Amnesty International, a global human rights advocacy group, recently published a report critiquing the Canadian government’s oversight of interactions between law enforcement agencies and indigenous Wet’suwet’en protestors engaged in demonstrating against the Coastal GasLink pipeline project.
In their report, Amnesty alleges that the Canadian government, through the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and a private security firm named Forsythe Security, consistently intimidated, harassed, and conducted unwarranted surveillance on Wet’suwet’en activists. These activists predominantly live in the vicinity of the pipeline’s planned route in British Columbia.
From 2019 to 2023, the report claims the RCMP arbitrarily arrested and detained 75 Wet’suwet’en protestors and their allies on four distinct occasions. Their justification for these arrests was to enforce a 2019 ruling from the British Columbia Supreme Court that barred protestors from blocking access routes designated for transporting pipeline construction materials. In 2022, 20 protestors were charged by the BC Prosecution Service for violating this 2019 injunction, despite the protest locations being on Wet’suwet’en territory.
Contributing to this fraught situation, the RCMP responded to these allegations, stating “these protests have been neither peaceful, as evidenced by videos, nor lawful.” Coastal Gaslink has also refuted Amnesty’s claims in a statement published in the report.
Instances of discord between indigenous communities and the Canadian federal government over decisions related to gas extraction and pipeline construction are not novel. In 2022, the UN Committee to End All Forms of Racial Discrimination alleged instances of intimidation and harassment of the Secwepemc and Wet’suwet’en during protests against the Coastal GasLink Pipeline and the Trans Mountain Pipeline. Details of this are available in a letter released by the committee. Furthermore, The Guardian published an exclusive report in 2019 revealing evidence that the RCMP was prepared to use force to counter Wet’suwet’en protests against the Coastal GasLink Pipeline.
Canada is currently, according to the US Energy Information Administration, the fourth largest producer of oil on a global scale and the primary source of crude oil imports to the US, which is one of the largest oil markets worldwide. Canada currently produces approximately 4.8 million barrels of crude oil each day, a figure expected to grow. This growth underscores the centrality of these concerns, given the potential for escalating infringement on indigenous lands and rights.