This video of Wet’suwet’en land defender Molly Wickham (Sleydo’) was projected on the side of the RBC branch on Wellington Street West in Ottawa.

Peace Brigades International-Canada observed a Decolonial Solidarity video screening on the side of a Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) branch in Ottawa.

The videos highlighted the Wet’suwet’en demand that the construction of the pipeline – now being built without free, prior and informed consent on their territory in northern British Columbia – be stopped.

RBC is financing this pipeline, including $275 million in project finance, a co-financed $6.5 billion loan, a $40 million corporate loan, and $200 million in co-financed working capital. RBC also acts as a financial advisor to CGL. RBC also holds more than $1.03 billion in shares in Calgary-based TC Energy, one of the owners of Coastal GasLink company.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, that monitors the compliance of States with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, has called for construction of the pipeline to be stopped.

Violence against Indigenous women

The link was also made between Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the construction of the pipeline. A red dress was hung at the front door of the bank as a symbol of the thousands of disappeared and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. People also lit candles and placed cedar at the door.

In its final report released in June 2019, the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls found that “work camps, or man camps, associated with the resource extraction industry are implicated in higher rates of violence against Indigenous women at the camps and in the neighbouring communities.”

As of September 30, Coastal GasLink has 6,389 workers along the pipeline route, including 1,125 workers at Huckleberry Lodge (just south of Houston on Wet’suwet’en territory) and 1,552 workers at the 9A camp (on the same road just 17 kilometres from the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre) and the Sitka, Hunter Creek and P2 camps.

Brandi Morin has written: “There have been approximately 4,000 or more Indigenous murdered or missing women and girls in the last 30 years. That works out to about 133 a year, or three a week. [But in truth this crisis has] been happening since 1492.”

Day of action

The action in Ottawa was part of a National Day of Action on November 5.

Actions also took place in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Moncton, Smithers, Terrace, Courtenay, Kelowna, Ladysmith, Daajing Giids, Sault Ste. Marie, Dunas, Belleville, Thunder Bay, Victoriaville, Outremont and other cities.

The full list can be found here.

Houston Today had reported: “Sources have also informed Black Press Media of potential highway closures and blockades in northwest B.C., which has been a hot spot for CGL pipeline opposition for several years. Closures can be expected along Hwy 16 (intersection of Hwy 16 / 62, right in New Hazelton) and Hwy 37 (near Gitwangak).”

We continue to follow that on social media.

This video of the RCMP using an axe and chainsaw to tear down the door of a cabin on November 19, 2021, and arrest land defenders and two journalists was also played.

Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault at COP26 last year. Photo by La Presse canadienne / Sean Kilpatrick.

An Environment and Climate Change Canada media release notes:

“Over the course of COP27, Canada will support ambitious outcomes within the negotiations, including on issues related to climate finance and adaptation.

Canada will also advance concrete actions that raise global ambition, including building international support for the phasing-out of coal-fired electricity, reducing methane emissions, increasing climate finance commitments from developed nations, cutting plastic waste, and protecting nature.

Canada will also have a national Pavilion to highlight both domestic and international leadership in the fight against climate change and promote Canadian innovations, from low-carbon businesses and clean technologies to sustainable finance and nature-based solutions.”

The Canadian delegation will also include Catherine Stewart, Ambassador for Climate Change, and Steven Kuhn, Canada’s Chief Negotiator for Climate Change.

Photo: Guilbeault and Kuhn at COP26.

Environmental human rights defenders

The UN Human Rights Council has affirmed that “human rights defenders, including environmental human rights defenders, must be ensured a safe and enabling environment to undertake their work free from hindrance and insecurity, in recognition of their important role in supporting States to fulfil their obligations under the Paris Agreement.”

That resolution was adopted in March 2019. At least 639 land and environmental defenders have been killed since then.

Furthermore, as Global Witness documented at COP26, more than 1,005 land and environmental rights defenders have been killed since the Paris Agreement was signed at COP21 in December 2015.

Despite this death toll, and the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee resolution on a defender protection policy, the 10-page Glasgow work programme on Action for Climate Empowerment that emerged from COP26 in Scotland last year neither references human rights nor environmental defenders.

Recommendations

In the lead up to COP27, EarthRights International, Global Witness, Natural Justice, Sociedad Peruana de Derecho Ambiental (SPDA), CIVICUS, and the International Land Coalition have released a set of recommendations for policymakers attending COP27 calling on them to take meaningful steps to protect those on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

Silvana Baldovino of SPDA says: “A higher recognition and incorporation by UNFCCC and COP27 of the role of defenders in facing the climate crisis is crucial to move States towards stronger protection schemes.”

Amnesty International has also called on all parties to: “Ensure the action plan recognizes the role of environmental human rights defenders in promoting effective and ambitious climate action and includes concrete measures to protect them in line with the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.”

Other notable concerns

Global ambition: Greenpeace says Canada should be proposing at least a 60 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels. Last year, the Canadian government proposed an emission reductions target of 40 to 45 per cent by 2030.

Climate finance: Environmental Defence says Canada should contribute $9 billion a year in annual climate financing to countries bearing the brunt of climate change. Canada’s previous commitment of $2.65 billion will be increased to $5.3 billion over the next 5 years.

Fossil fuel subsidies: A new report released by Oil Change International notes that between 2019 and 2021 Export Development Canada provided on average CAD $11.3 billion annually in support for the oil and gas sector.

Domestic leadership: In 2018, the Canadian government bought the existing Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline for $4.5 billion and committed to spend an additional $7.4 billion to expand the capacity of that pipeline (from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 bpd). The cost to complete that pipeline has now soared to $21.4 billion.

Domestic leadership: In 2020, the federal government’s export credit agency, Export Development Canada (EDC), said it would lend up to $500 million to build the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline. More than 74 people, including land defenders, allies and journalists, have been arrested resisting this pipeline that could produce 125 million metric tons of CO2 pollution annually over the next 25-50 years. The pipeline will feed the LNG Canada export terminal, that has been praised by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Webinar, November 15

Peace Brigades International-Canada is helping to organize a webinar that will amplify the voices of frontline environmental defenders in Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Kenya, Nicaragua and Honduras.

To register for that webinar, please click here.

Photo: Family and supporters march in Ottawa in October 2020 following the ‘not guilty’ verdict in the police killing of Abdirahman Abdi.

Peace Brigades International accompanies threatened human rights defenders and monitors the shrinking of civil society spaces around the world. The Transnational Institute has defined shrinking space as “a metaphor that has been widely embraced as a way of describing a new generation of restrictions on political struggle.”

One form of restriction is political bias and stigmatization.

The University of York has explained: “Stigmatisation tactics often draw upon nationalist, religious, homophobic, patriarchal, racist, and/or xenophobic sentiments in society to cast defenders in negative light.” In the context of Colombia, Front Line Defenders has called on the police “to refrain from stigmatizing the work of human rights defenders”.

What does this look like in Ottawa?

CTV has reported: “A report from the [Ottawa Police Service] Security Intelligence Section, dated January 25 [2022] and authored by Sergeant Chris Kiez said the [Freedom Convoy truck protest] was ‘less a professional protest with the usual sad players, but rather a truly organic grass roots event that is gathering momentum.’”

Press Progress further notes: “The report describes other protests as ‘repetitive’ with the ‘same players, same chants,’ mocking left-wing activists who ‘glue themselves to something, waiting for the same old supper hour news shows and write-ups in hard-left handbills, blogs and undernourished Twitter feeds.’”

That article adds: “In the intelligence report, Ottawa Police [deride] left-wing community activists as ‘professional activists’ singling out one activist by name who has been critical of Ottawa Police in local media.”

It then quotes the Ottawa Police Service intelligence report that says: “The [Freedom Convoy] protests globally are made up almost entirely of middle-class members of society. Since the so-called ‘silent majority’ is numerically much larger than the professional activists, such as local Sam Hersch can order up.”

Hersh, an organizer with Horizon Ottawa, has responded: “It’s very disturbing but not surprising to see that the Ottawa Police are targeting particular individuals for their activism around police accountability. This puts into question their neutrality when it comes to things like the police budget and whether they are deliberately targeting left wing activists.”

Carleton University professor Stephanie Carvin, a former Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) intelligence analyst, comments: “The threat assessments are not threat assessments. They are strange editorial positions.”

She adds: “This person (Kiez) is effectively saying look, these are white middle class people, they’re not going to engage in the kind of demonstrations that we’ve seen with Black Lives Matter or Indigenous protesters.”

Press Progress now reports that the Ottawa Police Service has confirmed that its Professional Standards Section is “reviewing” social media comments allegedly made by Kiez that include him referring to teachers as “the most vile of the left-marxist set”.

While former Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly says he had not read the intelligence report, he did recently testify: “Sgt. Chris Kiez is one of our best intelligence operators, I had an opportunity to interact with him quite a bit when I was at the police service.”

Notably, the Security Intelligence Section is not listed on the Ottawa Police Service “Sections and Units” page, but elsewhere on the OPS website they do note: “Our Security Intelligence Section has the responsibility for monitoring trends and issues that can lead to local incidents of hate and extremism in Ottawa.”

To read more from the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute on the global concern of shrinking “political space to organize, to operate, to have a legitimate voice, to protest and to dissent”, please click here.

Photo: Ottawa police officers filming the #EveryChildMatters walk, July 1, 2021.

Photo: Ottawa police surveillance van parked next to Wet’suwet’en solidarity rally near Parliament Hill, February 2020.

Related reading: Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) deems rail blockades in support of Wet’suwet’en land defenders as acts of “ideologically motivated violent extremists” and New Ottawa police chief oversaw the arrests of Wet’suwet’en land defenders opposing megaproject that lacks consent.

Front Line Defenders Americas has tweeted: “‘Canada’s reconciliation with our people is a mockery’ Powerful testimony from Wet’suwet’en land defender Sleydo Molly Wickham. They have used militarised police to force a pipeline on their territory. She has been threatened, harassed and arrested.”

The Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline

Sleydo’ has been arrested at gunpoint and criminalized for opposing the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline that is being constructed on her territory in northern British Columbia without free, prior and informed consent.

She has stated: “[The drilling at the site of our sacred headwaters] is happening now. The salmon are spawning in the river and you can actually hear the drilling happening from kilometres away. You can feel it in the ground, in the earth, from kilometres away. The salmon are spawning and you can feel the vibration of the drilling.”

The Coastal GasLink company is 65 per cent owned by the US-based private equity firm KKR and Alberta Investment Management Corporation, 25 per cent by Calgary-based TC Energy and 10 per cent by several First Nations.

Stand.earth has documented: “RBC is among top commercial banks providing the CGL project with working capital, including CAD $275 million in project finance, a co-financed $6.5 billion loan, a $40 million corporate loan, and $200 million in co-financed working capital – while acting as financial advisor for the pipeline.”

Sleydo’ has highlighted: “By financing the Coastal GasLink pipeline, RBC is choosing to bypass our right to free, prior, and informed consent and instead justify police violence against unarmed Wet’suwet’en people to push the project through. As an Indigenous woman, I have experienced violence by militarized RCMP to forcibly remove me from my own territory, criminalize me, and jail me. RBC is willing to risk the killing of unarmed Wet’suwet’en people by police to push this project through sovereign lands.”

Since January 2019, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has spent more than $25 million on their ongoing presence on the territory and have arrested more than 74 land defenders, legal observers and members of the media in three militarized raids. Over the three-month period of March to May 2022, the RCMP “attended” the Gidimt’en village near the Coastal GasLink drill pad site by Wedzin Kwa 269 times.

Video of Canadian police smashing down a door and arresting Sleydo’ at gunpoint on November 19, 2021.

The Line 3 tar sands pipeline

Ojibwe water protector Tara Zhaabowekwe Houska (seen in this photo with Sleydo’) was also present at the Dublin Platform.

She tweeted: “This week was intense heart work; uplifting, horrific, inspiring all at once. Frontliners sharing stories of brutality, triumph & refusing to stand down in the face of oppression. Miigwech @FrontLineHRD for bringing together Indigenous land defenders. #BigOilLies #WaterIsLife”

Houska and the Giniw Collective have struggled against the construction of the Calgary-based Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline that begins on Indigenous territory in Canada and crosses Anishinaabe territory in northern Minnesota.

Emily Atkin has reported in Heated: “Enbridge established a financial relationship with Minnesota law enforcement in May 2020, when the state Public Utilities Commission approved Line 3’s route permit. That permit required the oil giant to set up a special fund that would reimburse police responding to anything pipeline-related.”

That article highlights a reimbursement request from the police for “nearly $72,000 worth of riot gear and more than $10,000 in ‘less than lethal’ weapons and ammunition, including tear gas, pepper spray, bean bag and sponge rounds, flash-bang devices, and batons.”

On August 2, 2021, Houska tweeted: “Rubber bullets bought and paid for by Enbridge. Fuck Line 3. For the land, for the water, for the rice, for love of those to come, we stand.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved the construction of the Line 3 pipeline in Canada in November 2016.

The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has documented that the top five financiers of Enbridge are Canadian banks: TD Bank, Bank of Montreal, Scotiabank, RBC and CIBC. Collectively they have provided billions of dollars in financing to Enbridge.

The Dublin Platform

The Dublin Platform is convened by our friends at Front Line Defenders.

They have explained: “Established in 2002, the Dublin Platform for Human Rights Defenders is a biennial event providing a truly unique opportunity for human rights defenders from almost every country in the world to gather in Dublin. Over 3 days in Dublin Castle, human rights defenders share strategies for advocacy and protection, build solidarity with colleagues around the world, and network with high-level decision makers from governmental and intergovernmental bodies.”

This year’s Dublin Platform took place from October 26 to 28.

Joana Kathe, the international coordinator for Peace Brigades International, was also present at the Dublin Platform.

Peace Brigades International-Canada will be following the Decolonial Solidarity day of action on Saturday November 5 that will call on the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) to defund Coastal GasLink. Mobilizations are happening in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Victoria, Belleville, Moncton and other cities. For more information, click here.