A deeply regrettable state of affairs
On the recent events on Wet’suwet’en territories in northern B.C.:
Coastal GasLink, the proponent of a project that would build a pipeline to carry fracked gas from north-eastern B.C. across the land to the coast at Kitimat, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of TransCanada Corporation, which is owned primarily by the governments of China, Malaysia and South Korea. The proposed pipeline would run across lands and waters of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, near Houston, B.C.
The Supreme Court of Canada, in two major decisions over the past twenty years, known as Delgamuukw and Tsilhqot’in, in agreement with Canada’s Constitution Act, have ruled that the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en Nation have ownership of 22,000 sq km of territory in northern B.C. because that land never has been removed legally from their ownership by any treaty, sale, or war. The Supreme Court of Canada ruling includes that the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en Nation have the right to decide who may enter that territory and what may be done there.
So, in this instance, the RCMP, having violently forced their way, bearing automatic weapons, through a Wet’suwet’en checkpoint, with the complicity of the Canadian and B.C. governments, have acted as foot soldiers undertaking foreign countries’ invasion of lands where they have no legal right to be.
The temporary injunction made recently against the Wet’suwet’en people and allowing that invasion, is contrary to law and, according to legal experts, is very likely to be overturned. But contesting that injunction will take time and money, a delay of which the Canadian and B.C. governments, conspiring with foreign governments, are taking advantage.
These actions by the governments of both B.C. and Canada undermine public confidence that we might actually be living in a civil society where the rule of law and the spirit of justice exert some influence.
One might be forgiven for believing that government policy all too often is little other than a variety of iterations of the tyranny of commerce over justice, and that we are governed by corporations, but we don’t know that because they hide behind, and pay for, elected governments to act both as their public relations agents, and as administrators of public funds according to corporate interests.
This is a deeply regrettable state of affairs, a crisis of Canadian law and civil rights, all for foreign profit.
John Mowat Steven
Duncan