BC’s newest political party calls for investigation of RCMP actions and halt to pipeline construction
By Contributor
The BC Ecosocialists are the first provincial political party to respond to the revelations published in The Guardian on Friday, alleging that the RCMP planned to deploy snipers and were prepared to use extreme tactics including child apprehension in a raid on the Indigenous land defenders who continue to oppose the gas pipeline across their territory.
“This international media report provides shocking evidence of the extent to which these heavily-subsidized fossil fuel mega-projects like LNG Canada put at risk the lands and lives of Indigenous people in BC,” said Geoff Berner, an executive member of the BC Ecosocialists.
The RCMP documents on which the Guardian report were based reportedly relate to the Jan. 7, 2019 raid on the Gidimt’en Access Point on Unist’ot’en territory.
“The BC Ecosocialists note the deafening silence from NDP Premier John Horgan in response to these revelations, and call for an investigation into RCMP tactics and a halt to all construction work on the pipeline. We cannot allow any Indigenous lives to be put at risk for the profits of big multinational corporations,” added Berner.
The proposed natural gas pipeline is to run from Summit Lake across northern BC to supply LNG export facilities in Kitimat. An estimated 80% of new oil and gas wells in Canada are fracked. Fracking has been banned in several countries, the most recent being Britain.
Berner commented further:
“The NDP government, kept in power by the Green Party of BC, has offered billions of dollars in subsidies to LNG Canada. It’s unconscionable that the B.C. government is offering massive subsidies to expand fracking and LNG.
“The BC Ecosocialists’ first act in the Legislature would be a complete ban on all fossil fuel subsidies in BC, consistent with the requirements outlined by global scientific consensus and demanded by climate justice movements if we are to seriously address the climate emergency.
“John Horgan and the NDP have chosen the wrong side on the most important issue in the world today. That’s a big reason why the Ecosocialists now exist and why we’ll be running candidates in the next BC election. Our province deserves elected members of the legislative assembly who will stand up against corporate colonialism like this pipeline and LNG Canada.”
