The Dominion - Accounts

Was the fix in for Mi'kmaq Warriors at Elsipogtog?

dawn — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 15:56:49 +0000

Signs point to some having prior knowledge October 17th was 'take down' day

MONCTON, NB–Coady Stevens, the first of six Mi'kmaq Warrior to appear on charges related to the anti-shale gas encampment along Highway 134, has been denied bail.

As bail hearings today continue for the five remaining incarcerated members of the Mi'kmaq Warriors Society, enough information is beginning to surface to suggest that the vicious pre-dawn RCMP takedown of the anti-shale gas encampment on the morning of October 17th was a well known fact among some before it happened.

This is not to suggest that these people necessarily knew of the severity or magnitude of the RCMP raid, or even what it would look like. On the other hand, the possibility that others knew of the raid on October 17th is becoming too real to ignore.

Not only this, but there is a clear possibility that the greater narrative behind the raid is the measured destruction of the Mi'kmaq Warriors Society, to be replaced in their stead by a joint Assembly of First Nations/RCMP force.

Did Elsipogtog First Nation Chief Sock know that Thursday was the day?

Much has been made of the fact that Chief Sock and members of his council were arrested on the morning of October 17th. Sock and council were arrested in the second confrontation with RCMP, after the police had swept through the encampment, making numerous arrests, with guns drawn in the pre-dawn hours.

What brings Sock's pre-awareness of the events of the 17th into question is a series of notes obtained by APTN journalist Jorge Barerra.

The notes, which Sock has since admitted to Barerra that he penned, were taken during a meeting between Chief Sock, Robert Levi and 'Jumbo' Sock, who are both councillors from Elsipogtog First Nation, Tobique First Nation member John Deveau and Listuguj First Nation member Wendell Metallic, and two provincially-appointed advisors and other members of the New Brunswick provincial government, which included premier and Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Alward, as well as Energy minister Craig Leonard.

The Sock notes suggest that the talks focused, at least for a period, on a timeline of when to take down the ongoing blockade.

Point '8' on page one reads: “Blockade down, protest continues.”

Point '3' on page two of Sock's hand-written notes says: “Week – time limit Monday to next Wednesday.”

Point '4' on the same page reads: “Equipment out Thursday?”

These notes were written on Monday, October 7th, so it is reasonably safe to conclude that the “next Wednesday” in question refers to Wednesday, October 16th. The Thursday in question is October 17th, the date of the vicious raid.

Granted, Sock does continue to publicly denounce SWN Resources Canada's seismic testing in the area. In an attempt to patch up relations between his community and the RCMP, he even helped clean up the wreckage of six torched police cars. But based on his own notes, one must consider the possibility that he was aware that there was a plan in motion to dismantle the encampment and end the peaceful anti-shale gas encampment on Thursday, October 17th.

A blockade of millions of dollars of seismic testing equipment, without which SWN could not work, is one thing. A peaceful protest alongside the highway, where people can vent their indignation without actually stopping the Texas-based company from testing for shale gas deposits, is quite another.

One is effective, albeit potentially illegal in the eyes of the Crown. The other is a co-option of energy towards ineffective means, that is, if you actually want to stop the company from working.

The fly in Sock's ear: John Deveau, heir to the director's chair of the joint AFN/RCMP crisis response team in New Brunswick

Deveau, one of Sock's provincially-appointed advisers, is an intriguing character and no stranger to the anti-shale gas protests in Elsipogtog. We have written in more detail about him here.

But to fully understand his role in the current anti-shale gas movement – and it is a big one – we need to back up for a moment to late June of 2013, when Elsipogtog's anti-shale gas movement was being led by Elsipogtog 'War Chief' John Levi.

After 12 anti-shale gas arrests occurred on June 21st, 2013, along Highway 126 in Kent County, the community of Elsipogtog was understandably up in arms. A eight and a half month pregnant woman had been arrested, and an elder had been roughed up enough by RCMP that she was bleeding from the mouth by the time they zip-strapped her and tossed her in their wagon.

In response, on June 23rd, two new players were introduced to the community during a town hall-style meeting in Elsipogtog.

The first was the Mi'kmaq Warriors Society. The second was Tobique First Nation member Wendell Nicholas.

When first brought before the community of Elsipogtog, Nicholas was introduced as a 'UN Independant [sic] Observer'. His rather vaguely defined mission at the time was related to making observations and preparing an upcoming report for a branch of the United Nations.

Claire Stewart Kannigan, working for rabble.ca, identified a mis-print on Nicholas' shirt and started snooping. When Kannigan couldn't find an established connection between Nicholas and the United Nations, and proceeded to out him on rabble, Nicholas promptly re-branded himself - with the assistance of a Chief Sock-led press conference - as the leader of a new 'peacekeeping' team known as the 'Elsipogtog Peacekeepers'.

In the midst of a heated summer of protests, with residents tired of watching their community members being roughed up by the RCMP, the press conference introducing Nicholas was awash with hand shakes, ceremony and praise for Nicholas' new team – even if his role wasn't entirely understood beyond being something of a liaison between Elsipogtog band council and the RCMP.

As it turn out, Nicholas is something of an old hand in the game of liaising between First Nations communities and the Royal Colonial Mounted Police. In fact, he is the brainchild behind the Public Safety Cooperation Protocol (PSCP).

At the very least co-authored by Nicholas in 2004, the PSCP is amongst the modern day memorandums that facilitates sharing information between Indian Act chiefs and the RCMP on Indigenous unrest across Turtle Island. It is, in essence, an agreement between then AFN Chief Phil Fontaine and RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli – on behalf of the Queen – to spy on and squash Indigenous grassroots unrest before it starts. The terms used in the PSCP are more flowery and bureaucratic than that, but the song remains the same.

Fontaine found himself outed and discredited when he collaborated with the RCMP to quash Indigenous unrest in 2007. His intelligence sharing with the police smacks of the Nicholas-penned PSCP agreement.

As for Nicholas, he hired members of the Elsipogtog community on as peacekeepers, and also hired people from outside of the community.

Suddenly summertime anti-shale gas protests alongside of the highways in Kent County were highly monitored affairs, with people wearing bright orange 'Elsipogtog Peacekeepers' t-shirts wandering around everywhere, some speaking to the police, some taking notes on clipboards.

One of those bright-shirted protest monitors was former US National Guardsman and police officer –and Nicholas' cousin- John Deveau.

At some point, possibly due to failing health or prior commitments, Nicholas stopped being the public face of the Elsipogtog Peacekeepers. Handing over the daily duties to Deveau, Nicholas retired to a behind-the-scenes roll as Elsipogtog's Public Safety Advisor, where he appears to remain.

Deveau, for his part, took over the directorship of the 'peacekeeping' team, and is actively drawing a salary of $60,000 a year as the director of the 'Wabanaki Peacekeepers', essentially version 2.0 of the Elsipogtog outfit, but with better equipment and full-time salaries.

Make no mistake. This is the pleasant name given to the Deveau-run joint AFN/RCMP crisis response team, the team that all summer long was liaising with SWN, the RCMP and Elsipogtog Band Council – all the while presenting itself as a neutral negotiating body to grassroots activists actually on the ground.

October 16th, 2013: John Deveau gets outed by the grassroots.

On Wednesday, October 16th, a crew of grassroots activists from Elsipogtog, as well as members of the Mi'kmaq Warrior Society, broke in on a John Deveau-chaired meeting. Present were numerous members of the RCMP, Elsipogtog 'War Chief' John Levi and several members of the Elsipogtog community.

Elsipogtog elder – and Levi's aunt – Norma Augustine requested that Deveau, as well as bad-faith RCMP negotiator “Dickie” Bernard, be escorted out of Elsipogtog First Nation.

And by now the entire nation knows what took place on Thursday October 17th.

A tale of two Johns. Dividing camps, co-opting a movement

Elsipogtog 'War Chief' John Levi's influence upon the autumn anti-shale gas blockade along Highway 134 was virtually non-existent before October 17th. Levi, a clean and sober sun-dancer, has made much of what he perceived as the Mi'kmaq Warriors less-than-puritan lifestyle, and has privately used this as his reasoning not to attend the blockade.

It is possible that some of these disparaging remarks were fuelled by the general misunderstanding over Levi's role as Elsipogtog's 'War Chief', and where exactly that placed him within the Mi'kmaq Warrior Society.

In effect, it placed him nowhere.

The Mi'kmaq Warrior Society operates as an independent body, with it's own Chief and ranking system.

For his part, Levi was appointed 'War Chief' of Elsipogtog by Noel Augustine, Keptin of District 6 of the Migmaw Grand Council. The Grand Council is a modern day facsimile of a traditional Mi'kmaq government style that does not appear to wield much more than figurehead-style power. Noel Augustine, for example, has issued a variety of eviction notices to SWN Resources Canada, all of which have fallen upon the deaf ears of the Texas-based gas giant.

The more nefarious possibility is that Levi, under the influence of Deveau, could not infiltrate the encampment to any degree of information-gathering success, and thus reverted to a public smear campaign against the Warriors.

In any case, with the violent takedown of the Warrior Society out of the way, Levi is once again a common sight at the quickly rebuilding camp along Highway 134. It has been reported that Levi's main aim at Highway 134, however, is in actively trying to encourage activists to move towards last summer's encampment along Highway 116.

To boot, it has been reported that Levi is in negotiations with RCMP, offering the police that he can move the camp to the out-of-the-way Highway 116 location, in exchange for the police grounding their ever-present spy plane that continues to monitor the encampment along Highway 134.

Despite the destruction of the encampment during the raid of the 17th, the Highway 134 encampment by far remains the more tactical of camps.

SWN's seismic testing lines are slated to be near Highway 11, one of the main arteries of transport in New Brunswick. Snap highway blockades, as occurred on October 19th as a show of defiance in the face of the RCMP's raid, are also a quick and potential technique when the encampment remains on the 134. The 116 camp, arguably safer due to it's proximity to Elsipogtog First Nation, is tucked far out of the way of any action save the falling of leaves.

Sadly, especially considering the very real legal costs now being incurred by the five Warriors who remain without a bail hearing, Levi's camp division has also reached a financial level.

Splitting up donations from well-intention sources, including accepting money from the popular group The Indigo Girls, and then funnelling this money towards other side-projects, rather than towards the immediate legal costs of the Mi'kmaq Warriors, is only the tip of the iceberg.

At the Wilsons' gas station in Elsipogtog, there are now two donation jars side by side. One for donations to the Highway 134 encampment, and one for the Highway 116 encampment. Social media has also begun offering a variety of sources for donations. Most appear to agree that the Warriors' legal defence fund, which has already paid out a retainer to lawyers Lemieux and Menard, is the grassroots choice for donations.

APTN reported Monday that Chief Sock may well give the Elsipogtog band seal of approval, as it relates to anti-shale gas protests, to Levi. What exactly this means is entirely unclear.

With a summer's worth of experience in leading blockade-free anti-shale gas protests on the side of the highway, and with close friend John Deveau there to guide him, Levi may well be the front-runner for the band's endorsement.

The case of the missing van – and the missing Christian Peacemaker Team

At the rebuilding encampment along Highway 134, rumours continue to circulate of pre-October 17th tip-offs to the effect that Thursday would be a bad morning to be there. None of these rumours have been validated, yet, except for one.

On the evening of October 16th, Lorraine Clair, whose van originally had been blocking the entrance to the compound where SWN Resources Canada's seismic testing equipment was being held, left the encampment. She left with her van.

It is unclear whether she had some kind of verbal altercation with members of the Mi'kmaq Warriors Society before she drove off.

In any case, before leaving the encampment, Clair contacted Chris Sabas Shirazi, the senior member of the Christian Peacemaker Team that had been monitoring the Indigenous anti-shale gas activists from Elsipogtog since the summer. Clair asked Shirazi to leave the encampment with her.

Shirazi then asked Elsipogtog elder Kenneth Francis, who was on the scene to give Clair's dead van a battery boost if she should leave. Francis concurred that the CPT team should leave the encampment.

In her attempt to justify fleeing a scene that in hindsight was in desperate need of some kind of independent monitoring to counter the RCMP narrative that is seeing multiple charges being levied at all six incarcerated members of the Warrior Society, Shirazi noted that Clair – after John Levi became a non-factor at the Highway 134 encampment – was her “community partner from Elsipogtog.” Rather than seeking a new “community partner” at a live situation with the very real potential for confrontation to erupt, it appears that the CPT's partnership chain ended with Clair.

So on the night of the 16th, at the request of Clair and Francis, the CPT left the as-yet peaceful encampment on Highway 134.

In her defence, Shirazi did attempt to return to the site in the morning. She also took some great video – amongst many other great videos – of the secondary confrontation with RCMP on the morning of the 17th.

Of the initial conflict, precious little footage exists that is not in RCMP hands.

Clair, for her part, appears to have located a computer on the evening of the 16th. She wrote a short message, all in caps, and posted it on the most visited of social media sites. The message mentioned that the “peaceful” part of the protest was over, and encouraged all supporters to meet her and others at the Highway 116 encampment for a noontime ceremony on the 17th. It cannot be determined what Clair was basing her assessment on; as a first-hand observer I saw no violence break out at the encampment on the night of the 16th to suggest that the peaceful part of the encampment had ended.

Confrontataion at Elsipogtog

Sinking Ships

dawn — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:39:32 +0000

Shipwrecks, shellfish and the future of the BC coast

HARTLEY BAY, BC—The two ex-lovers who were at the helm of the BC Ferries ship Queen of the North during a routine overnight sailing from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy six years ago probably didn't expect their first reunion after a two-week separation to end the way it did. Years later, despite a lengthy investigation into what happened that night (with which the ex-lovers refused to co-operate), only the bridge crew on staff know the specific details of the human error that caused a 700-passenger ferry to collide with Gil Island and sink in the early hours of March 22, 2006.

Soon the jagged rocks and narrow channels that consumed the ferry may be an obstacle course for much larger ships, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

If the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal is accepted, tankers will cross the ferry route at Wright Sound, passing the sunken ship as they start up Douglas Channel.

The tankers would carry hundreds of millions of litres of bitumen from Kitimat to China, making the 250,000 litres of diesel on the Queen of the North seem paltry by comparison.

Each tanker is three times the length of the ferry, requiring two kilometres to stop completely. There is far less room for human or technical error. With growing opposition to the gas and oil pipelines proposed to cross BC, a closer look at the Queen of the North incident sheds new light on the dangers of tanker traffic on the wild, rocky coast.

The passengers and crew stranded in the dark, isolated sound on that fateful March night in 2006 were fortunate to be in Gitga’at Nation Territory.

Upon hearing the radioed distress signals, nearly all of the 200 Gitga’at residents of the nearby Hartley Bay leapt out of bed, mobilized every boat in the village and prepared the community centre to accommodate 99 exhausted and traumatized survivors. Their life-saving efforts came well in advance of the arrival of the Coast Guard. Even with this effort, two of the passengers aboard the Queen of the North, Shirley Rosette and Gerald Foisy, were never found and are presumed dead.

When it sank, the Queen of the North brought hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel, oil and hydraulic fluid down with it. First responders on the scene that night reported that the entire surface of Wright Sound was covered in a film of diesel.

Hartley Bay residents as far as 11 kilometres away reported that they could smell the accident from their homes. The 2007 Queen of the North Monitoring Summary Review, an environmental report commissioned by BC Ferries, found that following the sinking, patches of diesel dotted several hundred square kilometres of ocean surface and may have contacted 100 kilometres of shoreline.

Six years later, community members from Hartley Bay are still dealing with the impacts of the sinking. The ship remains on the ocean floor. Even today, they say, diesel patches are visible when the weather is calm.

“If the Queen of the North had sunk anywhere near Vancouver or Victoria, it would still not be sitting at the bottom of the ocean, leaking contaminants,” said Cameron Hill, a Hartley Bay Band Council member. “There’s no way that would have happened anywhere else. But it’s happening right outside Hartley Bay.”

Hill claims that two days after the sinking, former BC Premier Gordon Campbell and former BC Ferries CEO David Hahn promised the ship would be raised. “At the very least, [they said] they will take out all of the contaminants,” said Hill. “The technology is there to do that. That never happened either. And still to this day it leaks.”

Following analysis from the Canadian Coast Guard and London Offshore Consultants, BC Ferries determined that it was not worth raising the wreck or attempting to remove the diesel. Nobody knows for certain whether all of the diesel was dispersed in the incident, or if some is still trapped in the hull. The Queen of the North remains 430 metres under the ocean.

Removing the diesel floating on the ocean surface also proved to be an insurmountable task.

Diesel is a very light fuel that spreads to less than one millimetre of depth. Without a very calm surface it is difficult to extract. “There was not a heck of a lot that you could do,” said Ernie Hill, one of three Hereditary Chiefs of the Gitga’at. “They had booms out there, but all they could do was redirect it. I think somebody said they collected, maybe ten gallons or something, of actual diesel fuel. But the rest went to the beaches.”

Western Canada Marine Response Corporation, the company contracted by BC Ferries for the cleanup, did not respond to interview requests before this article went to press.

Ernie Hill and others think the diesel is already taking a toll on marine life.

“Unfortunately there were really big tides,” said Hill. “Our major clam beds were just totally below it. We looked at the clams the following year and they were just not good. You know, dark inside and not very much of it. And it drifts up to the high water mark and it affected a lot of our plants there too.”

BC Ferries, a private corporation contracted and legislated by the BC government, promised the region would be restored to a pristine condition and that it would fund a yearly contribution to the Hartley Bay Band to pay for monitoring and testing of marine life in the area. The monitoring included visually inspecting the wreck area to check for leaking fuel as well as sending shellfish to a lab to check for contamination.

BC Ferries paid for monitoring until March 2011, when the company decided it was no longer effective at detecting pollution. The decision to axe the monitoring program occurred the same year that BC Ferries was facing a $20 million budget shortfall, following years of controversy surrounding high executive compensation. The company considers the monitoring unreliable at detecting spills because of factors such as weather conditions, timing of the upwelling, underwater currents and limited time spent on the water.

“The result of this monitoring disclosed extremely minor leakage from the wreck of approximately half a litre of fuel per day or less, which spread and dissipated quickly on the surface without any identified environmental impact,” wrote Deborah Marshall, Executive Director of Public Affairs for BC Ferries, in an email to The Dominion. “Upwelling monitoring did not provide any useful data other than to establish that, over the five-year period, the wreck appeared to be very stable with decreased residual leakage,” she wrote.

The Queen of the North Monitoring Summary Review suggests that the effects of the Queen of the North were short lived. “Local residents have indicated that their food resources are still contaminated, but the science indicates that resources closest to the wreck site were ‘recovered’ by June of 2006 and contaminant levels reached the same level as sites that had not been affected by the spill,” wrote John Harper, who coordinated the monitoring program for BC Ferries, in an email to The Dominion.

Hartley Bay residents, believing there are lingering impacts from the vessel, are now paying for their own visual monitoring. Many residents still won’t eat from certain shellfish beds.

Health Canada has done shellfish testing since BC Ferries ceased doing it, although residents are uncertain how long that will continue. Even if the toxins are at low levels now, without daily monitoring, residents have no way of knowing if an underwater "burp" has unleashed a fresh batch of diesel onto the clam beds.

Ernie Hill takes this contamination very seriously. His peoples’ traditional harvesting grounds hold centuries of cultural significance, and are also a major food source. Their territory is remote; the nearest grocery store is in Prince Rupert, a four-hour ferry ride away. Since goods shipped to the region are expensive, access to local seafood is a matter of survival.

“Any oil spill, anywhere in our territory, that’s the end for us,” said Hill. “Our people would cease to exist, really. We’ll have to move out.”

The Queen of the North isn’t the only abandoned shipwreck in Gitga’at Territory. In 2003, the Coast Guard noticed a mysterious crude oil slick in Grenville Channel that polluted five kilometres of shoreline.

Shortly after the discovery, an underwater robot determined it was the Brigadier General MG Zalinksi, a long-forgotten US armament ship that sank in 1946, approximately 30 kilometres northwest of the ferry’s shipwreck. The Canadian government sent divers down to plug the corroded rivet holes. The quick fix was repeated this spring when more bunker oil was discovered to be leaking.

Although the Zalinski sits under only 27 metres of water, a long-term solution is complicated by the fact that the ship contains at least a dozen 500-pound aerial bombs. The United States government has absolved itself of any responsibility, and the Canadian government has been deliberating on a solution for years.

For now, other ships have simply been warned not to anchor near the site.

The Gitga’at are left hoping for a solution before the 93-year-old ship rusts away, releasing whatever remains of the 700 tonnes of bunker C fuel the ship was carrying. Bunker C is a much denser and more persistent toxin than the diesel released by the ferry. Its consistency and effects are more like the crude that was carried by the Exxon Valdez tanker that crashed in Alaska in 1989.

As unhappy as the Gitga’at are about the abandonment of either shipwreck in their territory, they know they still aren’t dealing with the worst-case scenario.

“The Queen of the North spilled thousands of litres of diesel that impacted our territory,” said Cameron Hill. “In the overall scheme of oil spills, diesel is a pretty light material compared to the crude that’s going to be in these tankers.”

Members of Indigenous communities from Alaska have visited Hartley Bay to share their experiences of the Exxon Valdez. One such community was so badly hit that the people had to be permanently relocated. “Everybody involved knew that there was no way that their territory was ever going to rebound for these people,” said Hill. “They moved them off of every bit of passed-down knowledge that they had ever known about the territory that they were in.”

If industry gets its way, Northern Gateway tankers will carry diluted bitumen, which is much more expensive and difficult to clean up than crude oil. Unlike diesel, bitumen does not evaporate, and unlike diesel or crude, it doesn’t really float. Once it is spilled in water, it separates into a poisonous gas condensate and a dense sticky resin that is too heavy to be caught by surface skimmers. It coats the surrounding wilderness with a persistent toxic sludge.

According to a Canadian Press report, the head of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Centre for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research, Dr. Kenneth Lee, believes that Enbridge has done insufficient research on the differences between crude oil and bitumen spills.

While the Enbridge bitumen pipeline is heavily contested, construction has already begun to accommodate tankers carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG). Hartley Bay residents are more or less resigned to the LNG tankers, which are slightly smaller than the bitumen tankers and carry different risks. An LNG spill would not coat sea life in a heavy toxic slick, but it can become flammable as it evaporates.

“We’ve been trained by Burrard Clean, that’s an oil cleanup company,” said Marven Robinson, a Hartley Bay Band Council member and part of the marine guardianship program. “They told us, ‘See what you guys did the night the ferries sank? Don’t do it with any of those ships going up to Kitimat.‘ The guy said they’re being paid, for dangerous pay. They said ‘Don’t you guys ever go out to one of these boats. If it’s condensate, don’t go out at all. If anything you might have to move all of the people in the community.’ We said ‘Why?’ and he said ‘Well the condensate is under pressure. And it’s safe while it’s under pressure. But as soon as you take that pressure away it starts to evaporate.’ They said ‘If you guys go to one of these accidents your outboard motors will ignite the condensate.‘”

Unlike BC Ferries, which is controlled by the province, Northern Gateway tankers will be owned by a variety of foreign entities who would be liable for costs of cleanup in the eventuality of an ocean spill. Enbridge is promising to extend its spill response plan to the ocean, though it isn't legally responsible for the oil once it has left the pipeline. Spill costs that exceed $1.3 billion will be on Canadian taxpayers. The 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker accident resulted in $3.5 billion in cleanup costs and $5 billion in legal and financial settlements.

The historical precedents set by past wrecks have the Gitga’at apprehensive about the future of their territory. Once a ship goes down, it appears it does not come back up. Once a contaminant is in the water, it can’t easily be removed. Long-forgotten wrecks can come back to haunt the living. Parties liable for cleanup, if they accept accountability at all, can unilaterally decide when the work is done. Experienced crews on established routes with sophisticated technology remain vulnerable to human error.

Erin Empey is a Vancouver based writer.

Hartley Bay

Map of routes of Queen of the North & proposed Northern Gateway

A Dead Man’s Prints

Tim McSorley — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 02:03:34 +0000

RCMP request to fingerprint Wiebo Ludwig's corpse refused

HYTHE, AB—The day after controversial eco-activist Wiebo Ludwig died, the RCMP wanted to open his coffin and take his fingerprints one final time. His family refused.

The media-savvy reverend was seen as an "eco-warrior" by his supporters; to his foes he was an "eco-terrorist." He was best known for his run-ins with the oil and gas industry—and the police—because of his objection to poisonous leaks.

The Dutch-born preacher died from cancer of the esophagus on April 9 at his log cabin near Hythe, in northwestern Alberta. Ludwig was 70. The ink had barely dried on his death certificate when his casket was carried to a small cemetery in woods nearby and placed in an above ground concrete crypt. The previous fall I’d walked with Wiebo on a path that curves through the graveyard. At one point he stopped and, pointing with his cane, said, “This is where I’m going.”

The graveyard is a short walk from Trickle Creek, the small Christian community Ludwig founded 26 years ago. Today it’s home to nearly 60 people, a sprawling complex of chalet-type homes, machine shops, greenhouses, barns, woodsheds and a dental office.

Richard Boonstra, Ludwig’s long-time friend and a resident at Trickle Creek, called the RCMP’s request to fingerprint his corpse “odd,” “invasive” and “a terrible disrespect and interference” with human remains. Boonstra suspects the Mounties wanted to see for themselves that Wiebo Ludwig was actually dead. The request showed authorities’ discomfort with Ludwig, according to Boonstra, because, he said, Ludwig had embarrassed the "establishment."

Doris Stapleton of RCMP Media Relations says “a fingerprint is the best way to positively identify someone, and if that person has a criminal record the fingerprints are sent to Ottawa so they’re able to take the record off CPIC.” CPIC is the Canadian Police Information Center where criminal history files are kept.

The family’s attorney, Paul Moreau of Edmonton, informed the RCMP “that wouldn’t be happening.” The Mounties dropped the matter, and the heavy top covering the crypt was never raised. Moreau, a veteran criminal defence lawyer, says it was the first time he’s heard of police lifting prints off convicted criminals to close a file.

The request to fingerprint a dead and buried man came as news to recently retired correctional officer Rick Dyhm. In his 34 years as a guard at federal prisons—where numerous inmates have died—Dyhm says police never showed up to take prints off a dead inmate.

In 2001, an Edmonton judge handed Ludwig a 28-month prison sentence after finding him guilty of oilfield vandalism. He was found guilty of attempting to possess explosives and “public mischief” over $5,000 after two gas well-heads nearby Trickle Creek were damaged. One had been dynamited; the other encased in concrete. Ludwig was released after serving two-thirds of his sentence. What precipitated the vandalism was a series of sour gas leaks that poisoned people and animals at Trickle Creek. The Ludwigs say when they complained to the authorities, nothing was done. The leaks continued and the people of Trickle Creek put duct tape around their doors and windows to try and keep the toxic gas at bay.

Two years prior to his conviction, tensions reached a boiling point when a local girl, 16-year-old Karman Willis, was shot and killed at Ludwig’s farm. Willis had been riding in one of three pick-ups that tore around Trickle Creek in the dead of night. Drivers did doughnuts and tossed empty beer cans, with one truck coming to within a metre of plowing down four children sleeping in a tent. A bullet hit the radiator of one truck and ricocheted off the frame, striking Willis. No one was charged with the shooting; neither were any of the intruders charged with trespassing at night, or impaired or dangerous driving.

In January 2010, about 200 RCMP officers raided Trickle Creek to search for evidence in the bombing of a gas pipeline near Tom’s Lake, BC, about an hour’s drive from Ludwig’s farm. Mounties told reporters they had proof—DNA evidence—that Wiebo Ludwig was connected to the bombings. Ludwig was tricked into thinking he was just meeting with Mounties in nearby Grande Prairie, but was arrested and locked up for 24 hours. He was never charged with the Tom’s Lake bombings.

Boonstra finds it odd the Mounties didn’t get around to meet with Ludwig in his final days. If police believed Ludwig shot Willis—or was behind the BC bombings—Boonstra wonders why investigators wouldn’t want to see him in the hope they might get a deathbed confession.

Ludwig, a carpenter, built his own coffin in February when he realized his battle with cancer was going south.

In his final media interview, published in The Dominion, a weakened Ludwig revealed he was looking forward to what he called crossing over. “[Death] doesn’t bother me,” he offered. “It is apparent to everyone there is an afterlife, even though we repress that in our anxieties. I am eager for redemption, eager to see what’s there. I just hope I die without too much pain.”

He got his wish, thanks to a combination of herbal medicine, oxycontin and morphine. Right up to the day he died, Ludwig went for walks, often arm-in-arm with Maime, his wife of 43 years.

In his last hours, family members made their way to the log cabin where their leader, frail and lying on a couch, blessed them one by one. Wiebo Arienes Ludwig took his final breath at 11:30 am on Easter Monday. On his last day he said “...Think I’m afraid of dying? Hardly.” His last words were a request: that family members not quarrel and that they keep the faith.

No outsiders were permitted at the funeral service, held in the family’s large dining hall. I first learned of Wiebo’s death when Josh, one of his sons, phoned late that afternoon.

Family members wept openly when I played back recordings of the final interviews with Wiebo. I had called Trickle Creek on April 2 for an update on his condition. Ludwig managed to get to the phone. “Why are you calling?” he queried. I joked I was curious to see if he’d died on April Fools Day. Ludwig chuckled. It was the last time we spoke.

What has changed at Trickle Creek since Wiebo Ludwig’s death? Plenty, but much remains the same. Trickle Creek continues to be managed by a council of eight family members, its spiritual core much the way it was when Wiebo was alive.

Trickle Creek remains a strong Christian community, bordering on Old Testament-like values. Meals are followed by readings from the Scriptures. No one is addicted to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, gambling, or television. The adults work every day except Sundays. Food and herbs are home grown, no one in the community suffers from obesity. The children have chores; they pick berries, help with the harvest, feed the chickens and milk the goats and cows. For kicks, they ride bikes, collect cattails, learn pottery and play volleyball, soccer and hop-scotch.

There are no video games at Trickle Creek. Put it this way: the apple products they admire hang on trees and the twitter comes from birds.

But a few changes have taken place. Wiebo’s log cabin was moved closer to the forest; the inside is now being refurbished and a second floor added. Plans are underway to build another multiple-story house, complete with a turret and an aerial walkway; the idea is that in cold weather people can travel between buildings without having to don extra clothes. A huge barn was recently constructed to store five thousand bales of hay and to give livestock shelter on cold winter days.

Before I pulled out of Trickle Creek I chatted with beekeeper Fritz Ludwig. “Sorry if I seem out of place here,” I explained, “I don’t go to church.” Holding a young child in his arms and swaying from side to side, the bearded Fritz smiled and replied, “neither do we.”

Byron Christopher is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Edmonton, Alberta. For more on his career, click here.

Wiebo Ludwig’s last interview was published in The Dominion on March 16, 2012. See Wiebo’s Final Battle.

Wiebo's Crypt

Wiebo Ludwig, November 2011

Red Squares in Sudbury

Tim McSorley — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 10:30:37 +0000

New academic year in Sudbury sees new opportunities for change

SUDBURY, ONTARIO—The day after students returned to classes at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, red squares could be seen on the city's streets. Students and supporters donned the red felt badges made famous in the Quebec student strike, picked up pots and pans, and noisily took up space on downtown streets to demand accessible, equitable, public postsecondary education.

Though the numbers were modest at between 15 and 20 participants, Brendan Lehman, who is doing a Masters degree in Neuroscience at Laurentian, described himself as "excited" at the turnout. Weekly "casseroles" marches began in Sudbury in the spring, initially with upwards of 40 participants, but attendance had dwindled to a handful during the summer months. Lehman saw the September 5th rally as a good early step in building something bigger.

In addressing the group through a megaphone, fourth year Political Science student Tom Sutton said, "Although we might not be many right now, this is just a humble beginning. The Quebec student strike had humble beginnings too. And guess what? They won!"

Not only was this march being held on the day after the start of classes, but Sutton pointed out that it was also the day after the electoral defeat of Quebec Liberal Premier Jean Charest, after an election campaign shaped in large part by his government's confrontation with Quebec's student movement.

The new premier, Pauline Marois of the Parti Quebecois, has already announced that two central demands of the student movement will be met by her government: the fee and tuition hikes introduced by the Liberals will be rescinded, and Law 12, passed as a repressive measure to the student strike, will be repealed.

Student activists in Sudbury are working hard to learn from the experience in Quebec. Several attended a weekend-long training at the University of Toronto earlier in the summer in which Quebec organizers passed on lessons to students from Ontario universities.

In addition, Sudbury's first "casseroles" march of the new academic year is meant to build towards upcoming speaking events by activists who will be visiting Sudbury from the largest and most radical of the Quebec student unions, CLASSE. They will be speaking at Laurentian on September 21 and in downtown Sudbury on September 22.

A handful of non-students also participated in the march, including Lyse Godard. Though it has been many years since she herself was a student, she can testify to the impact of rising education expenses.

"I basically had to sign my life away for my son, for six years of school, six years of student loans," said Godard.

Godard favours free postsecondary education for students who attend classes and get adequate marks, and thinks more should be done to enable graduates to get jobs in their field of study.

Research has confirmed that rising education costs have widespread impacts beyond students themselves, as in the 2011 study Under Pressure: The Impact of Rising Tuition Fees on Ontario Families. In it, David Macdonald and Erika Shaker of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives write, "Ontario undergraduate tuition fees are now the highest in the country," and the combination of tuition and other compulsory fees have risen, even when inflation is taken into account, by a staggering 244% between 1990 and 2011.

MacDonald and Shaker put this in the context of significant increases in mortgage and consumer debt for Ontario households, and of stagnating incomes for a great many Ontarians and conclude that not only is rising tuition a barrier to students, but that it hurts families as well. They write, "By increasingly downloading onto families and exploiting the parental desire to provide for their children, Ontario is severely hampering its economic and educational potential."

While Godard is eager to support a growing student movement in Ontario, she worries that many of her peers might not be. A lot of the people she associates with are retirees who do not necessarily understand the circumstances that students face today, and many have "no sympathy at all" for student demands. She says they say things like, "We paid our student loans, they can pay theirs."

Fourth year Laurentian English student Heather Harris is worried about the response from her peers, too. For her, a central point of student mobilizations is to demand that governments "take us seriously" and to make sure they "don't underestimate the youth of Canada." She believes passionately that other students "should be here," and that "because [other students] aren't doing anything about it, the government doesn't have to listen."

Some students, she thinks, are "apathetic," while others "think there's other things that could be done" apart from getting into the streets. She thinks that the biggest barrier to the student movement is information – that more students will only get active once they have better information about the realities of postsecondary education today and about what mobilizing has accomplished in Quebec.

Lehman agrees that it will take determined work to build the movement in Sudbury, but he argues that if organizers keep the focus "local" and "personal," and work "to try and hold our own school accountable," there will be a response from students. "We can really connect with students at Laurentian," he said, "because every year, everyone's tuition goes up," and every year there are courses and programs that are cut, "especially francophone ones."

Theatre student Linus Cunningham Closs sees the student victories in Quebec as key to mobilizations close to home: "Because there has actually been change in Quebec," Ontario students can begin to imagine what is possible, and "we can get some change.”

The students involved say they will continue to mount "casseroles" marches in dowtown Sudbury every Wednesday at 8 pm.

Scott Neigh is a writer and activist based in Sudbury, Ontario. For more of his writing, see his personal blog as well as the site about his forthcoming books on Canadian social movement history.

Red Squares in Sudbury

Dundalk Sludge Plan Stirs Up Resistance

Tim McSorley — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 12:59:33 +0000

Citizens and Supporters of Dundalk, Six Nations, unite to defend earth, air and water

DUNDALK, ON—Toronto’s crap may soon be coming to Dundalk.

But not if a coalition of concerned Dundalk residents, Six Nations land defenders, and their Toronto allies have anything to say about it.

With the blessings of Southgate Council, which governs the verdant plateau where Dundalk sits, Ontario’s Lystek International Inc. has broken ground on the creation of an “Eco-Park” facility to make big-city offal a little less awful, then make additional cash by selling it to farmers for fertilizer.

“We found that 'Eco-Park' doesn’t mean what you’d think it means,” said a Dundalk citizen who welcomed the supporters from Six Nations, Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo who arrived on three school busses. “It means the opposite.”

The opposition to this project isn't a Not-In-My-Backyard thing. The organic waste that flows through city sewers is not exactly black gold: it contains the leavings of industrial and urban activities including medical, manufacturing and auto waste. And it definitely has a smell. If the sludge facility operates as proposed it will be a mere 350 meters from the Dundalk and Proton elementary school.

Human waste retains useful elements for the soil, and in balanced conditions it is a resource for plants. Cultures that last more than a few centuries (such as the Haudenosaunee at Six Nations) understand that, to preserve the water and food supply beyond the next quarterly report, you must be careful where you put it. You don’t put it on a plateau that frequently floods (earning the township the nickname of Floatin’ Proton) then absorbs and filters the headwaters that become the Grand and Saugeen Rivers.

So, as I dismount from the bus, I find myself saying to locals: “Sorry about my sludge.”

The gentle people who greet us politely suggest that I keep my gift to the earth where I can personally enjoy its dubious benefits.

Ruby Montour of Six Nations didn’t mince words when she assured Dundalk residents of Six Nations support in resisting a project that has implications for the water and food supply of one of the most fertile areas of Canada.

“It’s horrible and you don’t deserve it,” she told residents of this farming community. “Your lives are important. Your children are important. Your futures are important.”

The Dundalk community is new at demonstrating. They are still press-shy, but welcomed those who came to walk with them and to learn about their community. The contingent carried a giant flag of the 2-Row wampum, considered the earliest and most foundational agreement between European and Haudenosaunee nations, where the nations vowed to travel in parallel, not interfering with one another but co-existing in a spirit of peace, friendship and respect. The town was quiet, and marchers were met with bemusement and warmth.

Reflecting the closed, rushed process that residents say led to the Southgate Council’s agreement to host the waste facility, lawns sported “Truth not Trash” signs. To those who had also walked with Six Nations in Caledonia on April 28, it was a welcome change to get the thumbs-up in Dundalk instead of shouts of “Go home!” that greeted marchers in Caledonia. One household gave out cold water to thirsty walkers.

A picnic across from the Eco-Park further cemented relations between Dundalk and Six Nations. Making a gift of the Haudenosaunee flag at the request of a Dundalk community member, Six Nations resident John Henhawke gave a very brief account of the history this flag embodies, of how five and then six conflicting nations created a peace, to form the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. This was an extraordinary gift: for the Haudenosaunee are very careful to ensure that those who fly their flag are respectful, and allied to their causes.

Dundalk residents who, with the help of Six Nations have been barricading the road to the Eco-Park, are also taking the issue to court; at the demonstration, they heard that Six Nations will be using the1701 Nanfan treaty, the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the 1784 Haldimand Proclamation to help fight this battle.

Speakers from the Six Nations Men’s Fire pointed out: “This is two-row in action: we’re working together.” They admonished: “Even we as Onkwehonwe people, we can never own that land. You can never own it. But we can all be stewards of the land, take care of it the best we can.”

Deb O'Rourke is a contributing member of the Toronto Media Co-op. This piece was produced by the Toronto Media Co-op. For videos about Dundalk's residents' fight against the Eco-park, click here and here.

Dundalk EcoWalk

Red Square Roots

dawn — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 08:11:45 +0000

How austerity underpins social crisis and repression in Quebec and beyond

MONTREAL—Across Montreal little red squares, sprayed on sidewalk corners, drawn into bus stop walls, or pinned to shirts, speak to the historic nature of Quebec's ongoing political crisis sparked by a massive student strike.

 Every evening in Montreal red flags continue to fly, as people armed with a carré rouge, the red felt square symbolizing Quebec's student uprising, join nightly protest starting at place Émilie-Gamelin.

From the cold of winter to the heat of summer, Montreal's streets have been alive with protest in 2012, a battle ground between contrasting social visions.   As a vibrant social movement calls for the government to retreat on moves to hike university tuition fees, people on the streets are also fundamentally questioning the logic of austerity economics.

Protests are riding a political high that is sparking growing international attention, while the Parti Libéral du Québec is mobilizing for a serious push back in mid-August via Law 78.   Police and Sûreté du Québec forces plan to open college and university campuses on strike across Quebec by force, if students, professors and supporters move to protest the controversial legislation on site. This move would threaten to unleash legislated police wrath on the strike, clearly undercutting student assemblies and associations who continue to sustain the strike movement.

Activists are now collectively organizing, through popular assemblies and meetings across Quebec, ways to challenge Law 78 and the legislated attempt to crush the strike movement.

  “La grève est étudiante, la lutte est populaire!”, a slogan roughly translating to, “a student strike, a people's struggle,” illustrates placard signs and banners around the city. It is also a chant often heard in the streets.

Popular opposition toward Law 78 is steadfast, a law that inspired a thousand protests, turning a student strike into the largest social movement in a generation.   Emergency legislation, drafted May 2012 by the Quebec Liberal government, includes restrictions on protest, banning public gatherings inside and around university campuses, while obliging organizers of street demonstrations across Quebec to seek police approval at least eight hours in advance.

 In Quebec and globally, Law 78 has been met by widespread condemnation. Amnesty International states that the bill violates freedoms of speech, assembly and movement. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights openly criticized the bill in a June 2012 speech, saying that it restricts “rights to freedom of association and of peaceful assembly.”

 “At times when governments face a crisis of legitimacy, the state will often resort to repression,” said Aziz Choudry, a professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University.

 “It's important to have historical perspective, in Canada the RCMP spied on and harassed union activists, indigenous people,” said Choudry in an interview with The Dominion. “Today in Quebec there is a movement that has been able to sustain itself for a long period of time and now that movement is facing repression and criminalization. It's really important for us to challenge this but also see it as part of a historic reality.”

 On the streets across Quebec, thousands are joining nightly popular protests against the law, banging pots and pans in casseroles protests, inspired by the cacerolazo grassroots protest tradition, that took root in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and was used more recently during the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina.  

Nightly casseroles protests illustrate how Law 78 pushed more and more people to take to the streets, not only in protest and support for the student strike, but also as a form of voicing wider opposition toward a political and economic system that is increasingly seen as predatory and unjust. 

 “In Quebec there is popular support for the student movement, so now the government is trying to break the movement with repression,” said Rushdia Mehreen, a graduate student at Concordia University and members of the social struggles committee of CLASSE. “Since the strike began there was always physical repression by police at protests, with pepper spray, rubber bullets and physical police assaults, but the students continued, so now the state is utilizing legislation to repress the movement with Law 78.

  “The Quebec government chose repression because there isn't democratic, popular support for their policy to hike tuition fees,” said Mehreen, in an interview with The Dominion. “More broadly in Quebec, people do not support the framework of austerity economics, so repression is now the response to create fear and to try to force these unpopular policies on the population."

  In Quebec the move to hike tuition fees by $1,778 over seven years, representing an 82 per cent increase per student, has been billed by government officials as part of a “cultural revolution” that is now rewriting social policy in Quebec. It's not just students who are feeling the crunch.

In the healthcare sector, the Liberal Government moved to impose a $200-per-year healthcare flat tax, or “user fee”, for all in Quebec. At the same time, the government has moved to gut corporate tax rates, making them among the lowest in the western world.  

Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand describes the policies as an effort to control public finances. But these changes occur in the context of a global drift toward austerity measures, a reality defined by a shift away from collective solutions toward societal problems, via public institutions—policies that place the burden of the ongoing financial crisis on the public sector, rather than the corporate sector, universally recognized to have sparked the current crisis.

  While working to re-engineer Quebec's public institutions, the Quebec Liberals are also pushing Plan Nord, a controversial development plan for the Northern regions of Quebec, inspired in ways by Alberta's tar sands industry, linking economic growth largely on resource extraction and drafted largely without meaningful consultation of the First Nations communities who live in the regions that the northern plan will impact. 

Popular opposition toward Plan Nord on the streets has been serious, with students joining forces with environmental group for Earth Day on April 22, a mass protest with hundreds of thousands on the streets, a key moment in the trajectory of the ongoing protest movement in Quebec. Outside the Salon Plan Nord in April, hundreds of environmental justice activists clashed with riot police. These tense protests marked a political turning point in the student strike mobilization, shifting the focus of street protests from tuition hikes toward a broader systemic critique of Liberal government policies.   

Some ask if the Quebec Liberal government's effort to control or force public institutions toward austerity has been a factor in pushing the party towards losing control.  

“Today in Quebec the government is failing to impose a neo-liberal 'cultural revolution' without force,” explains Guillaume Hébert, researcher at the Institut de recherche et d'informations socio-économiques (IRIS) in Montreal. “And when facing a growing student movement, a historic movement, the imposition of Law 78 is all about imposing an austerity agenda by force, an agenda aiming to commercialize education but also to privatize other public institutions in Quebec.

  “Many, many people in Quebec agree on the universal right to university education, so there is a discord between the neo-liberal model and Quebec's political culture,” Hébert told The Dominion.

“So we are seeing, as in Victoriaville and on many nights in Montreal that austerity policies are being backed and pushed by state force.”

In Victoriaville, the Sûreté du Québec provincial police force fired large amounts of tear gas and multiple rounds of rubber bullets on demonstrators supporting the student strike movement, severely injuring multiple students who traveled in hundreds on buses to protest outside a Liberal Party meeting. One student, Maxence Valade, lost an eye during the police attack.   

Questions are being raised on the streets of Quebec about the limits of democracy today in the context of a historic student strike. On top of the injuries in Victoriaville, journalists at Concordia University TV have also been repeatedly pepper-sprayed and hit by police batons while filming on the front-lines at nightly protests in Montreal.

  As political commentators shift their focus to the election campaign in Quebec, discussions inside the strike movement are now turning toward the limits for activists and social movements to express themselves in an era of austerity.

  “Democratic expression has always been limited and restrained in Quebec and Canada,” said Eric Shragge, professor at the School of Community and Public Affairs at Concordia University. “Liberal democracies are liberal to a certain point, once popular movements cross a threshold and move toward mass mobilization, repression is administered.

  “There is always a contingency plan of state violence and repression when people collective refuse the neo-liberal economic model that has been pushed for decades now,” said Shragge. “People are pushed to believe they need to find individual solutions to collective problems and that the market will bring solutions. Clearly this isn't the case and when people refuse this logic collectively on the streets, like we are seeing in Quebec, the state will eventually come in to bash heads.”

  The austerity agenda the Conservative Government is pursuing in the rest of Canada amplifies the current crisis in Quebec in different ways.   Although Quebec politicians question specifics of Canada's Conservative policies—namely the expansion of federal prisons—fundamentals of both governments' policies in relation to sustaining adequate funding for public institutions, like universities and hospitals, are similar.  

Beyond boosting policing and military budgets, the Conservative Government has cut funding in the name of 'balancing books', mirroring economic language of Quebec politicians and trends of austerity policies globally. For example, a watchdog organization responsible for monitoring Canada's spy agency CSIS was eliminated in the 2012 budget. This means less oversight for an agency with a long history of spying on and tracking the organizing efforts of social movements.

  At the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), people are drawing a parallel between repression against the student movement in Quebec via Law 78 and the back-to-work legislation imposed on CUPW this past fall.

  “In Canada, repressive legislation is targeting the right to strike, imposing heavy, heavy fines on unions for fighting back and undercutting collective bargaining,” said Aalya Ahmad, a writer and activist in Ottawa who works at CUPW.

  “Imposing working conditions and wages on workers through back-to-work legislation, first with the postal workers, then with Air Canada workers, is an attack on civil liberties,” said Ahmad, in an interview with The Dominion. “In Quebec Law 78 is part of this broader political environment, illustrating an incredible attack on students and professors, it's essential for unions and people in Canada to support the struggle in Quebec against Law 78 because our struggles are connected.”

  At the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) in Toronto, activist John Clark argues that both the conflict on the streets and scale of the protests in Quebec only signal the beginning of a larger conflict in society.   

“What is now happening is that post 2008 crisis and with the system hovering on the edge of a toilet bowl, the pace of austerity is being massively accelerated,” said Clark in an interview with The Dominion. “In the end there are only two ways to regulate a population, you can either meet their needs within limits, or get out the billy clubs.”  

“In Canada, the cutting edge of the resistance to the austerity agenda has come-up in Quebec. Even observing from the outside we see how shocking and unprecedented the repression of the state has become,” said Clark. “But I think Quebec is only the starting point, for both the resistance and repression, this will spread from coast to coast.”  

“The scale of this economic crisis is only beginning to assert itself and the austerity agenda is only getting started,” said Clark. “There is going to be a profound conflict in society in the near future and we need to be ready.”

  Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based writer, musician and community activist who contributes to the Media Co-op, follow him on Twitter at Spirodon.

No à Loi 78!

Canada's Punishment Agenda

dawn — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 18:52:00 +0000

Omnibus crime bill will mean more prisons and more prisoners

MONTREAL—If you grow pot at home for personal use, here’s a tip: keep it to five plants or fewer.

Come November, getting caught growing between six and 200 marijuana plants deemed to have been produced for the purpose of trafficking will trigger a mandatory minimum of six months in jail. The maximum sentence for growing upwards of five plants will also double, to 14 years in prison.

These are just a couple of examples from a gamut of changes to Canada’s Criminal Code under Bill C-10, which the feds have dubbed the “Safe Streets and Communities Act,” commonly known as the Omnibus Crime Bill.

“Bill C-10 will require new prisons; mandate incarceration for minor, non-violent offences; justify poor treatment of inmates and make their reintegration into society more difficult,” reads a critique of the legislation prepared by the Canadian Bar Association, which represents more than 37,000 jurists in Canada. “Texas and California, among other jurisdictions, have already started down this road before changing course, realizing it cost too much and made their justice system worse.”

Bill C-10, which the lawyers' group says will change Canada’s entire approach to crime at every stage of the justice system, was approved in March. From policing to wait periods between parole applications, changes linked to C-10 are being phased in through to the end of 2012. The bill also gives border guards discretion in the granting of work permits to migrants they deem to be "vulnerable to abuse or exploitation."

“The government keeps talking about how this is an agenda to address victimization,” said Justin Piche, an Assistant Professor in Criminology at the University of Ottawa. “In my view this is a punishment agenda, and should be viewed accordingly."

Piche’s research focuses on prisons and prison construction in Canada, and he predicts C-10 could trigger a new wave of prison construction in Canada.

“In the Canadian context, the provinces and territories have built or are in the process of building 22 new prisons and 17 additions to existing facilities since 2008 that added over 6,000 new prison beds at a construction cost of nearly $3 billion,” Piche told The Dominion. “These prisons were built in a context where provincial and territorial governments were trying to largely address the remand demand, the surge in the proportion of remand prisoners that they were housing in the last decade and a half.”

The majority of the 24,000 adults who are in prison on a given day in Canada are remanded prisoners, meaning that even though they haven't been convicted, the courts have ordered that they be held in jail while awaiting a court appearance. The number of adults in remand has been steadily climbing since the 1980s. “In 2009/2010, adults in remand accounted for 58 per cent of the custodial population while those in sentenced custody comprised the remaining 42 per cent. Ten years ago, the proportions were reversed, at 40 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively,” reads a document prepared last year by Statistics Canada.

The rise in people held under remand is connected to the current wave of prison construction and expansion, but new moves to implement mandatory minimums could lead to filling up the very provincial and territorial prisons built supposedly to prevent overcrowding because of remanding.

“What we’re seeing in terms of the mandatory minimums, more of them being introduced, particularly in C-10, [is that] a lot of them are going to have an impact on the provincial and territorial prisons, which may trigger a new subsequent wave of prison construction,” said Piche.

Mandatory minimum sentences for narcotics possession is one of the most controversial elements of the Conservatives’ Crime Bill, because it copies similar legislation in some US states that has been shown to increase the amount of prisoners without decreasing the supply of drugs.

“Bill C-10 is solidifying trends over the past decades with CSC [Correctional Services Canada], and will result in more people being imprisoned for more time,” according to Marie Dennis*, a prisoner solidarity activist based out of Montreal. “At the end of the day Bill C-10 doesn’t change that much for people in terms of people who are already inside, especially with life sentences, but what it does is solidify into law certain practices that have already been in place, which makes it harder for those practices to change at all if you have a slightly liberal warden or something like that.”

However, there are still a few important ways C-10 will impact people who are currently imprisoned, as well as those who are on parole. Waiting periods for people denied parole to re-apply will jump from six months to one year, ensuring more people will spend a longer time in jail.

“One thing that does change that hasn’t been in the law before is that now if you are on parole, the government can put electronic bracelet on you, in terms of tracking where you’re going and trying to figure out exactly where you’ve been,” Dennis told The Dominion. “That wasn’t something they were able to do before, [something] that has been written into Bill C-10, that a lot of people don’t know about.”

*Marie's name has been changed at her request. Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Prison Print

Colombians Refuse Canadian Mine

Tim McSorley — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 20:14:16 +0000

Farmers' stance against extractive project ignored in Ottawa

BERRUECOS, COLOMBIA—In southwest Colombia people are organizing within and throughout their villages, creating a strong network of resistance to Canadian gold mining. But they’re not fighting for concessions or reforms: they’re fighting to win.

Canadian mining company Gran Colombia Gold set up exploration platforms in small farming communities near Berruecos, Colombia in early 2011. Soon after, local coffee farmers began to question the benefits of a large-scale gold mine. “All I see that can come from this project is conflict and displacement,” said Hector Gomez*, a local farmer who is opposed to exploration. We spoke at a former drilling platform near the Mazamorras stream, where he had brought his kids for a swim.

His neighbour, Carlos Perez, adds that he moved to the area in part because of its reputation for being safe. “The first thing we lost [when the company came] was peace,” he said.

The budget for exploration is $3.8 million, which includes geophysical surveys and drilling, to test the size of gold, copper and silver reserves.

Gomez and others have already paid a heavy price for speaking out against the project. The Committee for the Integration of the Colombian Massif (CIMA), a rural social movement that counts many local farmers as members, has officially reported ten separate cases of harassment, death threats and violent assaults against critics of the company and their children since April 2011.

In two of these cases, CIMA representatives say, the head of private security for the mining project directly threatened the lives of local organizers. The human rights committee for the CIMA notes that many more cases go unreported due to fear and a lack of faith in officials to investigate.

“It's just like what happened with the coca-producing zones,” said Gomez in a comparison that may seem unexpected, until explained. “First comes the money, then comes the violence—the armed groups, drinking [and] crime.”

Farmers have had difficulty getting the Colombian government to provide information about the environmental impacts of large-scale mining, let alone hear their concerns about the project.

Gloria Muñoz, another local coffee farmer and young mother, went door to door collecting signatures for a petition calling on the municipal government to hold a forum against mining. She says she collected over one thousand signatures and sent it to officials, including Ingeominas, the Colombian government department responsible for granting mining exploration permits. She received no response. Meetings with the local mayor led to promises of a forum, but no results. "They put it off three times," she said in the courtyard of her modest but quaint home overlooking green hills and neighbouring farms.

"They act like if the company leaves, we'll die of hunger," said Muñoz. Sylvia, a relative of Muñoz, was hired as a spokesperson for the company. Also a young mother, Sylvia stresses the importance of job-creation, and argues that, when it comes to the environment, farmers have nothing to worry about. “This is a responsible company,” she said.

The debate between locally-hired contract workers and project opponents over jobs and the economic future of the region has sometimes boiled over, creating what the CIMA has called an atmosphere of chaos, anxiety and confrontation.

Local spokespeople for Gran Colombia Gold have their work cut out for them. People living close to exploration platforms say that when drilling began, it was loud and took place around the clock. When a shuttered drilling platform began to leak water, project opponents say they noticed that the water level in a near by aquifer began to drop.

As tension mounted between rural communities and the company, local contract labourers and spokespeople carried out community projects on Gran Colombia Gold's behalf—some of which did not go over well.

On October 9, 2011, some of the company's workers and private security personnel arrived to repair a paved soccer court in Bolivar, a tiny hamlet only accessible by a winding footpath up a steep hillside. Farmers living nearby say that they did not want company employees to carry out community work, so they approached the workers and asked them to stop.

They allege that the head of private security for the project ordered the workers to continue, and that a physical confrontation resulted in which a mine worker struck a protestor along with his sister and niece.

Later that day, hundreds of angry residents from Bolivar and nearby communities occupied two of Gran Colombia Gold's mining exploration camps. They remained on the grounds until the following day when they burned the camps to the ground.

Shortly thereafter a mediation team arrived, including the Department (the Colombian equivalent of a province) of Nariño's Human Rights Ombudsman, representatives of two municipal governments and of the Governor's office, as well as a Gran Colombia Gold employee.

Farmers say they negotiated a tentative agreement in which Gran Colombia Gold would suspend work for one month while the Governor of Nariño prepared and held a department-wide forum on the impacts of large-scale mining.

Gran Colombia Gold never signed the agreement. In a press release it said that the burning was carried out by "unknown invaders." The release did not mention a previous confrontation or mediation process.
Municipal elections led to some small gains for project opponents in 2012. In March, organizers finally got their mining forum in Berruecos, at which a number of officials and mayors declared their opposition to mining by multinational companies.

They were also able to pressure the newly-elected Governor of Nariño, Raul Delgado, to hold a department-wide forum on mining in March. At the forum the governor committed to setting up a co-operative roundtable that would bring together an array of social actors and decision-makers in order to better negotiate land-use policies handed down by the Colombian government.

At the end of the forum, CIMA representative Robert Daza said he was hopeful about the roundtable, but that the movement was prepared to organize a general strike across the department if it doesn't work out in favour of the local population.

Organizers believe that a large mobilization like this is possible because they are not alone. Their story is being played out in different ways across the country. While agriculture accounts for 22 per cent of jobs in Colombia, the national government has made large-scale mining a major priority in development planning.

In 2008 the Colombian Ministry of Mines and Energy reported that 52 per cent of companies investing in mining exploration in Colombia were Canadian. That same year the two countries signed a free trade agreement, which includes strong protections for investors. The agreement went into effect in August 2011.

The Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC) has followed the trade deal closely, producing a report on the agreement in 2009 entitled Making a Bad Situation Worse. Brittany Lambert, program officer for the CCIC's Americas Policy Group, said from Ottawa, “Our concern all along with the Canada-Colombia FTA has been that it has the potential to exacerbate the ongoing human rights crisis in Colombia.”

Colombia is home to the highest internally-displaced population in the world, estimated at between 3.8 and 5.4 million people. Peace Brigades International reports that 80 per cent of human rights violations that have occurred in Colombia over the last ten years took place in mining and energy-producing regions, with 87 per cent of internally-displaced people originating from these zones.

Many see this as a result of the tendency for rich earth to attract armed actors, from guerrilla groups to paramilitaries to the Colombian armed forces. The Colombian military has a strong presence in regions hosting large mining projects. President Juan Manual Santos announced in February 2012 that 30 per cent of Colombia's public forces—more than 80,000 members—are currently dedicated to protecting mining and energy infrastructure.

Aside from the militarization of mining zones, social and human rights organizations have reported the targeted killings of leaders opposed to large-scale mining. In September 2011 José Reinel Restrepo, a Catholic priest and outspoken critic of another Gran Colombia Gold mining project, was assassinated a week after travelling to Bogota to criticize the company's plan to displace the entire town of Marmato, Caldas.

Almost one year after the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and Colombia came into effect, the Canadian government was slated to release a report on how the deal has impacted human rights. Rather than comply with the requirement to produce an annual report, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade released a document on May 15 that merely outlined the methodology it will use to produce a report for next year.

Voices from communities like Berruecos have, at least for the moment, been ignored in Ottawa.

Despite being up against a powerful company, farmers in Narino are optimistic. "We're not rich, but we do good work here, and we're not going to lose what we've got because we're willing and ready to defend it," said Gomez.

*Some names in this article have been changed for security reasons.

Leah Gardner is a member of the Project Accompaniment and Solidarity with Colombia (PASC), a Montreal-based collective.

Colombian Farmers Demand Mining Dialogue

Burned out Mining Camp

Ottawa's Colombia Problem

dawn — Mon, 28 May 2012 10:41:01 +0000

Canada fails to release human rights report on Colombia following FTA

MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA—The Canadian government's failure to report on Colombian human rights, as promised as part of its Free Trade Agreement (FTA), drew criticism from the country's opposition last Thursday.

The FTA, which went into effect in August 2011, received the backing of Canadian opposition parties when Prime Minister Stephen Harper committed to releasing annual reports on how trade was affecting human rights in Colombia. A report analyzing the treaty was released last Wednesday with no mention of human rights issues.

"As the agreement has only been in force for the last four and a half months in 2011, there's not enough available data to do a comprehensive analysis," said Trade Minister Ed Fast in Canada's House of Commons. "That analysis will be released in 2013."

The report's delay drew the ire of many government critics, who felt the current administration was only seeking profit from Colombia while ignoring its human rights violations.

"Canadians want more trade...but we also want...the partners we trade with to respect democratic values," said the opposition's international trade critic Don Davies. "It leaves us to wonder whether the government was afraid to table an honest human rights assessment because it shows the situation in Colombia has not improved."

Opposition party member Scott Brison, who used his close ties to Colombian officials to propose the joint report, assured Canadians that the South American nation was committed to improving its shoddy human rights record, which has seen 17 trade unionists disappear since the agreement was signed.

"I know the Colombian government, with which I continue dialogue, takes this reportage very seriously and actually views it as an opportunity to deepen corporate social responsibility and to increase transparency around human rights and the effect of legitimate trade on actually strengthening human rights," said Brison.

"I hope that the Harper government takes this reportage process as seriously as the Colombians do," he added.

Numerous criticisms against Canadian mining operations have been lodged by Colombian civil rights groups, according to Jennifer Moore, the Latin American coordinator for Canada-based industry monitor MiningWatch.

"What really worries us is that you put into place a new free trade agreement, you provide new and substantial rights to foreign investors to defend their investments...and there are no correspondingly strong rights for communities to assert their rights when they're being infringed upon by these corporate interests," Moore told Colombia Reports, where this story originally ran.

Complaints have ranged from company representatives entering Indigenous land without permission to overlapping mining operations forcing residents from their homes. Canadian gold mining company Gran Colombia has been the target of heated protest in recent years after its alleged failure to allow "robust public participation" in communities where operations have taken place, according to Moore.

In 2011, a Catholic priest from the historic gold-mining department of Caldas protested his town's demolition to make way for the company's mining operations. He was murdered by unknown assailants shortly afterward. Gran Colombia denied responsibility for the murder, saying it was simply a robbery gone wrong.

"The inclusion of this human rights report in order to justify the passage of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement was a whitewash from the beginning and now we're just seeing what a sham it really is," added Moore.

The FTA made news May 7 when Canadian officials claimed Colombia failed to issue duty-free licenses to its exporters in 2011.

The United States FTA with Colombia went into effect on May 15. The agreement has also been fiercely criticized by human rights organizations in both countries due to the ongoing violence against labour activists and union workers.

Brandon Barrett is a journalist and regular contributor to Colombia Reports based in Medellin, Colombia. An earlier version of this story appeared in Colombia Reports and the Media Co-op.

Harper and Santos Handshake

Walking for Peace, Respect and Friendship along the Grand River

dawn — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:55:14 +0000

Honouring our historical agreements through shared action

KITCHENER, ON—If you travel south along the winding 50-kilometres stretch of the Grand River between Kitchener and Caledonia, you will pass farms fields, forests, a sprawling patchwork of towns with their own industrial sites and golf courses, finally coming to the edge of the Six Nations reserve, and eventually, Kanonhstaton, the “protected place”—a site of Haudenosaunee land reclamation and defense. A brief walk from Caledonia's downtown, the site is still identifiable by the downed hydro tower at the entrance just off the highway, and the skeleton of the trailer burned in early 2008 by a gang of anti-reclamation settlers.

Located on the boundary between the Six Nation reserve and the settler town of Caledonia, Kanonhstaton has brought Indigenous land rights to the forefront of national attention over and over again in the past six years, gaining prominence rarely seen in land occupations since the 1990 Oka standoff.

Kanonhstaton is about reclaiming the land and stopping a housing development known as the Douglas Creek Estates. The initial action by the group of around twenty, mostly woman Indigenous land defenders was met with little protest locally, and instead garnered widespread support from settler allies.

But on April 20, 2006, the Ontario Provincial Police carried out a violent raid on the site, during which OPP tore open tents, tasered, pepper sprayed, beat, and ultimately, arrested 16 Indigenous people. That day, hundreds from the reserve flooded to the site in response to the raid, ejected the police, and proceeded to build road blockades. Following this unsuccessful eviction attempt, groups of white settlers began organising citizen councils and anti-native and anti-reclamation rallies, under a call for a return to the “rule of law and order.”

This act of police aggression and state intimidation did not end the reclamation. It did, however, lead to a series of violent confrontations and acts of intimidation between hostile Caledonians, the police, and Haudenosaunee land defenders that came to be known as the Caledonia crisis. Instead of breaking the camp, the raid worked to solidify resistance to the development.

“They [those who protect the land] have the dedication to hold on to the land for the next seven generations. We are here, we are here to stay, and we are not going anywhere!” proclaimed Dawn Smith during the sixth-year commemoration of the reclamation, which took place on April 28, 2012. Smith, an Indigenous land defender who was involved in the original reclamation action added: “When we started this, it was with a hope to bring the communities together... to commemorate the Haldimand deed.”

In the six years since the reclamation began, the Federal government, which is, according to Canadian laws, in charge of dealing with land claims, has done nothing to bring resolution to the issue. Ottawa added further insult by appointing the head of the botched police raid, Julian Fantino, to cabinet in 2011 first as Minister of State for Seniors, and then as Associate Minister of National Defence.

The government of Ontario, which has shifted all blame to the Federal government, also purchased the land in question from prospective developers for $15.8 million, settled for further millions with other affected Caledonians and businesses, and acted no further.

This inaction has left the situation simmering, leading to ongoing confrontations and arrests, including over 160 charges laid against Indigenous land defenders.

Ken Hewitt, formerly a lead organiser of the Caledonia Citizens' Alliance, a group which formed to organise anti-native rallies, is now the mayor of Haldimand County, which includes Caledonia. These rallies, now organised by a citizens’ council, known as “CANACE,” continue on a monthly basis with between two and ten attendees who gather and hold racist and anti-native signs as they parade along the boundaries of the reclamation site.

In February 2012, days before the sixth anniversary of the reclamation, a 17-year old Caledonian youth, wrote a suicide note and drove his parents' mini-van into the house on the site which has served as the headquarters of land defenders since the action began in 2006.

The youth ended up in hospital, and the attack left a large hole in the front of the house and troubling questions in the minds of many who live across the watershed and around south-western Ontario. The main question is: how can lasting peace be built with so much trauma and hurt remaining within and between settler and Indigenous communities?

Two weeks after this attempted suicide attack on Kanonhstaton, many of the activists and union organisers from across southwestern Ontario who have been active in the reclamation, were again invited to the site to discuss ideas for building peace between affected communities.

“We have to rebuild our historic friendships, through actively living the agreements that were created to guide our relationships—the Two Row Wampum and the Silver Covenant Chain, we have to respect Indigenous land rights and the Haldimand proclamation, and think to our common future on this land aboard our ever crowding vessels,” said Luke Stewart, a born settler on the Grand River, an indigenous solidarity activist, and a resistance movement historian, as we drove down from Kitchener for the first meeting.

After lengthy discussions between the more than 20 attendees, a proposal was voiced to hold an event which could bring all residents from across the Grand River watershed and from other up and downstream communities, to build the relationships that would make living by the historic agreements possible.

This proposal was eventually transformed into a plan to hold a peaceful rally, walk, and community celebration near the sixth anniversary of the raid. The day would be organized by the newly-formed April 28th Coalition, comprised of a diverse group of Indigenous and settlers,
the group taking its name from the day the Walk for Peace was to be held.

“I feel it is important to make a statement to the government after years of inaction on our unresolved land rights," said Tracy Bomberry, a journalist and Indigenous member of the April 28th coalition, when I asked about her involvement in the event. "A walk for peace will provide the opportunity to get the governments' attention and to educate the larger community of our outstanding land issues not only on Six Nations but across the country."

To guide their work, the coalition looks to historic agreements between the British Crown and the Haudenosaunee. One is the Silver Covenant Chain which represents the bow line of a European ship being tied to the “Great Tree of Life,” indicating cooperation since contact, and commemorated by “polishing the chain"—literally coming together to clean the wampum belt that the agreement is represented on.

The English also agreed to live with the Haudenosaunee in peace, respect, and friendship in accordance with the Guswhenta, or the Two Row Wampum. First agreed to by Dutch settlers and Haudenosaunee in 1613, this agreement has settlers and Indigenous moving forward in parallel on the same river (of life) in their own boats, where one group is not to impact the course (sovereignty) of the other.

“Clearly, somewhere along the way our ship was commandeered by villains and crashed into the Haudenosaunee canoe,” said Stewart, reflecting on the failure of settlers to respect the Two Row.

The other key agreement for the April 28th Coalition is the 1784 Haldimand Proclamation. After the British lost the American War of Independence, the British crown granted six miles deep of either bank of the Grand River to their war ally the Haudenosaunee after purchasing the land from the Mississaugas. This is known as the Haldimand Proclamation.

“While some of this land was later sold off—blocks one to six—and some was leased to settlers, including the Caledonia claim, the vast majority has never been legally transferred from Six Nations,” said Stewart. In another obvious breach of peace, respect and friendship, the money paid in the few legitimate deals from blocks one to six was not kept in trust, added Stewart, it was instead plundered by colonial administrators and misappropriated for infrastructure projects that built Ontario and Canada.

On April 28th 2012, a thousand Canadians from across Southern Ontario participated in the Walk, Rally, and Potluck for Peace, Respect, and Friendship and joined with Indigenous land defenders and families who are tired of the inaction and disrespect shown by all levels of Canadian government, to demand that Six Nations land rights be respected.

Stewart described the walk, which was led by a 25-metre long representation of the Two Row, as “a call to honour and respect our historical agreements, and move toward a peaceful future of healthy coexistence, not colonial subjugation and corporate land theft.”

The march was not the only event the coalition has been working on, said Stewart, who pointed to public information sessions, documentary movie nights, and community meals organised in the lead-up to April 28th that ensured a respectful day with good representation from many communities.

The walk through Caledonia's downtown to Kanonhstaton was occasionally delayed by a small group of Caledonians, who ignored a history of colonialism as they sneered “it is a little late for peace” and demanded to see the passports of marshalls, who asked them to kindly “join in or stop obstructing the path of peace and friendship.” These hecklers included those who had received million dollar settlements for the impact of the situation to their lives.

Local authorities refused to stop the anti-reclamation rallies, but did try and halt the community events on April 28. "Hewitt went to extraordinary measures to stop the walk, with fear mongering in the media and proposing to council that they seek an injunction," said Stewart.

After the rally, march, potluck meal, games, concert and social at Kanonhstaton on April 28th, the buses departed and residents returned home.

“This is only the starting point in an ongoing dialogue and awareness raising on Six Nations land Issues, it was a chance to network, share a meal, make new friends, enjoy some music—all in the spirit of peace, respect and friendship,” said Bomberry. In communities all along the Grand River, added Bomberry, meetings to keep the dialogue going and to build on the momentum of the walk have been set to take place throughout the spring and summer.

Dan Kellar is a born settler on the Grand River Territory, and is an anarchist social justice organiser, who participated in April 28th coalition activities. Dan co-hosts Grand River Radical Radio (GRRR!) and AW@L Radio on 100.3 CKMS-FM (http://soundfm.ca).

April 28 Coalition

Marchers Vow to Protect Ancient Burial Site

dawn — Mon, 07 May 2012 04:50:26 +0000

Musqueam set up camp at condo site after infant graves desecrated

MARPOLE, VANCOUVER—The Musqueam First Nation has vowed to shut down condo construction to protect a major ancient burial site at the Marpole Midden. Infant graves were unearthed by heavy excavating equipment at the Vancouver location this week.

More than 100 Musqueam and supporters marched to the construction project at 1338 SW Marine on Thursday, May 3. The marchers included representatives from several First Nations. Musqueam are now occupying outside the site and say they will remain until protection for the site is assured.

The move to protect their 4,000-year-old village site come after more burials were dug up by the condo developer. Construction stopped six weeks ago when the developer first disturbed intact burials. Musqueam leaders say promised talks with the developer, the city and the province have gone nowhere.

The Musqueam reportedly offered a swap with developer Century Holdings for nearby land, but to no avail. The Marpole Midden is considered one of the most important in Canada and was named a National Historic Site in 1938.

Union of BC Indian Chiefs Grand Chief Stewart Phillip announced that the site will "remain shut down until the province is prepared to come to the table and discuss a resolution to this situation."

Musqueam Chief Ernest Campbell warned "never question our resolve or the resolve of our fellow First Nations, or of any one else for that matter, when it comes to protecting our sacred burial rights."

Musqueam spokesperson Cecilia Point said supporters are welcome to come down and join the protest on the sidewalk or bring a tent and stay.

This article and these images (and more) were originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Musqueam Marchers

Musqueam Marchers II

Quebec Student Strike Marches Into Eleventh Week

Tim McSorley — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:37:04 +0000

Fifteen thousand take to Montreal streets as Quebec government plays semantics, blocks negotiations

MONTREAL—It didn't take long; as always, the consensus among the media came quickly: "Downtown turns into battlefield," "Another demonstration goes sour," "Montreal student demonstration turns violent," "Violence breaks out during student protest"...

At the end of a day where 15,000 people took to the streets, a day that saw the provincial government play the worst kind of politics during negotiations with student representatives, you'd be hard-pressed to get any of that from the night's headlines.

Also invisible from those opening lines were any mention of police actions—actions which, if you were watching the live stream from CUTV, checking out clips on Youtube, or even following nearly any Twitter feed (let alone if you were actually at the protest)—did more to set off tensions than anything protesters did two nights ago.

The events of April 26 were set in motion by Education Minister Line Beauchamp's announcement that she was expelling the Coalition Large de l'Association pour une Solidarite Syndicale Etudiante from the negotiating session, which were meant to find a resolution to the 11-week-old student strike that has swept the province.

CLASSE represents 50 per cent of the 180,000 students on strike and was largely responsible for launching the strike in the first place. It has also been a constant thorn in the side of the government, organizing the most radical acts of civil disobedience and maintaining a firm line demanding the continuation of the province's tuition fee freeze.

Why were they expelled? After the coalition adopted a clear position against violence towards people, but encouraged civil disobedience, Minister Beauchamp demanded that CLASSE agree to a 48-hour truce for negotiations. During this time, the union would be allowed to organize traditional protests (which it did Wednesday afternoon), but not engage in economic disruption. While CLASSE did not have a mandate to sign a truce, it did state that it had no disruptive actions planned for the next 48 hours.

The Federation des Etudiants Universitaire du Quebec as well as the Federation des Etudiants Collegial du Quebec (FEUQ and FECQ) had already previously spoken out against "violent actions," including acts of vandalism and civil disobedience.

On Monday at 4pm, all three associations sat down with government representatives for the first time since the strike began.

Less than 40 hours later though, it was all over.

Since the start of the strike, CLASSE has maintained a website featuring a Google calendar that showed all student actions across the province, including those that involved actions that the government defines as disruptive or violent. This didn't appear to be a problem to start the truce, but it did serve as the excuse to end it. The ostensible reason was a march last Tuesday night that was announced on the Google calendar included at least one count of property destruction (a broken window), and confrontation with police, resulting in five arrests.

Clearly looking for a pretext to attempt once again to split the tuition freeze movement and to marginalize the association with the most radical—and persistent—membership, Minister Beauchamp took to the airwaves at 2pm Wednesday, announcing that CLASSE was expelled from the negotiations. Within several minutes, the other two federations walked away in solidarity.

A protest had already been called a week earlier for Wednesday night, and the government's arbitrary discussion to cut short negotiations—before, by most accounts, they had even really started—led to people understandably being angry and looking for a way to express their anger.

As Daniel Crespo, one of the organizers of last night's demonstration, told Cyberpresse:

«Évidemment on souhaite une manif énergique. Calme, c'est pas le mot...En ce moment, je crois que le sentiment qui se vit au sein des étudiant-e-s c'est la colère. Alors le calme, je ne crois pas qu'on en ait.»

"Obviously, we're hoping for an energetic demo. Calm isn't the word...Right now, I think the feeling students have is anger. So 'calm'? I don't think we have any."

That said, I have been in the middle of much angrier marches than what hit Montreal last night.

Fifteen thousand people were in the streets last night. Fifteen thousand who were fed up with a government that earlier in the day essentially spit in the face of the student strike movement, demonstrating the same condescension, arrogance and rejectionism that has characterized their approach to this movement, one of the largest social movements in the history of not just Quebec, but of Canada.

And despite all this anger, it was mostly channeled through chanting and speeches. All it took though was a few paint balloons and six broken windows before 15,000 people were announced illegal. Targeted for property destruction were banks, Loto-Quebec and a military recruitment centre: not random targets, but symbols of the government and the economic powers which are behind the push for higher tuition fees and with them higher debt. When the government refuses to negotiate in good faith for over two months, and slams the door when negotiations finally begin, is it any wonder that people would turn their frustrations on the symbols of that government and those who back them?

The response of police was unannounced and muscled. I was just a few metres from where the first percussion grenade went off, in the middle of the crowd, and I feel confident saying that the use of these weapons came before most—if anyone—in the streets knew that the march had been declared an illegal assembly. It was only after the crowd scattered that a voice was heard over the police loudspeaker announcing that the march was illegal. And looking to accounts posted on social media, I'm definitely not alone in that assessment. By the time the announcement was heard, police were already forcing their way into the crowd, separating it, with small groups of people scattering in all directions near the corner of Peel and Ste-Catherine.

From other parts of the march have come reports of police on horses charging crowds, excessive use of pepper spray and gas, batoning and tear gassing. It was only after this excessive intervention that the more aggressive tactics—a car lit on fire, more windows smashed, rocks thrown at police—took place.

Some will clearly argue that once a single window is broken, the law is broken and police have every right to intervene. But can six broken windows justify the police aggression documented on Wednesday night? And if six broken windows can make 15,000 people targetable for dispersion and arrest, then what does a tear gas cannister to the chest, or a concussion grenade to the eye, or a baton to the head or ribs, or a car ramming through a crowd equal? All are clearly more dangerous to the health and safety of individual people: police aren't taking on objects when they aggress, they are taking on flesh and blood.

When all was done—around 1am—85 people were arrested (70 in a mass arrest near St-Dominique and des Pins at the very end), accounts of police brutality were innumerable on social media, and students and supporters were vowing to fight on.

This morning, Quebec Premier Jean Charest was once again denouncing student violence as the obstacle of continued negotiation, playing out the same tired lines he and Minister Beauchamp have had on repeat for weeks. Tired lines that have, and will, do nothing to end this conflict.

Tim McSorley is an editor with The Dominion and a member of the Montreal Media Co-op.

This article was originally published by the Montreal Media Co-op.

April 25 night march in Montreal 1

April 25 night march in Montreal 2

Oil, Gas and Banks Head South

Miles — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:56:15 +0000

Mining companies are only part of Canada's corporate presence in Latin America

LOS CABOS, MEXICO—The hard fought battle against the Keystone XL pipeline, which was slated to carry tar sands crude across Canada and the United States to port in Texas, kicked struggles against Canadian-owned oil and gas companies up to a new level. Resistance dominated headlines in Canada, while rural folk, Indigenous people, celebrities, and climate activists in the US took direct action to block Calgary-based TransCanada’s plans. In northern BC, Indigenous-led resistance to the proposed Enbridge pipeline, along with a host of other US-owned infrastructure projects, have become front and centre issues for environmentalists and activists across Canada.

The role of Canadian oil, gas and pipeline companies in other parts of the world is, however, less discussed. Many activists have focused on the behavior of the Canadian mining sector, a natural choice given the size of that sector compared to the oil and gas industries in Canada. “In Canada, a major difference between the oil and gas and mining sectors is that while many of Canada’s largest companies are oil and gas producers, some with integrated operations, they are not particularly prominent in the global arena just now,” reads a 2008 report by the Economic Commission on Latin America.

It’s been four years since that report was released, and it might be time to revisit the idea that the Canadian oil and gas sector hasn’t gained prominence on a global scale. Take the case of Latin America, where a host of oil and gas companies based in Calgary and Toronto have been increasing their holdings throughout the hemisphere, taking advantage of the same lax legal standards Canadian mining companies enjoy.

A study by Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP found that in 2010, Canadian oil and gas companies made over $35 billion in mergers and acquisitions in Central and Latin America, and the region is the second most attractive place (after the United States) for Canadian oil companies to invest outside of Canada. Colombia in particular has quickly become a favourite destination for this new surge of Canadian oil and gas investment.

At the same time as the Canadian Senate approved a free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia in June of 2010, a government-hosted bidding fair on oil and gas properties was taking place in Cartagena, Colombia. "I have some good news for our Canadian friends. The Senate has just approved a free trade agreement...so that opens the way for a lot of opportunities and our government is very happy about that,” said then-Colombian Energy and Mining Minister Hernan Martinez to corporate representatives bidding on oil and gas concessions in Cartagena that day.

Canadian oil companies were among the chief supporters of the agreement, which was roundly criticized because of the continued killings, kidnapping and displacement of Indigenous people, trade unionists, peasants, dissenters and the poor in Colombia. A free trade agreement with Peru was approved by the Canadian Senate a little later, on the heels of a massacre in the Amazon province of Bagua where an estimated 100 people were killed during protests in defense of their lands.

A preliminary list of Canadian oil companies active in Latin America

CALGARY
Gran Tierra Energy Incorporated: Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Peru
Parex Resources Incorporated: Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago
Canacol Energy Limited: Colombia, Guyana, Brazil
Talisman Energy Incorporated: Colombia, Peru
Nexen Incorporated: Colombia
Petrominerales: Colombia, Peru
Quattro Exploration and Production: Guatemala
Quetzal Energy Limited: Colombia

VANCOUVER
Petro Vista Energy Corporation: Colombia, Brazil
TrueStar Petroleum Corporation: Guatemala

TORONTO
Pacific Rubiales Energy: Colombia, Peru, Guatemala

Pacific Rubiales and Talisman, two of the most important Canadian oil companies in Colombia, have already come under intense criticism linked to the high environmental and social cost of their operations.

A class action lawsuit brought against Talisman in 2002, which was later dismissed, alleged that the company was involved in funding war in southern Sudan. “Talisman Energy finances and directs the Government of Sudan’s ethnic cleansing campaign and must be stopped before all of our villages are destroyed and all of the people are killed,” said Taban Deng, a former government official, in 2002, from what is today Southern Sudan.

In some ways, it seems that little has changed in the 10 years since Talisman was active in Sudan. In December of last year, Amazon Watch released testimony from a priest who traveled into northern Peruvian Indigenous communities near Talisman’s operations. “The presence of Talisman is generating conflict between those who accept and those who don't accept the company, and a conflict like this here in the jungle runs the risk costing many lives,” said Father Diego Clavijo. “What they are doing here [in the Pastaza river basin] with some ex-leaders is also dividing people, and it is going to cause death and destruction,” he said. “We are on the verge of genocide, genocide between peoples, due to infighting over the presence of the company here.”

Talisman made inroads in conflict-ridden Colombia in 2010, when they bought 49 per cent of BP’s oil and gas projects in Colombia, including more than 2,000 kilometres of pipelines.

Pacific Rubiales, for its part, operates the largest oil project in Colombia. The company, which at one point had a military base with 600 soldiers stationed on its property, has been subject to ongoing strikes by the United Workers Union (USO). Numerous incursions by riot police to break up strikes have resulted in serious injuries among workers. Pacific Rubiales is working hard on public relations, having recently sponsored a prestigious golf tournament in Colombia, inaugurated with a celebrity swing by Bill Clinton.

Along with Nexen, another Calgary-based company, Pacific Rubiales has announced that it has discovered natural gas reserves within its Colombian concessions. A number of other Canadian companies have recently displayed renewed interest in the vast jungle regions of northern Guatemala, which is populated by communities primarily of Mayan descent. Increasing conflict in the region, exemplified by a horrific massacre of 27 peasants in San Benito, Peten, last year, has not been linked directly with oil and gas interests, instead being linked to the activity of drug cartels.

Tracing the fault lines of Canadian oil and gas companies in Latin America and the Caribbean also requires looking at Canada’s role in the banking sector throughout the region. RBC and Scotiabank are both major players, with banks and ATMs popping up throughout countries with heavy mining and oil and gas investment.

"Today, RBC has bought off every single aspect of the [Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago], and now financially dominates the landscape," said Macdonald Stainsby, an activist and writer who returned from the island nation earlier this year. “[RBC has] openly called for financing of new oil plays, in particular they’ve brought up tar sands,” he said. Stainsby, who runs the website oilsandstruth.org, increasingly devotes time to making links with communities organizing against tar sands in countries like Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.

Building these links of solidarity and continuing to raise awareness about the impacts of oil and gas projects on local communities, while at the same time organizing against war and repression that so often accompany these projects, is work that must continue if we are to have any chance of collective survival on this planet.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op. A version of this article was published in the March/April print edition of Watershed Sentinel.

Oil Death Jeans Improved

Homelessness and Police Brutality

mccabe.melissa — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:20:41 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—In the winter of 2000, I was co-managing a four bedroom house in Walley, BC. My co-manager and I became friends, but eventually he wanted to have a relationship. When I refused, he started to become verbally abusive and controlling with me. I took the abuse for a while, until I started to get incredibly stressed. I decided to leave in the spring of 2001. In a state of extreme depression, I left with a couple of bags and took the bus into Vancouver, where I ended up homeless.

During the day I panhandled for food and smokes, and at night I stayed wherever I could find a quiet and safe spot on the streets such as in a park or in a doorway. I felt alone, scared, and lost in the cracks and in the crowd. I could not sleep at night because there was no privacy, only constant harassment—whether it was the police, private security, drunk people leaving the bars, violent men, or somebody trying to rob me. A few guys tried to get me to do sex-work on the street for them, but I refused.

While I was panhandling, people would always hassle me and yell at me to move away from their store. I would often get sworn at or told to get a job. I felt judged by the people walking by and I was so ashamed of myself. I wish I could have made them understand how hard it really was. It was overwhelmingly difficult just to survive and I would never want to be homeless again. There are approximately 11,000 homeless across BC, with 3,000 people homeless across the Lower Mainland.

I had been on the street for a few months when someone told me to go to the Downtown Eastside to access support and services. I found a welfare worker who helped me get into the Bridge Shelter, where I stayed for one month, after which I got into Bridge Housing in June 2001.

I had to start all over again to establish my life. I found the Downtown Eastside Womens’ Centre. When I first walked in the doors, I did not want people to know me or know where I came from. But I met some friends who told me about the different activities available and I joined various programs and groups. Being a part of the DTES Power of Women Group showed me how to stand up for myself and others, which helped me regain my confidence and I began to feel good about myself again.

One of the issues I have continued to raise my voice against is that of police brutality in the Downtown Eastside. This is just one of the many stories that inspired me to take action.

I had been living in a supportive housing building for women for about nine years. As opposed to private single-resident-occupancy (SRO) housing, one of the benefits of supportive housing run by non-profits is that it maintains the confidentiality of the tenants who live there. Unless it is an emergency or a tenant has called 911, the police can only enter with a warrant.

One day the police arrived at my building looking for a tenant. They did not have a warrant and no one had called 911. The building staff refused the police access into the tenant’s room. I was sitting in the lobby of our building and witnessed the whole incident. At first the female officer got agitated and was demanding that they be allowed into the tenant’s room. The staff did not give in, which just made the police officers angrier, stating that they had a right to go inside. I saw one officer go towards the staff member to grab her arm. I ran out to try to inform people about what was taking place and to get some help.

When I returned, the staff was in handcuffs and had been taken outside. I heard them saying that they had arrested her and would charge her with obstruction of justice. By that time a crowd had gathered and staff from next door at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre had also arrived. Eventually, the arrested staff member was let go.

This whole incident made me very angry. There are so many stories of police arrogance and violence, and most are worse than what happened to this staff member. In this situation they were not even following their own protocol. I was scared that if this could happen to a staff member what could happen to someone like me who has less authority in this neighbourhood? It made me feel very powerless and vulnerable, especially as the incident occurred in my own building.

I have lost faith in the police. I fear that if I ever needed them to help me, they would turn on me instead. They do little to protect against actual violence, like all the murdered and missing women. Instead, they are violent towards us, frequently arresting people for minor things like jaywalking, or harassing people who are just standing on the street. It deeply frustrates and angers me that we let the police use their power and badges in such negative ways, and that society allows them to power-trip and do what they want. I imagine a Downtown Eastside where we are free from the arbitrary beatings and the brutality of the Vancouver Police Department, and so I and others fight to make this possible.

Karen Lahey is proud to be a survivor. She has been living in the Downtown Eastside for the past 11 years. Because of the DTES Power of Women Group, she can now publicly speak in front of a crowd and in front of cameras. She likes to help other women find their voice.

This story was originally published on the Vancouver Media Co-op as part of the Downtown Eastside Power of Women “In Our Own Voices” writing project. For more information and to read more stories, please visit http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group

Karen Lahey

Homeless in Halifax

hillarybain — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:49:03 +0000

A first person account

HALIFAX—I’m fixing dinner on another damp Halifax evening and enjoying the momentary peace in my large kitchen.

Behind me, a middle-aged mom is trying to persuade her two-year-old that milk tastes better than juice and, not surprisingly, losing that argument for the moment. To my left, a younger woman is perched on a stool, engrossed in a third-year university chemistry text—heck, at Dalhousie University, I never made it past the first page of that book, which is why I promptly switched back to psychology. From the living room, I hear laughter about some of the latest signs to appear in our home:

Please do not dry cigarettes in the Microwave. Thank you, Staff

Please do not open window – it will fall out. Thank you, Staff

Squash stew for breakfast – enjoy! - Your Staff

Welcome to my new home. Welcome to a Halifax Shelter for Homeless Women.

Hannah, making dinner for her daughter, has been unable to find affordable rental accommodation that also accepts children in Halifax, which is where she moved after she lost her job in Cape Breton. “I borrowed the money to take a bus here, just because we figured there were more jobs in the Halifax,” Hannah explains. She had not expected that when she arrived, she would be unable to find housing that she could afford, with or without her child. And she still can’t.

Hannah has now become a member of an exclusive club, which, for want of a better label, might be called the CAE Club—the “Chicken and Egg” Club, where I too am now an unwilling member.

You may be part of the CAE Club because you need housing to get a job—a place to get dressed, receive mail, communicate with employers, store your belongings, do laundry, have meals. But you need a job in order to get that place and pay for that home. That job will provide the rent to get a place to live, or to satisfy a landlord that you are working and can afford your rent. For many of us at a shelter, the question of getting a job, or getting a home first, no longer makes any difference. We currently no longer have resources to make either happen.

In 1998, the Big City Mayors Caucus of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) declared homelessness in Canada a national disaster.

That was thirteen years ago.

By conservative estimates, there are over 200,000 people in Canada who are homeless today, according to organizers of November’s Housing and Homeless Conference in Halifax. Women, youth, and families are the fastest growing groups in the homeless and at-risk populations.

In the kitchen on this rainy night, my chemistry-text-loving friend, Denise, and I are now looking for the best place to put her cane so I don’t keep tripping over it. Denise represents another audience needing shelters; she has a health issue. In her case, a stroke that she suffered a year ago. Denise’s subsequent inability to walk unaided was something that her new husband could not cope with. In spite of some great health care agencies which worked with the couple to create Denise’s successful transition from a wheelchair to her cane, “he just didn’t expect to be looking after me,” says Denise of her husband. He kicked her out of a home where her name was not on the rental agreement. Her husband since left the province, along with their car and bankbook.

I remember Lenore, another health “victim” at another Halifax shelter with a similar story, but she faced even greater problems—she not only could not walk properly, but a stroke had affected her speech. Lenore’s move to a shelter came after she discovered that the mortgage for the home she shared with her partner of 20 years did not include her name, and he “no longer wanted me anyway,” she says. She could not afford to hire a lawyer or use Legal Aid options, none of which she qualified for. Lenore did, however, qualify for her current shelter residence which is where I got to know her, and where I finally discovered someone who could beat me at a game I had ruled all my life: I am no longer the Maritime Scrabble Queen.

I asked Stephanie, a staff member at a Halifax shelter, what the hardest part of her job was: “The hardest part of my job is telling a homeless woman who is already facing the worst day of her life, that she has to move, whether she has a place to go or not. Her time to use a shelter for a roof over her head has run out. Whether she has a place to go or not, there is someone who also now needs that her space.” There is no longer a "room at the inn."

I continue to be amazed at how “up” most residents are in these situations which are so often just unbearable: no home, sometimes limited food, cramped surroundings. It seemed to go without saying that residents usually give incredible support to others also living at the shelter. A house-mate will offer an exhausted young mom some down time from her cranky baby. Today, one the residents who has stayed at the shelter the longest dropped a pile of books off by my bed after a great discussion about best authors; she had seen how much I enjoy a good read. This weekend, I also received an unsolicited Tim Hortons’ gift card when another housemate passed along the card which had been given to her to share.

There are, of course, downsides to living at a shelter and, for me, noise is my greatest challenge. I am used to a pretty quiet life, but that does not necessarily fit with the in-the-gene-pool gift of gab we Maritimers are inevitably born with. Nor is waiting to do laundry, or the other rules that can come with communal living. Still, there are success stories celebrated at women’s shelters every day—and celebrate we do.

A former shelter roommate, Barb, has just been accepted into a community college chef program and her application for financial support, allowing her to move forward with her life, was also approved. The mother sharing the kitchen with me, Hannah, thinks she has found an apartment where children are allowed, although she will need another roommate to help with the rent.

I’m about to take this evening’s dinner to the living room and join in a twelve-woman, lively discussion about the Grey Cup game and the Lions’ victory. Yes, this is a women’s shelter. And yes, a sports-focused conversation about football may not be what one expects in a place for homeless women. But surprises are definitely part of my current life. I am just looking forward to the happy surprise of having a new home again, but I am so glad I have this shelter, and the amazing company of these new friends, until that home finally happens. And it will. To date, staff tell me, no one has ever been here forever.

*The author's name has been changed.

L.D. Steeves is currently living in a shelter for women in Halifax.

This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Gottingen St

Affordable Houing