Canada

Activists Block Rail Line Near General Dynamics Over Arms Sales

March 27, 2021 Bryan Bicknell, London CTV News. Resist! Blockade, Canada, General Dynamics, Weapons Sales

London, Ontario - A small group of activists blocked a rail line in east London Friday, demanding the federal government cancel a contract to provide military vehicles to Saudi Arabia. About 15 people from various anti-war groups demonstrated on the railroad tracks at Clarke Road and Oxford Street East in London, just west of the General Dynamics Land Systems plant, which manufactures light armoured vehicles (LAVs). The protest was meant to stop any shipments of military vehicles bound for the middle eastern kingdom. No trains came through during the protest.

British Columbia Urged To Protect At-Risk Old Growth Forest

March 17, 2021 Canadian Press, Vancouver Island News. Create! Biodiversity, Canada, climate crisis, Forests

The most at-risk ecosystems should be set aside from logging while British Columbia shifts its forestry policies toward a more sustainable system, says a forester who helped write a provincial report on old-growth forests. The report last April co-written by Garry Merkel urged B.C. to act within six months to defer harvesting in old forest ecosystems at the highest risk of permanent biodiversity loss. “There (are) some of those ecosystems targeted for harvesting right now,” he said in an interview this week, six months after B.C. released the report and pledged to implement the recommendations from the panel of two independent foresters who were commissioned to write it. “I do share the impatience of a lot of folks.”

Canadian Protestors Call For An End To Arms Sales To Saudi Arabia

March 9, 2021 Staff, Straight.com. Resist! Canada, Saudi Arabia, Weapons Sales, Yemen

Rachel Small, Canada organizer for World BEYOND War, says the use by Saudi troops of Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) manufactured by General Dynamics Land Systems in London, Ontario has been well-documented in the war in Yemen where a humanitarian crisis is unfolding. “It’s despicable,” says Small, who notes that the U.S. has signalled it will be freezing arms sales to Saudi Arabia over its involvement in Yemen. Germany and Italy have also halted arms sales to Saudi Arabia over its involvement in a conflict that has its roots in the Arab Spring uprising in 2011. “It’s long past time for Canada to do the same,” Small says. CN is one of 28 Canadian companies involved in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and named in an open letter delivered to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday urging an end to Canada’s weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries taking part in the war in Yemen.

Protesters Block Intersection In Support Of Jailed Indigenous Elder

March 4, 2021 By Lindsay William-Ross and Thor Diakow, Vancouver is Awesome. Resist! Canada, Indigenous Activist, Legal System, Trans Mountain Pipeline

A group of protesters has blocked the port access at Clark and Hastings in Vancouver since Tuesday night. The action was organized by Braided Warriors, a newly formed group, made up of Indigenous youth from many Nations, who fights for Indigenous sovereignty mostly on the unceded territories of the Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) nations. The group is calling for the release of Indigenous elder Stacy Gallagher who was sentenced to 90 days in jail Tuesday. Gallagher was handed the sentence in B.C. Supreme Court on Tuesday by judge Shelley Fitzpatrick for violating an injunction that bars people from protests at Trans Mountain sites in Burnaby. It was at the Burnaby tank farm in 2019 where Gallagher took part in a smudging ceremony and was subsequently apprehended and charged.

Protecting The Peatlands

March 2, 2021 Saba Dar, Briarpatch Magazine. Resist! Canada, Environment, Mining, Peat

In September, Kona Barreda, a teacher in the northern community of Air Ronge, was working on a lesson about “finding the courage” for her Grade 7 class when she came across a proposal from Quebec-based company Lambert Peat Moss Inc. The company had outlined its plan, with a timeline of 80 years, to mine peat in four designated areas south of nearby La Ronge, an area covering about 2,619 hectares. Shocked by the implications, Barreda, a Woodland Cree woman, started asking people in the community if they had heard about the project. Although Lambert claimed to have distributed letters among residents, no one Barreda spoke to had received one. Hoping to teach her students how to find the courage to fight for a cause, even when the opponent is a multimillion-dollar mining company, Barreda and the Grade 7 class launched a petition demanding that Lambert leave the northern Saskatchewan muskegs alone.

Magpie River Becomes First In Canada To Be Granted Legal Personhood

February 25, 2021 By Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin, National Observer. Create! Canada, Rights of Nature, Rivers

In a first for Canadians, a river in Côte-Nord, Que., has been granted legal personhood by the local municipality of Minganie and the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit. The Magpie River, (Muteshekau-shipu in the Innu Coet) is an internationally renowned whitewater rafting site, winding nearly 300 kilometres before emptying into the St. Lawrence. The river has one hydroelectric dam managed by Hydro-Québec, and environmental groups have long sought a permanent solution to protect the river from further disruption. It is unclear how this will affect attempts to build developments on the river, including dams, moving forward, as legal personhood for nature doesn't exist in Canadian law and could be challenged in court.

How One Community Creatively Solved Keeping Its Residents Fed During A Pandemic

February 21, 2021 April M. Short, Pressenza. Create! Canada, Hunger, Mutual Aid, Pandemic

Hunger and food insecurity have increased worldwide since COVID-19 took hold. In December 2020, the United Nations warned of the threat of “catastrophic global famine,” urging worldwide governments to prioritize food security and humanitarian needs in their COVID-19 response plans. The global, industrialized food supply chain is strained and fraying. Production and shipping delays are increasingly commonplace. Given the lack of substantial response by many governments to food insecurity, it has often fallen to individuals to step in and feed their communities. Neighborhood-based volunteer groups across major U.S. cities and beyond have come up with strategies to support themselves from within, working to curb hunger with creative initiatives like community free-food fridges, volunteer grocery deliveries and other mutual aid efforts.

Indigenous Youth Demand End To Trans Mountain Insurance

February 21, 2021 Katie Hyslop, The Tyee. Resist! Canada, Divestment, Insurance, Trans Mountain Pipeline

A group of Indigenous youth took their fight against the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project to the Vancouver offices of insurance companies backing the controversial venture earlier this week. On Thursday, approximately 20 youth from the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh) and other First Nations occupied the lobby — as well as south and west entrances — of 250 Howe St., a high-rise building housing Chubb Insurance Co. of Canada, one of 11 insurers backing the pipeline project. “We are demanding that they stop insuring the pipeline,” said a protest spokesperson who declined to give their name. “We’re going to be here all day, we’re going to make sure that they hear us, that they know that we’re here, that we know that we are trying to pressure them to stop insuring this pipeline.”

Violence Against Indigenous Peoples Is Happening In Plain Sight

February 18, 2021 Brandi Morin, Toronto Star. Educate! Canada, Indigenous Rights, Police violence, Wet’suwet’en

It’s been just over one year since the RCMP raided Wet’suwet’en camps along the route of the Coastal Gas Link (CGL) LNG pipeline in Northern B.C. Brandishing guns and tactical gear, the RCMP arrested dozens of Indigenous land defenders and supporters who defied an injunction obtained by CGL to not impede the construction right of way. The raids evoked outrage that saw supporters across Canada erect railway blockades and highway shutdowns. Demonstrators gathered by the thousands in the streets demanding governments, police and industry to uphold Indigenous rights and stop construction of the pipeline.

One Year Anniversary Of Wet’suwet’en Protests, Blockades

February 12, 2021 Adam Olsen. Resist! Canada, Indigenous Sovereignty, Pipelines, Wet’suwet’en

The protests were a result of the BC NDP’s decision to press ahead with the Coastal GasLink pipeline through the Wet’suwet’en territory using militarized RCMP to enforce their decision. I had just returned from a visit to the territory. I was invited by the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs to witness firsthand their beautiful lands and the violence delivered by the BC NDP government. As the protestors pulsed with anger, solidarity blockades popped up on rail lines and other infrastructure across the country. Just a few short weeks after passing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in November 2019, it looked like 2020 was going to be a difficult year for Crown-Indigenous relations in British Columbia.

Mary River Mine Protesters End Blockade, Announce Next Steps

February 11, 2021 Randi Beers, Nunatsiaq News. Resist! Blockade, Canada, Indigenous Sovereignty, Mining

After a week of blockading an airstrip and road to an iron mine on north Baffin Island, a small group of protesters are packing up their tents. That’s according to protesters’ spokesperson Marie Naqitarvik, wife of protester Tom Naqitarvik. She sent out a news release late Feb. 10, announcing the group would be decamping and moving to an observation position at a nearby hunting cabin, before heading to Pond Inlet Saturday to prepare for face-to-face meetings with community leaders and Inuit organizations. The protesters call themselves the Nuluujaat Land Guardians, and they have been blocking access to Baffinland Iron Mines Corp.’s Mary River iron mine since the evening of Feb. 4.

Protesters Say Mine Expansion Ignores Nunavut Agreement

February 8, 2021 Beth Brown, CBC News. Resist! Biodiversity, Canada, Indigenous Sovereignty, Mining

Protests continue in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, on Saturday, as a two-week environmental hearing on an expansion at the Mary River iron ore mine wraps up. At noon Saturday, around 50 residents gathered outside the community hall where the hearings are happening. It was – 32 C with the windchill, according to Environment Canada. "We protested and chanted, 'Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, protect our rights, protect our people, protect our animals'," said resident Sheena Akoomalik. At the protest, she brandished a copy of the Nunavut Agreement. She said the legal agreement between Nunavut Inuit and the Canadian government, and its protections for land and harvesting rights, are being ignored.

Why We Must Do More To Recognize The Application Of Indigenous Law

February 1, 2021 Gavin Smith, West Coast Environmental Law. Educate! Canada, First Nations, Legal System, Pipelines

In the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1996 decision in R v Van Der Peet, Justice Beverley McLachlin[1] famously made reference to a “golden thread”: The history of the interface of Europeans and the common law with aboriginal peoples is a long one. As might be expected of such a long history, the principles by which the interface has been governed have not always been consistently applied. Yet running through this history, from its earliest beginnings to the present time is a golden thread – the recognition by the common law of the ancestral laws and customs of the aboriginal peoples who occupied the land prior to European settlement. For Wet’suwet’en people reading the BC Supreme Court’s December 31, 2019 decision in Coastal GasLink Pipeline Ltd v Huson, it may have seemed more like an “invisible thread.”

Post Workers Suspended After Refusing To Deliver Epoch Times

February 1, 2021 Katie Nicholson and Jason Ho, CBC.CA. Resist! Canada, China, Epoch Times, Media

Ramiro Sepulveda, one of the suspended postal workers, told CBC News he objects to the insinuations in some of the paper's past coverage of the origins of the coronavirus, which the paper calls "the CCP virus." "I'm not for censorship. I'm not against freedom of speech," he said. "What my thing is, is there is no disclaimer stating that this was theory." He says he went straight to his supervisor when he saw the free editions that were set to be delivered earlier this month. "I said, 'That Epoch Times, I'm not delivering it. It goes against everything I believe in.'" The second worker, Linying Su, who was born in China, said she felt uncomfortable delivering the paper because she feared its coverage of the Chinese government could contribute to anti-Chinese and anti-Asian sentiment in Canada and misconceptions around the origins of the coronavirus.

The Virus Changed

January 31, 2021 Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee. Educate! Canada, COVID-19, Pandemic, Viral Mutations

Are you tired of COVID? I fucking am. But as a longtime science writer and the author of two books on pandemics, I have to report what you probably don’t want to hear. We have entered the grimmest phase of this pandemic. And contrary to what our politicians say, there is only one way to deal with a rapidly mutating virus that demonstrates the real power of exponential growth: Go hard. Act early. And go to zero. Last January, one strain of this novel virus began its assured global conquest, and since then our leaders have hardly learned a goddamn thing. So yes, I am angry, and I will not disguise my frustration with comfortable or polite language.

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