Tar Sands Pipeline Protests Accelerate In Hamilton, Ontario Area

Posted January 18^th, 2016 on Niagara At Large

News from the Hamilton,Ontario-based Citizens At City Hall (CATCH)

In the few weeks since the Paris climate accord (this past December), there have been three pipeline occupations and there are promises of more civil disobedience as citizens, including Hamilton organizations, turn up the heat on the National Energy Board (NEB) and the fossil fuel sector it oversees.

A pipeline protest in Sarnia, Ontario area this past December resulted in arrests

Multiple groups including First Nations, the Council of Canadians, and 350.org are pushing the federal Liberals to implement their promised reform of the Board before the NEB makes further decisions on oil and bitumen pipelines.

The immediate focus is the controversial Kinder Morgan application to twin a pipeline from Alberta to Vancouver, but the promised reform of the NEB could also affect three Enbridge pipelines through Hamilton – Line 9 that was shut down twice by protests last month, Line 7 that was also briefly disrupted, and Line 10 whose expansion application is now before the NEB.

Both the City of Hamilton and local landowners have now written to the NEB about the latter indicating their concerns and intentions to participate in the expected 2016 hearing. Meanwhile last year’s Line 9 approval is facing a Supreme Court challenge by the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation – bolstered last week by a major First Nations victory in the BC Supreme Court.

Enbridge says Line 9 is now carrying oil from Sarnia to Montreal, but protests haven’t stopped, including a young woman’s 831 kilometre run along the length of the pipe during November and December. The Line was also manually shut down twice by opponents since its opening – once in Quebec near the Ontario border, and a second time just before Christmas outside of Sarnia.

There was another shut down near Cambridge of Line 7, a pipe that runs parallel to Line 9 between Sarnia and Hamilton. Each shutdown was carried out by activists easily accessing manual shutoff valves and then calling the company. The civil disobedience has won endorsement by dozens of citizen organizations including Environment Hamilton and the Hamilton chapter of Council of Canadians.

During the federal election campaign Prime Minister Trudeau promised to “modernize and rebuild trust in the NEB” and to include aboriginal voices and full consideration of climate change impacts in its decision-making process. Changing the NEB membership has been stymied by Stephen Harper who made pre-election appointments to the Board that block any change before 2020.

The NEB hearings on the Kinder Morgan pipeline are scheduled to re-open on January 19 to almost certain protests by First Nations, local residents and municipal governments. And the British Columbia government has now announced they can’t support the pipeline twinning project because of insufficient safety information.

They have been decried as fraudulent and an abuse of process by prominent British Columbia officials including the past presidents of the Insurance Corporation of BC and BC Hydro – the latter a former deputy minister of energy in seven provincial governments. Last week the Mayor of Burnaby called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to suspend the hearings.

“These hearings do not allow for meaningful public participation. They do not consider the devastating upstream and downstream impacts of Kinder Morgan’s industry-driven proposal,” Derek Corrigan said in a news release. “They are happening in the absence of any national energy strategy, and they do not allow for the environmental and social reviews that the new federal government has agreed are critical, and that they have committed to immediately introduce.”

Perhaps the most significant challenge to the NEB process came from the BC Supreme Court ruling last week that the BC government “breached the Honour of the Crown” by failing to consult with First Nations about the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal when it shifted provincial environmental assessment responsibility for that project to federal authorities. The BC government made the same agreement for the Kinder Morgan project.

“This is a huge victory and has major implications for Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion,” argues Sven Biggs of ForestEthics. “Clearly, the message is that the province can’t cede its decision-making powers and consultation of First Nations to the federal government.”

Civil disobedience has been threatened by the Canadian branch of 350.org if NEB reform doesn’t occur before the Kinder Morgan hearings start. This is the group that brought hundreds of people to Ottawa in November to illegally occupy the entrance to the Prime Minister’s house, although the federal government chose not to make any arrests.

They also organized the largest climate civil disobedience action in US history with over 1200 arrested outside the White House, and 350 in Germany last July led 1500 through police lines to shut down the Garzweiler open cast coal mine, Europe’s largest source of emissions.

CATCH (Citizens at City Hall) updates use transcripts and/or public documents to highlight information about Hamilton civic affairs that is not generally available in the mass media. Detailed reports of City Hall meetings can be reviewed at hamiltoncatch.org.

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