Federal Green leader Elizabeth May arrested for violating Kinder Morgan court injunction
Posted Mar 23, 2018 03:21:44 PM.
Last Updated Mar 23, 2018 03:49:58 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
BURNABY (NEWS 1130) – Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May and NDP MP Kennedy Stewart have been arrested on Burnaby Mountain for violating a BC Supreme Court order related to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
The two politicians stood just inches from the Kinder Morgan gates today, in defiance of the five-metre injunction.
About 20 minutes before her arrest, RCMP read the injunction to the pair and other activists.
Earlier in the day, May said she was prepared to be arrested to fight the pipeline.
“I was on a road, blockading logging on Clayoquot Sound in 1993. The RCMP came and read the injunction and I stepped aside. I don’t think I’ll step aside today.”
She added that she would not participate with anyone who is violent.
Stewart, who has not yet been arrested, says his constituents have been fighting the planned expansion for years.
“I feel I have no choice, at this point, but to do this to amplify the deep, deep opposition to this project that’s felt by my constituents.”
Stewart argues BC bears most of the risk from the pipeline but gets almost none of the benefits. “We won’t see a drop of this oil unless it spills out.”
“We have an existing pipeline that my constituents support because they’re not hypocrites and they know that’s the pipeline that supplies the oil and gas and the jet fuel, which we use every day,” he adds.
A lawyer for Trans Mountain, a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan Canada, told a judge at hearings on the injunction application that the protesters’ goal was to cause so much financial harm through delays that the company would be forced to abandon the $7.4-billion project, which has been approved by the National Energy Board and the federal government.
Protesters have set up tents, trailers and a wooden cabin outside Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby facility in the ongoing demonstrations.
So far, more than 80 people have been arrested for violating the injunction, which says they can’t go within five metres of the plant.
Most have been peaceful, but on Monday, three officers suffered minor injuries. One was apparently kicked in the head. The others suffered injuries to the knee and hand.
