ARRESTS ADD UP
A dozen more people facing charges in hopes of ramping up pressure on politicians
12 protesters detained Tuesday outside Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain facilities, bringing to 55 the number taken into custody since last week
A 17-year-old high school student, West Vancouver seniors and an environmental engineer who once worked for Trans Mountain stepped forward Tuesday to be arrested in opposition to expansion of the pipeline.
“This seemed like something I could do today because my heart is breaking,” said Andrea Miller of West Vancouver, a self-described lifelong environmentalist who volunteered to be arrested though she is recovering from a broken hip.
Twelve people stayed inside the five-metre no-go zone around Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline facilities on Burnaby Mountain to be arrested Tuesday. In total, 55 people have been detained for violating the injunction granted to the company March 15.
The injunction is supposed to bar protesters from blocking the gate at its tank farm, but the protest and arrests meant trucks were prevented from leaving or entering the site for about three hours.
Elsewhere Tuesday, a judge ordered Suntree Johnson Larue, a man who was arrested at Monday’s protest, to remain in jail until a contempt of court hearing in April.
Two others held in jail overnight opted to sign an undertaking agreeing to abide by the injunction and were released pending the hearing.
The judge warned the protesters that public defiance of a court injunction is a criminal offence, which if proven carries with it criminal sanctions, including fines and prison.
Back at the protest site, a spokeswoman for the protesters said “it isn’t our explicit goal to stop construction and construction hasn’t stopped.”
Amina Moustaqim-Barrette of Protect the Inlet, the umbrella name taken by the environmental and Indigenous groups involved in the protest, said they do want to stop the $7.4-billion project to triple the pipeline’s capacity, but the protests are designed to put political pres- sure on decision makers.
“Protests will continue with the goal of showing vocal opposition, no matter what politicians decide,” Moustaqim-Barrette said.
Protect the Inlet has promised daily protests, with the potential of arrests for those willing to violate the March 15 injunction, every day until at least March 26, the deadline for Kinder Morgan to finish clearing trees in the Burnaby Mountain construction zone before the return of migratory nesting birds.
On Tuesday, at least 60 protesters marched on Kinder Morgan’s gate from a nearby soccer field with the event billed as a day for students and youth to take part.
Moustaqim-Barrette said their protest days typically start at 8 a.m. with a two-hour briefing about their goals for peaceful protest, which includes legal advice.
Moustaqim-Barrette said it is up to individuals to decide what they are going to do, but “we have a volunteer legal clinic working with us to help participants know their rights and what they can expect for crossing into the injunction zone.”
Burnaby RCMP Cpl. Daniela Panesar said the police first have to receive a complaint that protesters are violating the injunction. Once they do, the detachment is obliged to enforce it.
Panesar said protesters are first given physical copies of the injunction before an officer reads the doc- ument out loud and gives them a reasonable amount of time to decide if they want to leave before arrests start.
Those arrested are processed on site and released on a promise to appear in court on a charge of contempt of court with conditions that include a promise not to violate the injunction again. Panesar said to date two people have been arrested again for violating the injunction.
On Tuesday, Van Tech Grade 12 student A-C Barrios-Stewart, 17, agreed to walk with police away from her spot zap-strapped to the Kinder Morgan gate before realizing she wasn’t under arrest.
Among protesters Tuesday was Romilly Cavanaugh, a 55-yearold environmental engineer who worked for Trans Mountain between 1991 and 1996 and admitted to being nervous standing and waiting for police.
“I’ve been a law-abiding citizen all my life, I’ve never been arrested, never taken part in civil disobedience,” said Cavanaugh, who was willing to if it helps bring attention to the cause.
“Having worked at Trans Mountain, I happen to know that if there is a spill into a river or the ocean, they’re only going to be able to recover 10 to 20 per cent of (it).”