SITE C RALLY CANCELLED AFTER DEADLY POLICE SHOOTING
Organizers have cancelled a rally opposing the Site C dam in the wake of a deadly police shooting outside a B.C. Hydro open house in Dawson Creek on the $9-billion Peace River hydroelectric project.
A Save the Peace rally, originally set for Thursday outside B.C. Hydro’s head office in downtown Vancouver, has been cancelled over security concerns, said Ana Simeon, Peace Valley campaigner for the Sierra Club B.C., one of the organizers of the event.
“We just do not know enough about what happened in Dawson Creek,” Simeon said, referring to an incident last Thursday when a masked James Daniel McIntyre, 48, was shot and killed by RCMP outside a Site C information session.
The online “hacktivist” network Anonymous released a statement describing McIntyre as “our fallen comrade” and vowing “justice.”
Simeon said: “We are concerned. We want to keep people safe, so we cancelled the rally ... It’s really unfortunate that people’s freedom of expression in peaceful and lawabiding ways is now being curtailed because of the threat of violence from these fringe groups.”
B.C. Hydro declined to answer questions Monday about the possible start date of construction for Site C, but a Hydro announcement earlier this year said construction “is planned to start in summer 2015.”
Simeon said she heard the project could break ground as soon as next week, adding: “They’re itching to have shovels in the ground this summer.”
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said: “I’m disappointed the rally isn’t going to go forward ... But this is going to be a very long, bitter and protracted campaign.”
In a message posted to Twitter about the rally cancellation, UBCIC vice-president Chief Bob Chamberlin mentioned “potential violence planned by ‘others.’ ”
Earlier this month, the B.C. government approved the first phase of Site C construction, despite pending lawsuits against the project, a move Phillip described Monday as “throwing down the gauntlet.”
One legal challenge against Site C is to be heard in federal court in Vancouver this week, Simeon said.
Despite vocal opposition from some groups, Stewart Muir, executive director of Resource Works, a resource industry think-tank, said that based on polling data he believes Site C has “pretty broad public support, and growing support at that.”
“I’m wary of commenting on any of the circumstances (surrounding last week’s shooting),” Muir said.
“But I think it may show us the need for an emphasis on respect and maintaining the open society we have, because if public processes of any kind are closed off because there are fears about safety, that is a loss for everybody involved.”