The federal NDP’s reconciliation critic says the justification used for the RCMP’s intervention of a blockade in northern British Columbia is “pretty lame” in the era of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.
Romeo Saganash joined demonstrators on Parliament Hill today before a group marched through downtown Ottawa streets with signs including a large red sign stating “RCMP Off Wet’suwet’en Land.”
READ MORE: RCMP arrest 14 people in northern B.C. over anti-LNG pipeline protest
The Mounties say they were enforcing the injunction from the B.C. Supreme Court in removing anyone who interferes with the Coastal GasLink project in and around the Morice River Bridge.
Members of the Gidimt’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation have set up a camp and a checkpoint southwest of Houston, B.C., on a forest-service road that leads to a pipeline construction site.
Coastal GasLink says it has signed agreements with all First Nations along the route but demonstrators say Wet’suwet’en house chiefs, who are hereditary rather than elected, have not given consent.
Saganash says he did not hear back from the provincial and federal Indigenous affairs ministers that he asked to help alleviate tension in northern B.C. prior to the arrests by the Mounties.
The Canadian Press