Peaceful protest gets ignored by The Spec

It appears that if you’re not throwing rocks, your actions don’t rate coverage

It appears that unless you are throwing rocks at windows or have masks on your face, Hamiltonians out on the street protesting don’t rate being covered by your newspaper.

Fifty people demonstrated peacefully against Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion plans outside MP Filomena Tassi’s office on Main Street West on the afternoon of March 23, and the only journalist to cover the event was a young man from the cable television station. Under the co-ordination of LeadNow, groups across the country were taking part in demonstrations and tieins (to KM fences). The national opposition to this Texas company’s plan to despoil the west coast of Canada and its waterways and to ignore the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples there, is echoed by bedrock opposition in B.C., even though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his environment minister say it’s “in the national interest.” As Dr. Lynne Quarmby, Green Party Science Critic, said of the National Energy Board’s approval in May 2016, “Trans Mountain is opposed by the municipal governments of Vancouver, Victoria, Burnaby, North and West Vancouver, the regional government of Metro Vancouver and First Nations, who oppose the project on environmental, cultural and legal grounds. Clearly, this ill-conceived project should be rejected as not in the public interest.”

Clearly, the “national interest” is not the same as the “public interest,” but does this PM even have the mandate to decide? I think not, especially when so many parts of civil society are risking arrest to tell him to reverse his decision! We so need the proportional representation he promised for the 2019 election, another promise Trudeau broke, along with his pledge to fix the National Energy Board’s review process.

If you think “despoil” is an “emotional” word, you are absolutely right! Water defenders such as the late, luminous Berta Cáceres of Honduras, assassinated in 2016, have given their lives for the sacredness of water. It is also a reasonable word because in such narrow passageways with so much diluted bitumen on more and more tankers, spills are inevitable and irreparable, because this substance cannot be cleaned up.

“No Blood for Bitumen!” seems the only thing left to tell our reckless prime minister.

Here in Hamilton, members of LeadNow, supporters of Hamilton 350 (focused on climate change/chaos), Hamilton Blue Dot (Suzuki Foundation), and my own group, the Council of Canadians Hamilton Chapter, all took to the streets to voice our determination that this expansion will not be completed and made operational. Trudeau must back down, however gracefully he chooses to do so, pretending it’s his own idea. We don’t even mind that!

What we do mind is that your reporters did not attend this Hamilton expression of a national event despite having been sent press releases for it. Our action was clearly local, since our ecosystems are also at risk from Enbridge pipeline expansion. You missed an opportunity to show those other protesters how meaningful protest can actually be if you put your mind and soul to it, not your kneejerk throwing arm. The ceremony where two devoted members of Hamilton’s environmental movement handed over two jars of water to Tassi’s staff member was touching in its simplicity: one jar was of clear water from Burrard Inlet in B.C., from the traditional territory of the Squamish First Nation and that of several other Indigenous nations near the narrow Strait of Juan de Fuca. The other jar of water came from Ancaster Creek near Tassi’s office, water also under local threat from Enbridge’s Line 10 pipeline expansion to transport heavy, cruddy, diluted bitumen across the farmland we all need and over precious aquifers and traditional and treaty land. As in B.C., the approval of Lines 9 and 10 expansions makes a mockery of the federal government’s pledge to undertake truth and reconciliation with the first peoples of this land.

So, we invite you to cover the whole community, not just the more sensational stories, by showing up next time. Regrettable as smashed windows are, the owners can fix them, while we can never mend water, birds or river otters coated in dilbit. Water is life! Protect it! Cover it!