Green Party leader, NDP MP both arrested at pipeline protest in B.C.
May vows to ‘stand in solidarity with the First Nations’ against Trans Mountain project
BURNABY, B.C. — Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and a New Democrat MP were arrested Friday at a protest against Kinder Morgan’s expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline as demonstrations spread across the country.
May and New Democrat MP Kennedy Stewart were processed by RCMP officers inside a tent at the Trans Mountain pipeline terminal in Burnaby, B.C.
The two MPs acknowledged they risked arrest after the B.C. Supreme Court placed limits on where demonstrators could protest in an injunction issued last week.
As she was led away by police, May said the permits issued for the project to proceed did not respect the rights of Indigenous people on their territory.
“The commitment to build a pipeline in 2018 when we are in climate crisis is a crime against future generations and I will not be part of it,” she said.
After she was released by police, May said she has been charged with civil contempt for blocking a road, which is not a criminal charge. She said she must appear back in court on June 14.
In a news release, May said she respects the country’s courts.
“I will continue to stand in solidarity with the First Nations on whose land these acts of vandalism are now being committed. Non-violent civil disobedience is the moral obligation of the climate-aware, responsible citizen.”
Protest organizers said earlier Friday almost 100 people were taken into custody since demonstrations in Burnaby began.
The injunction prohibits activists from getting within five metres of Kinder Morgan’s two terminal sites on Burnaby Mountain where work related to the pipeline expansion is underway.
The expansion project will triple the capacity of the pipeline to nearly 900,000 barrels from 300,000.
Before his arrest, Stewart said he was supporting his constituents in Burnaby South knowing the legal implications he faced.
“I feel I have no choice at this point but to do this to amplify the deep, deep opposition to this project that is felt by my constituents,” he said.
“It’s a combination of the disastrous potential of this project, but also betrayal around how it was approved that is moving many of my constituents to take the actions that they are.”
A lawyer for Trans Mountain, a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan Canada, told a judge at hearings on the injunction application that the protesters’ goal was to cause so much financial harm through delays that the company would be forced to abandon the $7.4-billion project, which has been approved by the National Energy Board and federal government.