ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

CANADA HAS TURNED INTO A CAN'T-DO NATION AS SURGING ACTIVISM STRAINS ECONOMIC GROWTH

RESISTANCE TO INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS — pipelines, dams, wind turbines, mines — has become commonplace in Canada. BUT IT IS COSTING US. As part of a fourmonth investigation, the Financial Post identified 35 PROJECTS, worth $129 billion, that have been stalled or cancelled due to opposition from environmental, aboriginal or community groups. This week-long series takes us to the HOTSPOTS OF THIS CONFLICT and reveals the economic hit being felt throughout Canada and in every part of the resource sector.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had barely finished delivering his statement approving the Trans Mountain and Line 3 pipelines, and rejecting Northern Gateway on Nov. 29 when anti-pipeline activists erupted on Twitter.

“@justintrudeau just approved the #Kindermorgan pipeline. Vancouver: Join us at the CBC building at 5 pm,” Stand.earth tweeted, along with a photo with protesters and the headline: IT’S TIME TO ESCALATE AGAINST KINDER MORGAN.

Greenpeace Canada took direct aim at Trudeau: “BREAKING: @JustinTrudeau approves #KinderMorgan and #Line3 pipelines, rejects #NorthernGateway,” illustrating it with indigenous protesters and the warning: “If Prime Minister Trudeau wanted to bring Standing Rock to Canada he succeeded.”

In its tweet, Oil Change International had a photo of Trudeau at the Calgary Petroleum Club with the headline: NOTE TO JUSTIN TRUDEAU: “CLIMATE LEADERS” DON’T. BUILD. PIPELINES, and the comment: “If approving massive new oil pipelines fits in Canada’s #climate plan, then Canada’s #climate plan is freaking awful.”

Anti-pipeline activists from these and other groups had devoted years of campaigning to stop all three projects through regulatory, political and legal means, before adopting a more “in your face” approach, in the vein of the ongoing uprising against the now stalled Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States, and in the tradition of the famous War in the Woods two decades ago against logging on Vancouver Island’s Clayoquot Sound.