s why repeated claims by federal officials that there was no need to impose a deadline to clear the barricades were so ludicrous.
The blockades imposed their own deadline. Considering the time necessary to restore the normal movement of supplies, the prime minister may have decided that deadline has been reached. His remarks on Friday were blunt: Time was up.
So now we wait to see what happens. And hope that new blockades don’t replace any that are cleared.
nationalpost.com/opinion/matt-gurney-its-past-time-for-the-barricades-to-come-down-canada-cannot-function-without-its-rails
Choke point: How the blockade movement has sent tremors across Canada’s economy and beyond
Kevin Piper still operates a crane at the Port of Halifax, but with each passing day, there’s less and less work.
This week, one of the port’s largest customers, New Jersey–based Atlantic Container Line (ACL), started diverting its ships to ports in the United States after a rail blockade paralyzed much of Eastern Canada, leaving valuable cargo stranded on the docks in Nova Scotia.
“It’s amazing to me that this has gone on this long,” said Andrew Abbott, ACL’s president. “We’ve always sold clients on the fact that it’s easier (to ship) in Canada.”
Earlier this month, what started as a protest of TC Energy Corp.’s plans to build its Coastal GasLink pipeline through the traditional territory of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in rural British Columbia set off a political and economic crisis that is wreaking havoc across the nation as far away as Halifax.
A clash between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and protesters in Wet’suwet’en territory inspired others to set up blockades elsewhere, including one that started on Feb. 6 at a crucial choke point on a Canadian National Railway line in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, about 200 kilometres east of Toronto. Blocking that one spot has apparently managed to freeze freight traffic throughout almost all of Eastern Canada, and, in turn, hindering work at some of its ports.
Canada’s rail traffic has been halted before, including at least twice in the past year because of a derailment in February 2019 and a CN labour strike in November. But the current crisis is entering its third week, outlasting the previous incidents, and there are few signs indicating that a resolution is just around the corner.
As a result, the blockade is raising fresh questions about how easily a small group of protesters in a remote part of Western Canada have been able to paralyze the country’s economy, and highlighting concerns about the vulnerability of the country’s infrastructure and its reputation in the world as a reliable economic partner even if the short-term economic fallout is small.
Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Financial Group, said the blockades could pose longer-term damages, but it’s difficult to quantify the exact impacts of a rail stoppage.
“I do have to wonder if it will do some lasting damage to Canada’s brand, especially if this is not a one-off event,” he said.
The current blockades were sparked by the proposed construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline, which would link up to a liquefied natural gas export terminal on the coast of British Columbia. Both the export terminal and the pipeline have drawn foreign investment, from Royal Dutch Shell and a consortium of investors led by U.S.-based private-equity firm KKR & Co. Inc., respectively.
Other energy pipelines, most notably the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, which would twin an existing pipeline to carry oil from Alberta to B.C.’s coast, have been slowed or stopped by protests and litigation in the past. Major executives such as Don Lindsey, the chief executive of Teck Resources Ltd., have said the status of such projects will influence whether his company invests in new projects in Canada.
Protests have occurred in the U.S., too, including one that started in 2016 in North Dakota where protesters used sit-ins and lawsuits to delay the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline for months in hopes that it would be rerouted. More recently, there have been similar attempts in the northeastern U.S. to block the construction of gas pipelines.
But Jim Bookbinder, a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who studies transportation systems, said it’s important to remember that Canada essentially has only two rail systems: one operated by CN and another by Canadian Pacific Rail Ltd.
“We have two nationwide railways, but only two,” he said. “In the U.S., there’d be a half-dozen and it’d be pretty hard to blockade all of them.”
A CN spokesman declined to offer details, but said a blockade at just one spot affects the entire system.
“It’s a network,” Olivier Quenneville said in an email. “If you clog a part, you clog the whole.”
Bookbinder said that most businesses, even those dependent on a functional rail system for supplies, can withstand the impacts of a temporary stoppage in service because they may have excess inventory on hand or they can sustain paying more for a new source for short periods.
That adaptability is partly why economists aren’t sure about the macroeconomic impact of the current stoppages.
“The question is how long it lasts?” said Nathan Janzen, a senior economist at RBC.
Janzen noted that the CN labour strike for one week in November inflicted only minimal damage on the economy. He estimates the strike may have lowered Canadian gross domestic product in November by less than one-tenth of a percentage point.
The small effect is largely because rail traffic accelerates once the stoppage clears up and the broader economy bounces back, even if some businesses suffer more acutely from the disruption.
For example, Saskatoon-based Nutrien Ltd., which mines potash in Western Canada, said the CN strike in November lowered its third-quarter earnings by $10 million, but that the current situation has had minimal impact so far.
“We don’t think it’s going to have an impact to our deliveries right now,” Nutrien chief executive Chuck Magro told shareholders this week, “but the reliability of the Canadian supply chain is becoming a concern for us.”
At the Port of Halifax, Abbott said the current “headache” may deter his customers from using it in the future, preferring instead to route goods through Baltimore and New York, and Piper, president of the International Longshoreman’s Association of Halifax, is worried other large customers, including the French shipper CMA CGM SA will follow ACL’s lead. Some, he fears, may not come back.
At the moment, new ships are still arriving in Halifax, but Piper said most are not bringing full cargo loads, and he estimates that work is down by 50 per cent.
Some cargo is being off-loaded onto trucks, a more expensive and slower way to move freight. There is also some cargo being loaded onto rails, but it is unable to move far from the port, Piper said.
Much of the cargo at the port, however, is just sitting around as everyone hopes for a resolution that will enable rail traffic to restart.
The slowdown at the Port of Halifax comes at a particularly bad time: the port had charted double-digit growth in traffic and added hundreds of jobs in recent years by marketing itself as the fastest way to move marine cargo into North America’s heartland.
“Our niche is time-sensitive cargo,” Piper said. “The thing with Halifax is, geographically, we’ve got an advantage over some of the ports in the U.S., because when things come into our port, it dumps onto a rail car and is on its way to Chicago before a ship could ever get to New York, Baltimore or wherever.”
Union workers have even staked their pensions — by agreeing to use their funds to provide financial rebates to ships that call there — to entice greater traffic to the port, according to Piper.
“That money could go back to our pockets, but we realized there’s a market here that we could entice shippers to go through Halifax,” he said. “What we lose through our pension, we make up in ship traffic.”
Of course, Halifax is not the only place in Canada that’s suffering. Protests near Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and other cities have slowed traffic on various roads, and ports at times as well.
The rail blockade in Ontario forced CN to shut down operations throughout Eastern Canada, temporarily laying off about 450 workers.
Via Rail Canada Inc., which operates passenger trains on the same tracks, said it is laying off 1,000 workers until the rail line re-opens and is deemed safe again.
How a blockade in a single spot could affect ports hundreds or even more than 1,000 kilometres away, in Montreal and Halifax, stumps many economists and even rail experts, but it’s clearly something the pipeline protestors have realized they can do.
Although many of the protesters are driven by concerns about climate change, the recent protests have an added layer of complexity because they involve questions about Indigenous rights to traditional land.
The proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline cuts through traditional Wet’suwet’en land, which, like most of British Columbia, was never officially ceded by First Nations to the Government of Canada. Within the Wet’suwet’en community, there are factions that oppose and support the project, and there are unresolved questions about who can speak for the First Nations people.
Drew Fagan, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, said the problem’s multiple layers — the protest in B.C. is related to historical grievances held by indigenous people as well as climate change — make it more intractable.
“This is what we call a super-wicked problem,” he said. “We talk about problems that are kind of squishy, not easily measurable, politically controversial, entangled with other problems, with no clear cause and no clear solution as wicked and this is super-wicked.”
business.financialpost.com/news/economy/choke-point-how-the-blockade-movement-has-sent-tremors-across-canadas-economy-and-beyond
http://globalnews.ca/news/6578329/rail-blockade-protest-wetsuweten/
It is lamentably inconsistent to insist that Canada is a nation of laws, while simultaneously publicly engaging in the appeasement of those defying court orders.
This nation’s justice system, through the British Columbia Supreme Court, has empowered its law enforcement arm to remove both obstructionists and their obstructions from blockading Canada’s national infrastructure. Enforcing that order has been another matter.
No doubt there is strong support among Indigenous peoples for the position taken by five hereditary British Columbia chiefs against the Coastal GasLink pipeline project. There is also strong and signed support among First Nations along the route of the pipeline, for its construction service implementation.
Meanwhile, this crisis isn’t solely resting on Indigenous blockades of rail lines and interference with daily Canadian commerce and life. Anarchists are seizing the opportunity to cause disruption, not in support of Aboriginals but rather as a rally to their battle cry to shut down Canada.
What’s the nature of the timid argument against arresting and charging these individuals who are costing Canada dearly?
It is entirely fair to question Trudeau’s commitment to finding a resolution to the crisis. After all, as the unrest was developing, the prime minister’s focus was the pursuit of securing Canada’s temporary presence on the United Nations Security Council, limiting his direct engagement at home to long-distance missives from Africa and Munich.
Furthermore, Trudeau’s churlish exclusion of Andrew Scheer from a meeting of federal party leaders — a meeting supposedly to work toward a peaceful conclusion of the national disruption — demonstrated a small-minded and petulant man at his politically most malevolent.
Canada is a nation of laws? Then enforce them.
Failure to do so does not demonstrate strength and resolve. Rather, it timidly green-lights even more disruptive and harming future behaviours.
It is lamentably inconsistent to insist that Canada is a nation of laws, while simultaneously publicly engaging in the appeasement of those defying court orders.
This nation’s justice system, through the British Columbia Supreme Court, has empowered its law enforcement arm to remove both obstructionists and their obstructions from blockading Canada’s national infrastructure. Enforcing that order has been another matter.
No doubt there is strong support among Indigenous peoples for the position taken by five hereditary British Columbia chiefs against the Coastal GasLink pipeline project. There is also strong and signed support among First Nations along the route of the pipeline, for its construction service implementation.
Meanwhile, this crisis isn’t solely resting on Indigenous blockades of rail lines and interference with daily Canadian commerce and life. Anarchists are seizing the opportunity to cause disruption, not in support of Aboriginals but rather as a rally to their battle cry to shut down Canada.
What’s the nature of the timid argument against arresting and charging these individuals who are costing Canada dearly?
It is entirely fair to question Trudeau’s commitment to finding a resolution to the crisis. After all, as the unrest was developing, the prime minister’s focus was the pursuit of securing Canada’s temporary presence on the United Nations Security Council, limiting his direct engagement at home to long-distance missives from Africa and Munich.
Furthermore, Trudeau’s churlish exclusion of Andrew Scheer from a meeting of federal party leaders — a meeting supposedly to work toward a peaceful conclusion of the national disruption — demonstrated a small-minded and petulant man at his politically most malevolent.
Canada is a nation of laws? Then enforce them.
Failure to do so does not demonstrate strength and resolve. Rather, it timidly green-lights even more disruptive and harming future behaviours.