On February 7 of this year, CBC reporter Chantelle Bellrichard tweeted: “Just got an email reply on an earlier request I’d sent to #RCMP around costs for last year’s enforcement actions and establishment of CISO [Community Industry Safety Office] detachment [on Wet’suwet’en territory]. RCMP said actions between January and March 2019 cost $3.6 million.”

Those “enforcement actions” included a raid on January 7, 2019 by RCMP officers armed with assault rifles against a checkpoint and the arrest of 14 land defenders.

The Guardian has reported: “Canadian police were prepared to shoot Indigenous land defenders blockading construction of a natural gas pipeline in northern British Columbia, according to documents seen by the Guardian.”

By December 13, 2019, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination urged Canada “to prohibit the use of lethal weapons, notably by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, against indigenous peoples.”

It also called upon Canada “to immediately halt the construction and suspend all permits and approvals for the construction of the Coastal Gas Link pipeline in the traditional and unceded lands and territories of the Wet’suwet’en people, until they grant their free, prior and informed consent, following the full and adequate discharge of the duty to consult.”

And yet by January 13, 2020, Canadian police had set up an exclusion zone on the territory and on February 6 launched a pre-dawn raid on the territory and arrested Wet’suwet’en land defenders seeking to block construction of the pipeline.

The cost of that January-February intervention is not available but could presumably be in the $3.6 million range of the January 2019 raid.

Canada is now campaigning to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council in a vote that is expected to take place on June 17.

Earlier this month, PassBlue, an independent media website that reports on the UN, noted: “For Canada, as of March 2020, the campaign-related expenses (including travel, hospitality, promotional items and more) were estimated around $1.56 million. This figure, however, does not include staff salaries, which comes from existing resources, the mission says.”

The CBC has reported the spending for the seat at $2 million.

Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne has stated: “The best campaign is when we don’t need to campaign, when we just show our leadership, that this is the type of voice that you would want at the Security Council.”

In the spirit of demonstrating that leadership, PBI-Canada has posted this URGENT ACTION that enables people to send an email to the Prime Minister asking him to act on the UN resolution on Wet’suwet’en land defenders prior to the June 17 vote.

Photo: RCMP on bridge at Unist’ot’en Camp, February 10, 2020.

It is possible that the world could see a decrease in spending on weapons due to the drop in the price of oil, pandemic related debt, and a popular push for public funds to be spent on health care and the environment rather than increasingly on armaments.

On May 18, The Guardian reported, “Saudi Arabia is facing an unprecedented budget crunch because of the collapse of the oil markets and the global economic turmoil caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has reduced oil demand for the foreseeable future. …Saudi Arabia may be forced to forego new weapons contracts and delay already-agreed weapons purchases as a financial crisis grips the kingdom, experts predict.”

Bruce Riedel of the Washington, DC-based research group Brookings Institution, says world oil prices need to be at about $85 a barrel for Saudi Arabia to maintain its budget. While the price fluctuates, West Texas intermediate (WTI), which is used as a benchmark in oil pricing, now stands at about $32 per barrel.

Given these plummeting oil prices, Andrew Smith of the UK-based Campaign Against Arms Trade says that Saudi Arabia may in the short term put off committing to some larger purchases, like buying a new set of fighter jets.

Guardian columnist George Monbiot also recently argued that the pandemic means that the United Kingdom should not be acquiring 138 new F-35 fighter jets.

Might there be similar implications in Canada?

Fraser McKay, a vice president at the global consultancy group Wood Mackenzie, says that extraction in the tar sands in Canada requires a price of $45 per barrel Brent, another leading global price benchmark, just to cover the cost of production. Again, that price varies, but it now stands at about $34 per barrel.

That will mean a hit for the tax revenue generated by the oil and gas sector. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers lobby group has boasted that the sector generates approximately $8 billion annually in revenues to governments. (It doesn’t tend to add that Canada provided almost $60 billion in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry in 2015 according to the International Monetary Fund.)

In late March, Canada’s parliamentary budget officer forecast a federal deficit of $112.7 billion in the current fiscal year, $89.5 billion more than predicted, as a result of pandemic related stimulus and relief programs along with dropping tax revenue.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government has previously committed to increase spending on the military from $18.9 billion in 2016-17 to $32.7 billion in 2026-27, with total spending over a 20-year period of $553 billion on a cash basis.

A key pillar of that spending is the planned purchase of 88 fighter jets that would cost $19 billion plus up to $300 million a year to service.

The deadline for the transnational corporations bidding on the jet fighter contract has now been extended by the government – at the request of industry – to July 31, 2020. The government will announce its decision in 2022.

The government’s timeline on the fighter jets suggest a two-year window in which a decision will be made between public funds being spent on peaceful, green purposes and the need to rethink unconstrained military spending.

It has already been well argued that anti-militarism needs to be at the core of a Green New Deal and that a choice needs to be made between spending billions on weapons or windmills. The contrast could also be made that $17.6 billion on public transit could create 223,000 person job years while $19+ billion on fighter jets could mean 50,000 jobs.

Elliot Hughes, a senior advisor at the Ottawa-based Summa Strategies, has already observed: “The soaring deficits [associated with COVID-19 spending] will place tremendous pressure on government to reduce its spending in non-COVID-19 areas in favour of healthcare and related priorities.”

The question of militarism/extractivism or environmentalism perhaps rests with the capacity of the peace and climate justice movements to effectively voice concern and mobilize together over the next two years on the issue of fighter jets.

Peace Brigades International is committed to making space for peace through the accompaniment of at-risk human rights defenders and environmental activists, peace education, and building on the heritage of nonviolent action that tells us that peace is more than the absence of war, but the presence of justice and the absence of fear.

You can find us on Twitter at @PBIcanada.

On Monday May 18, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, José Francisco Cali Tzay, a Maya Kaqchikel from Guatemala, stated: “Now, more than ever, Governments worldwide should support indigenous peoples to implement their own plans to protect their communities and participate in the elaboration of nationwide initiatives to ensure these do not discriminate against them.”

The Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Anne Nuorgam, has also noted that Indigenous peoples are “at disproportionate risk in public health emergencies” and that in response some are “sealing off their territories”.

On Friday May 15, the Tataskweyak Cree Nation set up a blockade on an access road to the construction site for Manitoba Hydro’s Keeyask dam on Treaty 5 territory. The Fox Lake Cree Nation had also set up a blockade.

They did so in order to stop a shift change that would replace the 600 workers who have been on site during the pandemic with 1,000 workers from Canada and the United States.

By Monday May 18 the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench issued an injunction ordering the blockade removed.

The Tataskweyak blockade is still in place as of Wednesday May 20.

CTV now reports, “RCMP announced it will be serving an injunction order Wednesday evening to Tataskweyak Cree Nation members who have formed a blockade at the Keeyask Power Generating Station and on PR 280.”

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO) Grand Chief Garrison Settee has commented, “Corporate interests do not trump the safety of First Nations peoples in Northern Manitoba.” Chief Doreen Spence of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation has also stated: “First Nations have undertaken many actions to restrict the transmission of COVID-19, including closing our borders to ensure our communities are safe.”

The Fox Lake Cree Nation and the Tataskweyak Cree Nation are partners in the construction of this dam. The other two partners – War Lake First Nation and York Factory First Nation – have also called on the Province of Manitoba to respect the concerns being expressed about the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic through this shift change.

The dam is being built on the Nelson River 730 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, the capital city of Manitoba. It will flood 93 square kilometres of boreal taiga lands and destroy spawning areas for fish and result in habitat loss for caribou, moose and beaver.

Manitoba Hydro has paid $169 million to First Nations who will be impacted by the dam and it is expected it will pay out another $100 million.

Construction on the dam (that could cost up to $10.5 billion to build) began in July 2014 and it is expected to be in service by August 2021.

On April 16, Peace Brigades International-Canada signed a civil society statement that called on the government to ensure that Indigenous knowledge-keepers are active participants in bodies established by the government to coordinate responses to the pandemic.

Photo by Nathan Neckoway.

With the Canadian government committed to increasing military spending to $32.7 billion a year by 2026-27 and subsidizing the fossil fuel industry with about $60 billion a year, where will the public dollars be found for a Green New Deal (GND)?

The same question might be asked globally given military expenditures rose to $1.917 trillion in 2019 and oil and gas corporations received $5.2 trillion in subsidies in 2017.

In July 2019, Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the executive director of Indigenous Climate Action, noted: “Currently, the GND proposals are focused on changing the energy infrastructure while redistributing wealth but ultimately failing to center the destructive intertwined roles of capitalism, consumerism, militarism and colonialism as foundations to the current crisis.”

The concerns expressed by Deranger are reflected in the Red Deal.

Professor Nick Estes, a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, notes: “It’s not the ‘Red New Deal’ because it’s the same ‘Old Deal’—the fulfillment of treaty rights, land restoration, sovereignty, self-determination, decolonization, and liberation.”

The September 2019 draft of the Red Deal notes: “Imagine if the US military had to hold a bake sale to keep its doors open instead of preschools, domestic violence shelters, art and language programs, and family planning clinics?”

It specifies that in 2015 military spending accounted for upwards of 54 per cent of all discretionary spending and that $718.3 billion in discretionary spending had been proposed for the military in 2020. It then compares that to the “$66 billion of discretionary funds are spent on healthcare each year, with $5.4 billion allocated to IHS [the Indian Health Service, a division with the US Department of Health and Human Services].”

The Red Deal notably focuses on militarism and military spending as others are now urging the Green New Deal to do as well.

Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies has written: “To fund the Green New Deal, with all of its component parts, we must transition away from the current war economy that pollutes the planet, distorts our society, enriches only the war profiteers.”

She adds: “An end to US wars across the globe and massive cuts to the military budget will provide funds for green jobs, public education, health care for all, green infrastructure development. And we will transition our nation’s security away from failed and failing wars into a new foreign policy based on peace and diplomacy, not war.”

She also flatly states: “Wars and the military render impossible the aspirations contained in the Green New Deal.”

And Medea Benjamin and Alice Slater have further warned: “If climate change is not addressed rapidly by a Green New Deal, global militarism will ramp up in response to increases in climate refugees and civil destabilization, which will feed climate change and seal a vicious cycle fed by the twin evils militarism and climate disruption.”

Professor Estes, a key participant in the Red Deal process, also writes: “We can start by defunding the US military and reallocating its resources to the parts of the world and the people the United States has destroyed, destabilized, or dispossessed.”

These issues are interlinked with the accompaniment of human rights defenders.

Global Witness has reported: “164 land and environmental defenders were reported killed in 2018, which averages out to more than three a week.”

It then observes: “Governments and business are failing to tackle the root cause of the attacks – overwhelmingly, the imposition of damaging projects on communities without their free, prior and informed consent.”

And they highlight: “Widespread impunity makes it difficult to identify perpetrators, but Global Witness was able to link state security forces to 40 of the killings.”

The Guardian has also reported: “More than 300 human rights defenders working to protect the environment, free speech, LGBTQ+ rights and indigenous lands in 31 countries were killed in 2019, a new report reveals.”

That article notes: “In nearly all countries that experienced mass protests last year, human rights defenders – who mobilized marches, documented police and military abuses, and helped citizens who were injured or arrested – were specifically targeted.”

Perhaps the key piece of legislation in the House of Commons in this country is now Bill C-232: An Act respecting a Climate Emergency Action Framework.

That bill, introduced this past February by MP Leah Gazan, calls on the Government of Canada, “in consultation with Indigenous peoples and civil society, [to] develop and implement a climate emergency action framework to achieve the objectives of the Convention on Climate Change respecting the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.”

The coming debates on Bill C-232, as well as the United Nations COP26 climate summit in Scotland in 2021, are just two forums where the issues of climate breakdown, militarism and Indigenous rights can be raised and hopefully advanced.

Photo by Rob Wilson Photography from Honor the Earth website.

Peace Brigades International is committed to making space for peace by accompanying at-risk human rights defenders, environmental activists and Indigenous land defenders; providing peace education; and building on the heritage of nonviolent action that tells us that peace is more than the absence of war.

You can find us on Twitter at @PBIcanada.