Canada

Canada Violating International Law By Selling Arms To Saudis

August 22, 2021 PeaceQuest. Resist! Canada, Saudi Arabia, Wars and Militarism, Weapons Sales

Canada’s ongoing arms sales to Saudi Arabia is being slammed as illegal under our UN commitments by Amnesty International and Project Ploughshares. And the international community is taking notice. A new report on Canada’s arms sales to the brutal Middle East regime earned coverage by the widely viewed Al Jazeera last week. “Canadian weapons transfers to the Gulf kingdom could be used to commit or facilitate violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, the rights groups found, particularly in the ongoing conflict in Yemen,” Al Jazeera said on its website on August 11, 2021. The peace and human rights group’s report titled, “No Credible Evidence’: Canada’s Flawed Analysis of Arms Exports to Saudi Arabia,” accuses Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government of violating the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), an international agreement that Canada became a party to in 2019.

Protestors Toppled Statue Of Canada’s First Prime Minister

August 19, 2021 Peoples Dispatch. Resistance Report Canada, Indigenous Rights, Residential Schools, Statues

On August 14, protestors in Canada toppled a statue of John A. Macdonald, the country’s first prime minister. Macdonald was responsible for some of the most atrocious crimes against Indigenous people. This includes instituting a policy of starving Indigenous people in order to clear lands where they lived for building the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

Fairy Creek Got An Old-Growth Deferral

August 15, 2021 Zoe Yunker, The Tyee. Resist! Canada, Forests, Indigenous Rights, Logging

Splatsin First Nation Kukpi7 Wayne Christian knows the migration patterns of the last remaining southern mountain caribou in his territory in southeast B.C. — they spend their winters up in the mountains. He knows the way that water travels from glaciers to the region’s streams and back again. He knows what the region’s forests look like when they’re healthy. Last month, he saw something he’d never seen before. The shiny green leaves of the cottonwood trees that make up part of the forest’s understory had turned a dull, parched grey — almost dead. “I was thinking, what’s going on here? There is a signal here. Pay attention to this.” Christian was on his way to lead a ceremony beneath a cluster of ancient cedar trees, marking the Splatsin Nation’s support for the blockades led by a group called Old Growth Revylution that opposes old-growth logging in the region.

Council Of The Haida Nation, Feds, And Province Sign Historic Agreement

August 14, 2021 K-J Millar, The Northern View. Create! Canada, Governance, Indigenous Rights, Indigenous Sovereignty

A historic new agreement, between the Council of the Haida Nation and both federal and provincial governments, has been signed as a framework agreement setting the stage to reconciliation negotiations, a combined media announcement stated, on Aug 13. The agreement, signed by the Haida Nation, the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, as well as Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, recognizes the Haida Nation’s inherent Title and Rights with respect to the geographic area. The GayG̱ahlda agreement which means “Changing Tide”, also includes the intrinsic right of the Haida to self-govern. “GayG̱ahlda represents an important opportunity to begin the process of Tll Yahda ‘making things right’ between the Crown governments and the Haida Nation,” Gaagwiis Jason Alsop, president of the Haida Nation, said.

Police Raid The Hub For Fairy Creek Blockaders

August 10, 2021 Zoe Yunker, The Tyee. Resist! Canada, Fairy Creek, Forests, Logging

In a major advancement of police activity in the old growth blockades around Fairy Creek on Southern Vancouver Island, RCMP raided the gate to the blockaders’ headquarters on Monday. It was the first time police had carried out arrests at the site identified as a communal hub for the movement. It also signals the likelihood of more confrontation ahead in the biggest direct action fight to protect B.C.’s old growth forests in decades. “The frontline has been brought to us,” Willow, a forest defender who is stationed at blockade headquarters, told The Tyee. The escalation occurred as blockaders were preparing to mark their one-year anniversary occupying the forests in Pacheedaht Territories surrounding Port Renfrew.

PEACH Provides Palliative Care For Homeless And Vulnerably Housed

August 9, 2021 Tracey Tong, The Toronto Star. Create! Canada, COVID-19, Health Care, Homeless

A child of refugees who fled war-torn Uganda in the 1970s, a young Naheed Dosani grew up having conversations about social injustice, inequity and poverty at the family’s Scarborough home. “I have always pondered what a life is worth,” he says, “and why our health and social systems are designed to value some lives over those of others.” This was especially the case after the challenges of the last year. A palliative care physician who works with some of the city’s most vulnerable, Dosani said that “COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted people who experience structural vulnerabilities. Pandemics are like guided missiles. They target the most vulnerable. The disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on three groups — racialized communities, essential workers and people who experience homelessness — are all textbook examples of its devastating impact.”

Fairy Creek Provides Opportunities For Conservation

August 9, 2021 Trevor Greene, The Georgia Straight. Create! Canada, climate crisis, Conservation, Forests

Ever since protesters started chaining themselves to logging roads in the Teal-Jones Fairy Creek cut block on southern Vancouver Island, dozens of articles on old-growth logging have declared that the ancient trees are worth far more standing than cut down for lumber. Usually, they go on to say that the trees' value is incalculable. The old-growth forests of British Columbia took 8,000 years to develop into amazing mini-ecosystems of biodiversity that store carbon, filter water, and provide habitat for endangered plant and animal species. It’s a fool’s game to measure their value in dollars and cents, because we'll never come to grips with the fact that the forests are priceless. But logging companies have no trouble putting a price on the giant trees by calculating the value of the lumber that can be produced.

Ottawa Implements Historic Fisheries Agreement With First Nations

August 8, 2021 Rochelle Baker, National Observer. Create! Canada, Fishing, Indigenous Rights, Indigenous Sovereignty

Years of negotiation to develop a collaborative fisheries governance model between Canada and eight First Nations along the West Coast came to fruition this week. Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan and Coastal First Nations (CFN) president K̓áwáziɫ Marilyn Slett, along with other CFN member nations, celebrated the signing and next steps for implementation of the Fisheries Resources Reconciliation Agreement (FRRA) on Friday. The first of its kind in B.C., the agreement between Canada and First Nations on the north and central coast and Haida Gwaii — whose territories make up 40 per cent of the province’s coastal waters — provides the nations an enhanced role in fisheries governance in their regions.

Hiroshima Day 2021

August 6, 2021 Canadian Peace Congress. Resist! Canada, NATO, Nuclear Weapons, Wars and Militarism

Seventy-six years ago, an act of international criminality and infamy took place, the consequences of which have posed an existential threat to humanity ever since. For the first time, a species had created the capacity to not only bring about its own extinction, but also to threaten virtually all life on our planet. On August 6 and 9, 1945, the U.S. military bombed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. Over 200,000 people, mostly civilians, died instantly or later succumbed from burns, malnutrition, and radiation-related illnesses, and their cities levelled to the ground. Many of their descendants carry the affected genes and pass them onto their children. Those notorious acts will forever be remembered as the first time the devastating impact of nuclear warfare was unleashed.

Indigenous Rights Are A Counterforce To The Climate Crisis

August 1, 2021 Eriel Deranger, The Breach. Educate! Canada, Climate Change, Environment, Indigenous Rights

During its six years in office, the Trudeau government has made countless promises around climate change and Indigenous rights that create the optics of progress. However, a recent analysis by Indigenous Climate Action of Liberal climate policies outlines how current plans included increased oil and gas production as well as clear structural exclusion of Indigenous peoples from decision-making. That is not only bad for our collective future, but it is also a violation of rights of Indigenous peoples’ as outlined in the government’s own reports and commissions.

Rio Tinto Workers Strike In British Columbia

July 27, 2021 Roger Jordan, WSWS. Resist! Canada, Mining, Strike, Worker Rights and Jobs

Around 900 workers walked off the job at mining conglomerate Rio Tinto’s aluminium smelting facility in Kitimat and power plant in Kemano, British Columbia early Sunday morning. The workers, for whom Unifor Local 2301 is the bargaining agent, are striking against the highly profitable company’s ever-expanding use of temporary contract labour and its refusal to grant workers hired since 2019 defined-benefit pensions. Talks between the Australia-based multinational, which is the third-largest mining corporation in the world, and union representatives began on June 7. Management immediately made clear its determination to enforce aggressive cost-cutting measures, even though the company raked in net profits of US $9.8 billion in 2020.

Court Stops Police From Blockading Line 3 Protester Camp

July 25, 2021 Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams. Resist! Canada, Legal System, Line 3 Pipeline, Pipelines

In a development progressives called a "huge legal win in the fight against Line 3," a Minnesota court on Friday ordered police in Hubbard County to stop impeding access to the Giniw Collective's camp, where anti-pipeline activists have been organizing opposition to Enbridge's multibillion-dollar tar sands project. The ruling comes less than a week after Tara Houska, an Indigenous rights attorney and founder of the Giniw Collective, and Winona LaDuke, an environmental justice advocate and co-founder of Honor the Earth, filed for a temporary restraining order against Hubbard County, Sheriff Cory Aukes, and the local land commissioner in northern Minnesota. "We want to thank the court for informing Hubbard County about the rights of property owners, and hope that the sheriff's continued preoccupation with the repression of water protectors can be focused on real criminals," LaDuke said Friday in a statement.

Winona LaDuke Arrested, Released From Jail

July 24, 2021 Deena Winter, Indian Country Today. Resist! Canada, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Line 3 Pipeline, Pipelines

White Earth Ojibwe activist and former Green Party vice presidential candidate Winona LaDuke was released from jail Thursday after her arrest Monday while protesting construction of an oil pipeline in northern Minnesota. She and six other women were sitting together praying on an easement and protesting construction of the Enbridge Line 3 oil pipeline near Park Rapids at the Shell River — which the pipeline will cross in five places — when they were arrested for trespassing.

New Indigenous Land Dispute Brewing In Norfolk

July 23, 2021 J.P. Antonacci, The Hamilton Spectator Resist! Canada, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights

According to Detlor, the Norfolk property is one of at least eight the HDI has purchased in Norfolk, Brant and Haldimand counties. The Confederacy is not looking to add these parcels of land to the Six Nations reserve — which Detlor dismissed as “a colonial construct” — but to “hold them as we held them prior to the arrival of settlers.”

Canada, Ground Your Plans For 88 New Fighter Jets

July 15, 2021 Neil Young et al., The Tyee. Resist! Canada, military spending, Wars and Militarism, weapons

As wildfires blaze in Western Canada amidst record breaking heat waves, the Liberal government is planning to spend tens of billions of dollars on unnecessary, dangerous, climate destroying fighter jets. The government is currently moving forward with the competition to procure 88 warplanes, which includes Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter, Saab’s Gripen and Boeing’s Super Hornet. Despite previously promising to cancel the F-35 purchase, the Trudeau government is laying the ground to acquire the stealth fighter. Officially the cost of buying the jets is about $19 billion. But, a report from the No New Fighter Jets coalition suggests the full life cycle cost of the planes will be closer to $77 billion. Those resources could be used to eliminate boil water advisories on reserves, build light rail lines across the country and construct thousands of units of social housing.

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