Read this story from the Toronto Star discussing the results of a recent freedom-of-information search which revealed special RCMP units have been spying on First Nations in BC who are organizing against the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline through their "unceded territory". (May 9, 2012)

The RCMP has been spying on a group of British Columbia First Nations whose vocal opposition to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline has taken them to the company’s annual shareholders meeting in Toronto, according to documents obtained through an access-to-information request.

The documents show that a provincial RCMP unit has been closely tracking the potential for “acts of protest and civil disobedience” by the Yinka Dene Alliance, a coalition of northern B.C. First Nations who have been at the centre of resistance to Enbridge’s $5.5 billion pipeline proposal.

Their territory covers a quarter of the route of the pipeline, which would carry more than 500,000 barrels of oilsands crude from Alberta through pristine territory to Kitimat, B.C., for export by supertanker to Asia and other markets.

The revelations add ammunition to critics who have charged that the Harper government is waging a campaign to demonize legitimate opponents of resource developments like the Northern Gateway, by labelling them as radicals or including them in Canada’s “counter-terrorism” strategy.

Saik’uz First Nation Chief Jackie Thomas, a member of the Yinka Dene Alliance who made a cross-country trip on the “Freedom Train” to protest in Toronto against the pipeline on Wednesday, said she has had suspicions for some time about RCMP surveillance.

“We’ve always been peaceful, but this is how they try to paint us as the enemy,” said Thomas, a grandmother and mother of four concerned that an oil spill could destroy the lands she hunts and fishes on with many of her community members.

“The federal government seems to be using all its arms to push through this project against the will of anyone who opposes it, but we won’t be deterred. It is not a crime to defend our land and waters from a tarsands pipeline and to make the future safe for our grandkids.”

According to the documents, the RCMP unit gathered intelligence from unspecified “industry reports,” newspapers and websites, and Facebook and Flickr photo accounts.

They also appear to have monitored private meetings, including one between First Nations and environmental organizations held in Fraser Lake, B.C., at the end of November, which Thomas says was not announced publicly.

The meeting’s purpose was “to strengthen the alliance between First Nations and environmental groups opposing Enbridge,” an intelligence report from December states.

Enbridge declined to comment about whether it has been exchanging information with the RCMP.

The monthly intelligence reports note that the oil company “will experience increasingly intense protest activity due to the environmental sensitivity of the Northern Gateway path, combined with the fact that the territory has never been ceded to the Crown by First Nations in B.C.”

The pipeline would cross more than 700 rivers and streams, whose abundance of fish has spawned an economy integral to the region, and three vital watersheds: the Mackenzie, the Fraser and the Skeena.

More than 100 First Nations have banned an Enbridge pipeline from their territories, declaring “we will not allow our fish, animals, plants, people and ways of life to be placed at risk.”

An intelligence report notes that the Yinka Dene Alliance will show an “increasing propensity and likelihood of utilizing blockades and confrontation to deter industry from accessing disputed territory.”

With opposition growing among the B.C. population, including NDP leader Adrian Dix, likely the next premier, Enbridge will face an uphill battle to build the pipeline.

As previously reported in the Star, a national RCMP surveillance program monitoring First Nations that ran between 2007 and 2010 shared similar intelligence reports about First Nations with the private sector, including energy companies.

Read full article: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1175824--rcmp-spied-on-b-c-natives-protesting-pipeline-plan-documents-show

Read this column from the Vancouver Sun's Stephen Hume on a respected analyst's Robyn Allan's warning that BC has surrendered its provincial sovereignty with regards to the review process on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline. (April 20, 2012)

Hearings assessing the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project and legislative changes planned in Ottawa compromise the province’s sovereignty and threaten its authority to defend British Columbians’ interests, warns a letter from Robyn Allan, the former president of ICBC, to Premier Christy Clark and other leading provincial politicians.

The planned pipeline would carry 190 million barrels of diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands to Kitimat each year. Tankers the size of three football fields would then move the bitumen through the Inside Passage to upgraders in China. Another proposed pipeline expansion by Kinder Morgan would more than triple capacity to move oil from Alberta to a tanker terminal in Burnaby from 100 million to more than 300 million barrels per year.

Potential environmental risks, first nations issues and municipal government objections have been a major source of controversy in both the public and political discussion of the Northern Gateway project. Clark has said the province won’t take a position until the environmental assessment and economic review process are complete. The mayors of Burnaby and Vancouver have both vowed opposition to the Kinder Morgan proposal.

Allan, an economist who has been analyzing the Enbridge proposal, says that an agreement quietly signed by the provincial government under former premier Gordon Campbell on June 21, 2010, relinquished the province’s right to its own environmental assessment process for major resource projects and instead accepted the federal NEB’s findings as an equivalent.

The assessment now underway combines the NEB review and the federal ministry of environment’s review under what’s known as the Joint Review Panel.

Allan says the B.C. government made its equivalency agreement in the belief that the NEB review would provide a neutral, objective, arm’s length assessment.

But since then, she says, the process has been compromised, the federal government has unilaterally moved to change the rules and B.C.’s sovereignty is now threatened with subordination to the interests of Alberta and Ottawa while input from provincial departments has effectively been muzzled.

“The federal government, as I am sure you are aware, has publicly endorsed the project, stated it is in the national interest of Canada, and has systematically demonized individuals and groups who oppose the project,” Allan writes. “This behaviour has made a travesty of the necessary arm’s length relationship between government and an independent regulatory body.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Hume+surrendered+sovereignty+pipeline+hearings+analyst+warns/6495354/story.html#ixzz1sjW3PcVf

From the Guardian - Jan 19, 2011

by Paul Lewis and Rob Evans

Senior officers say undercover operations need independent regulation as criticism mounts over the Mark Kennedy case

Police chiefs admitted today that their infiltration of undercover police officers into protest groups had gone "badly wrong" and called for independent regulation of spying operations.

Amid mounting criticism of police over the handling of the Mark Kennedy case, Jon Murphy, who speaks on the issue for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), also insisted that undercover officers were forbidden from sleeping with activists to gather information.

Three official inquiries have been launched into Kennedy's seven-year infiltration of the environmental movement after a criminal trial collapsed last week. The row has also led to Acpo being stripped of its power to run undercover police units.

Murphy told the Guardian: "Something has gone badly wrong here. We would not be where we are if it had not."

He said senior police officers would welcome an outside body monitoring their use of undercover police officers. "We are left to regulate it ourselves, and we think we do a good job of it," he said. But he acknowledged: "Sometimes things go wrong. It is a volatile area of police work."

Read full article