RCMP arrested 14 protesters on Burnaby Mountain this morning and are enforcing Kinder Morgan's injunction against pipeline opponents (according to activists, the number of protesters arrested is closer to 20). Kinder Morgan crews are now reportedly back at work on the mountain.
"I'm really sad. I've been fighting tears all morning," said Lynne Quarmby, an SFU scientist who is one of six citizens that Kinder Morgan has filed a multi-million dollar civil suit against.
cientist Lynne Quarmby -- the chair of SFU's molecular biology and biochemistry department, and a face of public opposition against pipeline giant Kinder Morgan -- has just been arrested at Burnaby Mountain.
The governing Liberals in BC and Conservatives in Canada insist that jobs, public revenues and economic growth all depend on expanding fossil fuel exports. Christie Clark’s Liberals won the 2013 BC election promising a future of jobs and rising public revenues based on the export of liquified natural gas. Now two years later faced with widespread protests and declining oil and gas prices, no LNG project has proceeded.
CALGARY - Kinder Morgan is overplaying the economic benefits and downplaying the costs of its proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, according to a report released Monday.
Simon Fraser University's Centre for Public Policy Research teamed with The Goodman Group Ltd., a California-based consulting firm, to examine the estimated impacts of the project.
The report "strongly recommends that the citizens and decision-makers of B.C. and Metro Vancouver reject this pipeline, which is neither in the economic nor public interest of B.C. and Metro Vancouver."
The B.C. Supreme Court will decide by Nov. 17 whether to grant Kinder Morgan an injunction to stop anti-pipeline protesters from interfering with survey work on Burnaby Mountain.
The pipeline company also launched a multimillion civil suit against the five pipeline opponents, claiming, assault, trespassing and intimidation, and protesters are anxiously waiting for the Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen's decision.
There's nothing more unambiguous in the battle against global ecocide than placing one's body between the fertile earth and a giant fossil fuel company. This is why when one spends a few minutes with the caretakers of Burnaby Mountain, one develops a genuinely abiding allegiance to their cause. This is direct witness to the existential immediacy of the climate crisis that threatens the future of our planet. This is appropriate response to the danger climate change entails.
An injunction and a $5.6-million civil suit in damages is what corporate energy giant Kinder Morgan is seeking against blockaders at a court hearing this week.
Since August of this year, a determined group of Burnaby residents have been stopping Kinder Morgan work crews at a designated conservation area within Burnaby Mountain. SFU professor and defendant Stephen Collis explains, "Many of us are increasingly concerned about climate change, issues relating to Aboriginal title, and the erosion of our democratic rights."
You would think that, in the name of public relations, somebody at Kinder Morgan might take a clue from the company’s name to work on its image.
It could do with some “kinder.”
But no. Quite the opposite. In its clumsy handling of its proposed pipeline expansion to bring diluted Alberta bitumen to Vancouver, Kinder Morgan — through its pipeline subsidiary Trans Mountain Pipeline — has alienated the city of Burnaby, the city of Vancouver and, well, me, for one. As part of its survey work, it took down trees in a public park.
Recent revelations that the RCMP spied on Indigenous environmental rights activist Clayton Thomas-Muller should not be dismissed as routine monitoring. They reveal a long-term, national energy strategy that is coming increasingly into conflict with Indigenous rights and assertions of Indigenous jurisdiction over lands and resources.
