Makaśa Looking Horse of the Six Nations of the Grand River says: “Nestlé’s presence on our land causes permanent harm to our people and Mother Earth.”

Peace Brigades International-Switzerland has forwarded to us an alert from MultiWatch, a Basel-based organization that visibilizes human rights violations by Swiss transnational corporations including Vevey-based Nestlé S.A.

Last month, it was announced that Nestlé Waters North America would be sold to the private equity firms One Rock Capital Partners and Metropoulos & Co for $4.3 billion.

The sale would include the Nestlé owned well in Aberfoyle, located near Guelph, Ontario, that is permitted to extract 3.6 million litres of water per day.

There is currently a moratorium on new or expanded permits for water taking for bottling operations in Ontario. That moratorium, however, allows Nestlé to continue to extract water in Aberfoyle even though the permit for that operation expired in 2016.

Guelph Today reports: “Wellington Water Watchers chair Rob Case has called on Jeff Yurek, Ontario Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks, to extend this moratorium and to not allow any active permits to transfer to the new company.”

Wellington Water Watchers is also calling on Minister Yurek to commit to phasing out permits to bottle water in Ontario.

Notably, the Aberfoyle well is on Six Nations territory in Ontario.

Makaśa Looking Horse says: “Nestlé’s presence on our land causes permanent harm to our people and Mother Earth.”

She highlights: “The Indigenous people of Six Nations, should always be at the table when the health of our water is at stake. We should have a say about the permits and our own water is governed. The reality is that we are rarely included in these conversations.”

In June 2019, Looking Horse read this cease and desist letter from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council to Nestlé. That letter stated: “Pursuant to the Haldimand Proclamation and the 1701 Nanfan Treaty, Nestlé sits on Haudenosaunee territory upon which it is carrying out illegal activity in removing aquifer waters from under our territory. We hold ancestral title to these lands, territories and waters.”

Wellington Water Watchers has also advocated that the Aberfoyle well should be returned to the Six Nations of the Grand River.

And yet the water takings by Nestlé continue.

The provincial moratorium on new and expanded permits expires on April 1. The sale of Nestlé Waters North America is expected to close this spring.

Peace Brigades International-Canada recognizes the human right to water and the Indigenous right to free, prior and informed consent. PBI accompanies Indigenous land defenders and water protectors in Latin America who experience threats, harassment, criminalization and judicialization for their activism. 

For more, you can watch the podcast series noted below by clicking here.

“200+ folks face criminal charges for protecting our territory from Line 3.”: Tara Houska, Giniw Collective

Emily Atkin reports 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.”

Atkin adds: “The permit said law enforcement could get reimbursed by Enbridge for any activity related to public safety and the pipeline.”

Notably, Atkin cites an article in The Intercept that reports a Minnesota Sheriff’s Office has requested Enbridge reimburse them for nearly $72,000 worth of riot gear and more than $10,000 in other costs including tear gas, pepper spray and batons.

Jane Fonda, who was in a car stopped by police while in Minnesota to speak against the Line 3 pipeline, has commented on this situation.

Fonda says: “This is a public police force that’s been privatized by a foreign oil company, and every minute they spend harassing the water protectors—and assaulting the water protectors—they turn in an invoice and they get paid.”

The article further notes that the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund is preparing to take legal action to challenge Enbridge’s financial relationship with Minnesota police.

Enbridge funded Hamilton police in 2013

In 2013, Hamilton 350 was fighting against the Enbridge Line 9B pipeline that puts at risk the Beverly Swamp in the headwaters of Spencer Creek, Hamilton’s largest watershed.

At that time, CBC reported: “Representatives from Hamilton 350 filed a policy complaint against Hamilton police services board for accepting $44,410 in donations from Enbridge Pipelines Inc. The money was given in two separate installments — $34,910 for a new ATV unit and $9,500 for mapping and GPS equipment in 2010.”

By November 2015, Toronto.com reported: “Enbridge Pipelines has stopped giving equipment grants to police services across Canada because of criticisms from Hamilton activists.”

Funding through police foundations

But companies can also direct money to the police through foundations.

In August 2020, The Tyee reported: “Canadian police forces have received millions of dollars from oil companies, banks and financiers, through shadowy charitable foundations that have little public oversight and increasingly serve as a ‘cash cow’ of private money.”

For example, that article cites: “Oil companies like Enbridge, Cenovus and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. helped kickstart the Calgary Police Foundation in 2012 with million-dollar donations, and pipeline company TransCanada is an annual donor, though the foundation would not say how much current donors give.”

“Cooperation agreements” in Colombia

Peace Brigades International-Canada has also drawn attention to the concern that the Canadian oil company Frontera Energy signed two agreements with the Ministry of Defence in Colombia for a total of US$1,343,106 to secure army protection for its activities.

In Colombia, the police are a part of the Ministry of Defence.

Not long after these agreements were signed, the police and army arrested eight social leaders who had been protested the environmental impacts of the company on their community of San Luis de Palenque in the department of Casanare.

There are reportedly more than 200 of these ‘cooperation agreements’ between the Ministry of Defence and more than 70 national and international companies.

PBI-Canada continues to follow these situations with concern.

The #FreeThemAll march in Ottawa said: “No prisons on stolen land.”

On March 20, a national day of action highlighted the impact of the COVD-19 pandemic on prisoners in Canada, notably Indigenous peoples.

In late January, University of Ottawa criminology professor Justin Piché stated that there have been more than 1,500 cases of COVID-19 in the federal prison system and more than 5,000 in the correctional system overall.

In Canada, if a person is sentenced to less than two years they go to a provincial jail, for sentences over two years they go to a federal prison.

In 2015, the federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended: “We call upon federal, provincial, and territorial governments to commit to eliminating the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in custody over the next decade, and to issue detailed annual reports that monitor and evaluate progress in doing so.”

And yet MacLean’s magazine reports: “There are more than 12,500 inmates in our federal system: Nearly one-third of them are Indigenous, eight per cent are black. Upwards of three-quarters of the prison population in Manitoba and Saskatchewan are Indigenous.”

That article commented: “Our prison system is racist.”

Radio Canada International further notes: “Government statistics from 2016 show that Indigenous people in Canada make up five per cent of the population … yet make up more than 30 per cent of those behind bars.”

Correctional Investigator (a federal ombudsperson for prisons) Ivan Zinger says: “I am particularly concerned by the fact that Indigenous inmates accounted for close to 60% of all positive COVID-19 cases in Canadian prisons since November.”

The United Nations has also expressed concern about the health-related implications of incarceration during the pandemic.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet had stated at the part of the pandemic that governments must work quickly to reduce the number of people in detention. And the Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said: “We urge Member States and the international community to include the specific needs and priorities of indigenous peoples in addressing the global outbreak of COVID 19.”

The Correctional Service of Canada, which operates 53 federal prisons across the country, has an annual budget of about $2.6 billion.

Millions more are spent on provincial systems. For instance, the budget in Saskatchewan for “custody, supervision and rehabilitation services” is about $187 million. About 75 per cent of the inmates in that provincial system are Indigenous. About 65 per cent of the inmates in the federal prisons in Saskatchewan are Indigenous.

Abolition feminism envisions a society in which this money would be directed toward the public good and addressing systemic inequalities and where “safety and security will not be premised on violence or the threat of violence.”