On November 12, 1971, Helen Betty Osborne was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered in the Pas, Northern Manitoba. On August 2014, we learned about the brutal murder of 15 year old Tina Fontaine in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Within the 43 year time span between the two murders, hundreds of Indigenous women have continued to go missing or have been murdered in every region across Canada.
Since 1996, when the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was released, over 40 reports have been delivered to the federal government calling for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women.
In August 2014, the premiers of Canada also called for an inquiry with the chairman of the group of premiers stating there are two possible routes to getting a national public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women: Prime Minister Stephen Harper changes his mind and calls one — or he is defeated in the 2015 federal election.
The Harper government consistently refuses to address the issue saying it is, “Not high on the government’s radar.”
With no end to the violence in sight, Harper’s refusal to act equals an act of violence against Indigenous women because it works to perpetuate the current status quo, which is unacceptable.
Saturday, February 14, 2015 marked the 25th Annual Memorial Walk for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada. Outrage and sadness will continue to spurred across the country as Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and organizations at national, provincial and international levels called once again for a public inquiry that includes meaningful engagement with leadership from the families of the victims as well as Indigenous communities and political organizations.
Last week political leaders from First Nations across Ontario joined together to begin their own inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women at a three-day gathering in Thunder Bay. “The federal government refuses to acknowledge the need for a national inquiry and we will not sit and wait any more,” said Deputy Grand Chief Denise Stonefish of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians.
However the Canadian public must still engage and contribute solutions to this systemic issue.
Visit the Native Women’s Association of Canada to find out where to join our sisters and show the Harper government that Canadians take this issue seriously and could soon bring his government down over it.
Here’s a list of some of the most recent reports calling for the Canadian public to address the issue.
The IACHR report focuses on British Columbia and recommends movement to address violence against women and support for the creation of a national-level action plan or nation-wide inquiry into the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Following the murder of Inuit university student Loretta Saunders, LEAF published two documents which list and synthesize 40 reports for MMIW advocates.
The Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women issues a report called ‘Invisible women: A Call to Action — ACAT Canada’, concludes by saying “the families will have to wait until the government changes to get the National Public Enquiry and National Action Plan”
United Nations Report — Crisis in Canada following a visit to Canada from October 7-11, 2013 by James Anaya, Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples in Canada. The document highlights least 29 official inquires with 500 recommendations for action have been put forward since 1996.
Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres (OFIFC) response to Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Operations Report slams the November 2013 document. The OFIFC outlines inconsistencies and calls on the RCMP to provide concrete actions to address the high rates of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada.
Over ten years after Stolen sisters was issued, the RCMP responds to missing and murdered Indigenous women. Brought us to a shocking total of 1100+ cases. Presently, the document is the most cited report used by media.
Coordinating Committee of Senior Officials (Criminal): Missing Women Working Group established in February 2006. Focuses between 2006 and 2010 confirming factors under which Aboriginal women became victims of violence and issues recommendations to reduce these factors.
The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry issues a report entitled ‘Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry Executive Summary’ a four volume response to British Columbia’s Missing and Murdered women in the wake of the Robert Pickton case.
Amnesty International Report entitled ‘Stolen sisters — A human rights response to Discrimination and Violence against Aboriginal women in Canada’ documents the stories of missing and murdered women over 30 years. The culmination of many inquiries (starting as far back as 1971), the report called for “Canadian officials to ensure the rights and safety of Aboriginal people are respected and upheld by police and courts.” SOURCE
Life is hard for children living on First Nations reserves, where poverty, poor water quality, teen suicide, and substandard housing are all too common.
As if that weren’t bad enough, First Nations children must also fight for access to health and social services that non-indigenous Canadian families take for granted.
According to UNICEF Canada, when it comes to accessing health and social services, “jurisdictional disputes between levels of government involving First Nations children are common, affecting hundreds of children every year.”
Too often, government bureaucrats seem more concerned with determining which level of government should pay for First Nations health and social services than with helping vulnerable kids in need. And intra-governmental squabbles that pit departments against one another also cause unacceptable delays.
Jordan’s Principle
On Dec. 12, 2007, the House of Commons unanimously passed the Jordan’s Principle motion, which UNICEF Canada concisely describes as “a child-first principle to resolve intergovernmental disputes affecting the lives of First Nations children.”
The historic motion endorsed the idea that meeting the health needs of indigenous children should be a top priority. And Parliament made it clear that the issue of which level of government should pay for health services should not impede the delivery of those services.
Unfortunately, much more work still needs to be done on this file. Last week, a bracing report was published, laying bare the social inequities that continue to deprive First Nations children of timely care and assistance.
The document represents the culmination of the efforts of the Jordan’s Principle Working Group, “a collaboration between the Assembly of First Nations, the Canadian Paediatric Society, UNICEF Canada, and a team of researchers based at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Manitoba.”
Jordan’s Principle is named in honour of Jordan Rivers Anderson, a First Nations child born with severe health problems who died at the age of five. Jordan, who was a member of the Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba, lived his entire life in hospital.
Jordan “encountered tragic delays in services due to governmental jurisdictional disputes that denied him an opportunity to live outside of a hospital setting before his death in 2005,” the report stated. The document is entitled “Without denial, delay or disruption: Ensuring First Nations children’s access to equitable services through Jordan’s Principle.”
“If he hadn’t been an on-reserve First Nations child, he would’ve gone home,” said David Morley, president of UNICEF Canada, in a telephone interview. “That’s what so frustrating.”
According to Morley, many First Nations children have health issues, “and then they get caught in a system where they can’t get the services that every other Canadian child would get, because governments are squabbling.”
“Bureaucratic squabbling has meant the wishes of Parliament, and I like to think of all Canadians, that all Canadian children should have equitable access to services have not been met,” Morley declared.
The gaps in access to health-related services for First Nations kids are shocking. For example, the report cited a funding dispute over a wheelchair for a paraplegic child. Health Canada refused to provide the funds to purchase the assistive device, so the First Nations child welfare agency involved in the case “deemed that fundraising was the only feasible option to provide the child with what he required.”
Given the systemic gaps facing First Nations children, the appalling conditions on many reserves and the myriad of other problems, we have to ask, why is this so? Is systemic racism part of the problem?
“I think we have to look at that and consider that,” Morley said thoughtfully. “Why is it so systemic? Why is it this one particular group that seems to be having a harder time than everybody else?”
Morley is no radical and understands that Canadians are people of goodwill. “I don’t mean that you, or me, or we, are overtly racist,” he said. “But there is something in the system that clearly isn’t working.”
The UNICEF-sponsored report contends that there’s “growing recognition that the governmental response to Jordan’s Principle does not reflect the vision advanced by First Nations and endorsed by the House of Commons.”
In addition, the Assembly of First Nations has condemned “the narrow operational definition of Jordan’s Principle adopted by the federal government.”
However, the federal government has a different take on the situation.
“Our government is committed to the health and safety of all Canadians, including First Nations children,” stated a spokesperson for Bernard Valcourt, minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.
“While there are currently no outstanding jurisdictional disputes involving Jordan’s Principle in Canada, we believe that the best way to ensure First Nation children and families get the support they need is by working with willing partners and continue engaging with provinces, territories and First Nations to collaborate on implementing Jordan’s Principle,” Emily Hillstrom wrote in an email statement.
“We have reached agreements to implement Jordan’s Principle with four provinces — Manitoba (2012), Saskatchewan (2009), British Columbia (2011) and New Brunswick (2011),” Hillstrom said on behalf of Valcourt.
“These arrangements outline commitments to developing dispute avoidance processes to ensure continuity of care for children with multiple disabilities.” As for the provinces not covered by these deals, Hillstrom said they “already have mechanisms in place to implement Jordan’s Principle.”
According to the Aboriginal Affairs spokesperson, the federal government “also provides over $2.5 billion every year towards programs and services for aboriginal health; this includes initiatives such as 24/7 access to essential nursing services in 80 remote communities and home and community care in 500 First Nations and Inuit communities.”
Report of the Auditor General
Jordan’s Principle focuses on health issues. But there are a myriad of other problems that are inextricably linked to First Nations health problems. And they merit discussion.
Living conditions on First Nations reserves are not good. Over the years, the auditor general of Canada has highlighted the many problems on reserves, including unsafe drinking water, high school dropout rates and inequitable access to social services.
The new report’s sponsors — AFN, the Canadian Paediatric Society, and UNICEF Canada — recommend that the senior levels of government immediately clarify jurisdictional responsibilities and eliminate “the underfunding identified in individual cases.” By doing so, governments could “prevent denials, delays and disruptions in services for other children in similar circumstances.”
However, with the 2015 federal election campaign unofficially underway, it seems unlikely that intergovernmental negotiations on First Nations health will be undertaken anytime soon.
Nevertheless, UNICEF Canada’s David Morley remains optimistic. He believes that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s historic apology, delivered in Parliament on behalf of Canada for the harm caused by the residential schools policy, is one reason for optimism.
Another is the work done by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the devastating legacy of residential schools. Morley said that the commission has demonstrated Canada’s goodwill and willingness to move forward on righting historic wrongs.
“I think there’s a recognition that things need to be better and that we are all responsible,” Morley said.
The Assembly of First Nations did not respond to a request for comment.
Follow Geoffrey P. Johnston on Twitter @GeoffyPJohnston.
A national roundtable on missing and murdered indigenous women ended with a commitment by federal, provincial and aboriginal leaders to keep talking.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne says Friday’s discussion on missing and murdered indigenous women was ‘powerful’ and ‘productive.’ Politicians and First Nations leaders have agreed to meet again before the end of 2016.
By Joanna Smith, reposted from the Toronto Star, Feb 27, 2015
OTTAWA—Premier Kathleen Wynne says more could have been done at the national roundtable on missing and murdered aboriginal women, and suggests the Conservative government stood in the way of more concrete action.
“There is more that we can do and I feel impatient, because I think we know what those things are and I think we need to push ourselves very hard, in the coming months, to make sure that we live up to our own expectations and we can hold each other accountable,” Wynne told reporters at the end of the one-day gathering in Ottawa of provincial, territorial and federal politicians, aboriginal leaders and families of victims.
The framework that came out of the meeting — a commitment to dialogue and action on prevention and awareness, community safety and policing and the justice system — is primarily an agreement to keep talking.
There will be a nationwide prevention and awareness campaign, a national task force to share best practices on policing and justice and another roundtable by the end of 2016 to assess their progress.
Dawn Harvard, the interim president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, said there is only one way she will be measuring their success.
“I hope and pray that the rates will go down — that I won’t be opening my newspapers every morning to find yet another young woman who has been taken from us. That will be the sign. That is the measurable outcome that we will see as progress,” Harvard said Friday at the news conference.
AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde speaks at a news conference in Ottawa on Friday following the national roundtable on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS.
Wynne pointed to 10 proposals Ontario brought to the table to address the problem that has seen nearly 1,200 aboriginal women and girls missing or murdered in the past three decades, according to the RCMP.
That included a plan to reduce the number of aboriginal children in foster care, a socio-economic action plan for aboriginal women and girls, and greater financial support for First Nations policing.
When asked what got in the way, Wynne pointedly referred to the absence of federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt and Status of Women Minister Kellie Leitch, who had attended the roundtable but held their own news conference at another hotel across the street in downtown Ottawa.
“The fact is that the provinces and territories and aboriginal organizations across the country are working very hard on these issues. We have joined together . . . . We are on the same page. We are working now to find a partner in the federal government,” Wynne said.
Leitch said the federal government did not attend the closing press conference with aboriginal groups out of “respect” for the families of missing and murdered women.
“I am quite confident that if we stood at a podium, you would only ask us questions,” Leitch told reporters Friday evening.
“We have been asked numerous questions here today. I think it’s extremely important that Canadians hear from these families, that Canadians hear what travesties they’ve experienced and what their needs are.”
Leitch also reiterated the Conservative government’s opposition to a national inquiry into the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women, and, in a statement, said conversations she had over the course of the two-day meeting moved her to action.
When pressed on what new action the government was taking on the issue, however, Leitch admitted she was referring to the $25-million action plan the Conservatives unveiled last September and that it remains unchanged by what transpired at the national roundtable.
“Our action plan is put into place as of April 1, 2015, and so that is what we will be doing,” Leitch said.
“It’s an action plan that we developed working with families.”
There was cautious optimism from aboriginal representatives around the table.
“It is a start. It’s not the inquiry, so we’ll keep pushing for that, but it’s an action plan,” said National Chief Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations.
There had been frustration and disappointment expressed by family members who were excluded from the roundtable, but Judy Maas, who was selected to attend the roundtable, said those at the meeting “spoke loud and clear.”
“We are hopeful. We always are and I think just by the fact that we are here, we still have our hand out to say we still are in this relationship together and we will walk into this together,” said Maas, whose sister, Cynthia Maas, was murdered in 2010 in Prince George, B.C.
Native women are twice as likely to suffer domestic abuse, and have shorter life expectancy. Recommendations 20 years ago have done little to change that.
Political and community leaders came together in Ottawa on Friday to discuss the high number of murders and disappearances of aboriginal women in Canada.
Here’s why it matters:
1. Between 1980 and 2012, 1,181 aboriginal women have vanished or have been murdered.
2. In 1996, a five-volume, 4,000-page Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples — after 178 days of hearings and 350 research studies — made 440 recommendations to improve social, education, health and housing needs for aboriginal people. A review 10 years later found little change.
3. Because convicted serial killers such as Robert Pickton in B.C. and John Crawford in Saskatchewan were able to exploit police and media indifference to kill innocent women.
4. Bella Laboucan-McLean, a 25-year-old fashion student of aboriginal heritage, fell 31 storeys from a Toronto condo, and no one who was with her that night reported seeing it happen. Her death remains a mystery.
5. There are more than 700,000 aboriginal women in Canada. According to Statistics Canada:
Aboriginal women are twice as likely as the average Canadian woman to be victims of spousal violence.
They are half as likely to have a university degree.
About 30 per cent of all aboriginal women live below the poverty line.
Aboriginal women live an average five years fewer than non-aboriginal women.
The energy industry is now firmly hitched to the national security state.
In this August 2013 photo, activists protest against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington, urging “to maintain pressure on (President Barack Obama) to keep his promise to fight climate change by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline.” This week, opponents of Canadian oil say they’ve been contacted by FBI investigators in several states following their involvement in protests that delayed northbound shipments of equipment to Canada’s oilsands.
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In August 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit distributedan intelligence bulletin to all field offices warning that environmental extremism would likely become an increasing threat to the energy industry. The eight-page document argued that, even though the industry had encountered only low-level vandalism and trespassing, recent “criminal incidents” suggested that environmental extremism was on the rise. The FBI concluded: “Environmental extremism will become a greater threat to the energy industry owing to our historical understanding that some environmental extremists have progressed from committing low-level crimes against targets to more significant crimes over time in an effort to further the environmental extremism cause.”
original photo John Duffy
Not long after the bulletin was distributed, a private security firm providing intelligence reports to the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security cited the FBI document in order to justify the surveillance of anti-fracking groups. The same security firm concluded that the “escalating conflict over natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania” could lead to an increase in “environmentalist activity or eco-terrorism.”
Since the 2010 FBI assessment was written, the specter of environmental extremism has been trotted out by both law enforcement and energy-industry security teams to describe a wide variety of grassroots groups opposed to the continued extraction of fossil fuels. In 2011, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP ) published a report titled, “Environmental Criminal Extremism and Canada’s Energy Sector.” The RCMP warned that environmental extremism posed a “clear and present criminal threat” to the energy industry. While both the FBI and RCMP reports make an effort to distinguish between lawful protest and criminal activity, they often conflate the two – in the RCMP report the terms “violence” and “direct action” are used interchangeably – and suggest opposition to the energy industry will lead to extremism. (The FBI’s Counterterrorism Division declined to answer questions about the 2010 bulletin.)
Yet even as the resistance to “extreme energy projects” has grown in size and scope, there is little evidence to support the breathless warnings about “eco-terrorism.” There has been no upward spiral in criminality among environmental activists. To the contrary, arson, property destruction, and other acts of violence most closely associated with the radical animal rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s have become all but nonexistent. According to figures compiled by the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) at the University of Maryland, there has been only a handful of incidents defined as eco-terrorism since 2010. In fact, between 2010 and 2013, the latest year for which the GTD has published figures, out of a total of 54 terror incidents in the United States, five were attributed to the Animal Liberation Front. The last recorded incident carried out by the Earth Liberation Front – the bulldozing of two radio transmission towers in Washington – was in 2009. Earth First! hasn’t appeared in the database since 1994.
From the RCMP report
Instead, environmentalists have largely relied on classic social change strategies such as choreographed nonviolent civil disobedience, carefully planned protests, and divestment from the fossil fuel industry. “Overall we’ve seen a decline in activity, in terms of violent criminal activity” among environmentalists, an FBI intelligence analyst told The Washington Post in 2012.
Nevertheless, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and many state law enforcement agencies continue to promote the idea that environmental extremism is on the rise. The oil and gas industry is spending more on security than it ever has. According to a 2013 report by Frost & Sullivan, a marketing research and consulting company, annual spending on global oil and gas infrastructure security is expected to top $30 billion in just a few years. (In comparison, $30 billion is roughly what South Korea spends on defense annually.) “Surveillance will continue to dominate the oil and gas infrastructure security market,” a summary of the report states.
At the same time, numerous intelligence-sharing networks between the private sector and law enforcement have been established at every level of government, giving rise to an unprecedented energy-intelligence complex. They range from project-specific and regional networks like the Nebraska Information Analysis Center’s Keystone Pipeline Portal community and the Marcellus Shale Operators’ Crime Committee, to federal programs like the FBI’s Oil and Natural Gas Crime Issues Special Interest Group and the Department of Homeland Security’s Oil and Natural Gas Sector Coordinating Council. These public-private partnerships, coupled with a revolving door between intelligence agencies and the more lucrative energy industry, have created a new kind of foe for the environmental movement. The fossil fuel industry is now an economic behemoth firmly hitched to the national security state.
It is true that environmentalists pose a threat to the energy industry – just not in the way the FBI or RCMP believe. The threat to the industry is existential and economic, not extremist. If the movement to end our reliance on fossil fuels prevails, the oil and gas industry will lose trillions of dollars in forecast profits. According to an estimate by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, if we hope to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, the energy sector would have to leave more than $20 trillion worth of fossil fuels in the ground. “The oil and gas industry is doing everything they can to ensure they’re in business for the next 30 to 50 years and doing so at a time when we should be, as a nation, collectively figuring out how to stop using those same fossil fuels over the next ten years,” says Wes Gillingham, program director of Catskill Mountainkeeper.
Conflict between fossil fuel interests and environmentalists is inevitable. But as the contest becomes ever more stark, there seems to be little effort to distinguish between lawful political activism and illegal activities. The fossil fuel industry’s reasonable concerns about the strength of its political opponents have morphed into a kind of paranoia, one that threatens to criminalize constitutionally protected dissent.
In the years since the FBI and RCMP reports, unconventional oil and gas development has been met with sustained protest, from small scale tree sits and encampments to massive nationwide demonstrations. The opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline is only the most high-profile example of resistance to the fossil fuel industry. The term “Blockadia” has been used to describe the loose network of citizens seeking to disrupt the continued exploitation of fossil fuels. Tactics vary depending on the region and political backdrop, but the emphasis has been on nonviolent civil disobedience, legal action, and ballot measures to hamper pipeline projects, ban fracking, and prevent or slow down tar sands extraction. A handful of pipeline projects – including Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain and Williams Companies’ Constitution pipelines – have been stymied. In mid-December, after several years of intense organizing, lobbying, and direct action campaigns, New York became the first state with substantial shale gas reserves to ban fracking. Towns in Colorado, Texas, and Ohio have passed restrictions that limit oil and gas drilling.
Such successes have emboldened these groups and inspired action elsewhere. (Of course it should be noted that oil and gas development has hardly been halted; it continues apace throughout North America.) Rather than lead to an increase in criminal activity, as the FBI predicted, opposition to the oil and gas industry has, in some ways, become more mainstream. “Five years ago you would have never seen the faces of rural farmers and ranchers and tribal leaders on the front lines of climate actions,” says Jane Kleeb, director of Bold Nebraska, an environmental group opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline. “This unlikely Cowboy and Indian Alliance that is also working shoulder to shoulder with big green groups is changing the way America looks at the issue of land, water, and climate change.”
But the new face of the environmental movement seems not to have registered with an industry intent on steamrolling its critics. In 2011, in comments that have been widely cited, a spokesman for Anadarko Petroleum described the anti-fracking movement as an “insurgency” and suggested that industry insiders download the US Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual as a guide to dealing with it. Less well known is the fact that Anadarko has built up a team of former intelligence operatives to combat what it views as an insurrection. The company’s southwest regional security manager was an officer with the Drug Enforcement Administration, where he was involved in undercover work. Another Anadarko security manager, LC Wilson, was regional commander of the Texas Department of Public Safety from 2009 to 2011 and oversaw law enforcement statewide. Anadarko has also been involved in the creation of at least two Oilfield Crime Committees, one in Texas and one in Pennsylvania, both of which are headed by former law enforcement officials. The South Texas Oilfield Crime Committee and the Marcellus Shale Operators’ Crime Committee have gathered intelligence on environmental activists and routinely exchange information with law enforcement.
Anadarko is not alone. Most large energy companies have security teams run by former FBI, Secret Service, or law enforcement personnel. The director of corporate security at Devon Energy, for example, was a special agent with the Secret Service for 14 years. Chevron’s chief security officer was the former head of the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service. And BP’s head of Government and Political Affairs from 2007 to 2012 worked for MI6, Britain’s top spy agency.
In most cases these security teams have been deployed to manage crises overseas. In Indonesia, for example, ExxonMobil ran its own intelligence operations and consulted regularly with the country’s military leaders as it sought to protect its assets amid destabilizing political conditions. In 2012 The Guardian reported that Shell Oil maintained a 1,200-person police force plus a network of undercover informants in Nigeria and spent tens of millions of dollars on security in the region.
original photo Stephen Melkisethian
As shale oil and gas development has expanded in North America, the frontlines of the energy wars are no longer overseas, but rather in places like Nebraska, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Range Resources, one of the largest drillers in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, has admitted to hiring veterans of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with experience in psychological warfare – or Psyops – to engage with local communities.
Neither Anadarko nor ExxonMobil nor Range Resources responded to requests for comment.
Even as the energy industry has beefed up its own in-house intelligence operations, it has established increasingly close ties with law enforcement agencies. This is partly a result of the post-9/11 national security state and the premium placed on information sharing. The Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC), established by the Department of Homeland Security in 2006, holds quarterly meetings to facilitate information sharing between the private sector and government agencies. (Meetings are exempt from the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which means there is no public oversight. Indeed, the Critical Infrastructure Information Act of 2002 stipulates that information voluntarily submitted by industry to the DHS or DOE is protected from public disclosure.) Within CIPAC there is an Oil and Natural Gas Sector Coordinating Council and an Energy Government Coordinating Council. According to minutes from an August 2013 CIPAC meeting, the DHS has been working to provide more security clearances to the energy industry. “Currently DHS is working to enhance policies to share more classified information both cyber and non-cyber related,” the document states. Anadarko, Kinder Morgan, ExxonMobil, and the American Petroleum Institute are frequent participants and sponsors of CIPAC meetings.
In addition to CIPAC there is a Homeland Security Information Sharing Network for the Oil and Gas Industry (HSIN-ONG), a web-based platform that allows companies to communicate with each other and with law enforcement. It also gives them access to Suspicious Activity Reports and other intelligence related information. Around the same time that the information-sharing network was being created, the Department of Justice launched its National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative to “improve the sharing of suspicious activity reports among state, local, tribal, and federal law-enforcement organizations, as well as private sector entities.”
Intelligence-sharing systems also have been developed at the state level. The Nebraska Information Analysis Center (one of more than 70 Homeland Security “fusion centers”) has its own network that focuses on “possible unlawful tactics and techniques of individuals/groups opposed to Keystone XL pipeline.” According to documents obtained by Earth Island Journal through a public records request, oil infrastructure company TransCanada has its own page in the HSIN portal where suspicious activity reports can be posted. TransCanada representatives, FBI agents, county attorneys, local sheriffs, and the US assistant attorney general all have access to the Keystone pipeline network.
Despite the numerous federal, state, and regional information-sharing networks established during the past decade, the industry has been reluctant to participate in programs that might be subject to public oversight. Thus last summer the oil and gas industry announced the creation of its own information sharing and analysis center, or ISAC, which allows member companies to submit intelligence anonymously and is exempt from public disclosure.
The industry’s fear of transparency is part of a larger pattern. Oil and gas firms often express alarm about having their facilities photographed or filmed by citizen watchdogs, which can lead to official investigations. For example, in 2011 the Rocky Mountain Energy Security Group (yet another regional intelligence sharing network) issued a security report that described activists in Pavillion, Wyoming who had photographed a natural gas processing facility. The report, which was disseminated to law enforcement and security professionals in the industry, defined the behavior as “suspicious activity” and said that the information was being circulated in order to determine “whether the activity has any underlying criminal or terrorism nexus (or intent).”
In recent years the FBI has pursued environmental activists in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho for little more than taking photographs of oil and gas industry installations. In 2011, after receiving an anonymous tip, the FBI went after Texas activist Ben Kessler, a member of the direct action environmental group Rising Tide North America. In November 2013 and February 2014, a Pennsylvania state trooper and member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force visited anti-fracking activists at their homes in New York and Pennsylvania under the pretext that they had trespassed while taking photos of a gas compressor station. More recently, members of Rising Tide in the Pacific Northwest have been contacted or visited by FBI agents. (The energy companies’ fear of transparency is in some ways similar to the livestock industry’s exposé anxiety, which has led to the passage of so-called ag-gag laws that prohibit the filming of farms and ranches.)
The frontlines of the energy wars are no longer overseas, but rather in places like Nebraska, Texas, and Pennsylvania.
But what happens when the private sector’s assumptions about criminal activity are wrong or misleading? In Pennsylvania the oil and gas industry has driven speculation that environmental organizations were behind several acts of vandalism at or near drilling sites, even though there’s no evidence of any link whatsoever. The unfounded assertion has spilled into the local press. In February 2014, The Williamsport Sun-Gazette in northeast Pennsylvania ran a story about the crimes headlined, “Ecoterror Target: Gas companies bolster security in response to threats.”
Jeff Monaghan, a PhD candidate in Sociology at Queen’s University in Ontario who writes on issues of surveillance, says the RCMP document reflects how deeply intertwined the suspicions of energy companies and intelligence agencies have become. “The broader context of this document is a very, very close working relationship between the Critical Infrastructure Protection team and the energy corporations. As the relationship develops the underlying belief is that environmentalists are first-and-foremost a threat to the economy. It’s really about protecting shared values of economic growth.”
Or, as the RCMP report put it, “Canada’s economic growth … and the objectives of environmentalists are in direct conflict.” Environmental activists wouldn’t disagree with that, especially given the aggressive pro-energy policies of the Harper government. What they take issue with is the highly provocative claim that their opposition to the energy industry will likely lead to criminal activity. As the interests of the state and energy sector become increasingly close, however, this perception is taking hold. Activists worry that it is shaping law enforcement’s approach to the movement and could lead to a crackdown on legal protest.
“It doesn’t surprise me that the industry is trying really hard to paint the environmental movement as fringe or dangerous, because it’s their last resort,” says Catskill Mountainkeeper’s Gillingham. “It’s behavior based on a losing argument.”
The conflict over the Keystone XL pipeline has reinforced the narrative that economic prosperity and environmental protection are mutually exclusive. Pipeline proponents like to paint the opposition as job killers and, yes, extremists. In April 2014, Allison Moore, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, described the pipeline as “a project that is being blocked purely by environmental extremism.” More recently, US Senator Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican, called anti-fracking activists campaigning for a moratorium “radical environmentalists.” A major Washington PR firm, Berman and Co., has launched an ad campaign bankrolled by the energy industry called “Big Green Radicals” that seeks to smear high-profile activists.
From the FBI Bulletin
But the demonization of environmental advocates goes far beyond mere polemics. TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, has worked closely with law enforcement along the proposed pipeline route from the very early stages of its development. A certain amount of collaboration with law enforcement is to be expected with any major infrastructure project. But TransCanada has gone further. The company has pressured attorneys general to prosecute environmental activists under terrorism statutes. It has given local law enforcement advance notice of meetings with landowners whom the company describes as hostile. And the company has held workshops with local law enforcement and the FBI, including a daylong “strategy meeting” in Oklahoma with the FBI in 2012.
According to documents obtained by Earth Island Journal, the FBI distributed a bulletin in early 2013 “regarding threat concerns by environmental extremists against the Keystone Pipeline expansion project” to law enforcement across Nebraska. In its strategic plan for 2014-2017, South Dakota Homeland Security identifies what it considers to be extremist enclaves in the state, through which Keystone is proposed to pass. According to the document, “Uranium mining in the southwest part of the state and a proposed oil pipeline in the western part of the state garnered the attention of extremist environmental groups.” The report does not describe or name the groups, their intentions, or tactics. A public records request for additional documents or communication regarding “extremist environmental groups” in South Dakota was denied.
In 2013 Earth Island Journal reported on the infiltration of a Tar Sands Resistance training camp in Oklahoma. Two undercover officers from the Bryan County Sheriff’s office attended the weeklong event and shared intelligence with the Oklahoma Department of Homeland Security Fusion Center. Law enforcement was tipped off and a planned act of civil disobedience was preempted. During that same week TransCanada’s corporate security advisor was in frequent contact with the Oklahoma Fusion Center and made comments on a classified situational awareness bulletin.
In many ways Texas, where the Keystone pipeilne would terminate, is the heart of the American oil and gas industry. Not surprisingly, activists there are routinely harassed by law enforcement and corporate security for nothing more than keeping tabs on the industry. In East Houston, the city’s industrial hub and most polluted neighborhood (Houston itself is one of the most polluted cities in the country), environmental activist and community organizer Bryan Parras has been questioned by the police on several occasions and once was contacted by a Coast Guard special agent assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Houston. The organization he helps run with his father,Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (or TEJAS), has been closely watched. Parras frequently takes activists and journalists on what he calls “toxic tours” – a survey of the neighborhood’s refineries, chemical plants, and shipping ports. He’s made a point of documenting the air pollution caused by the flaring at the refineries that flank the neighborhood. He says the images “compel people to action.”
“It doesn’t surprise me that the industry is trying to paint the environmental movement as fringe or dangerous.”
They’ve also made Parras a subject of interest for industry and law enforcement. He is routinely questioned by the police or harassed by security representatives from Valero Energy, a major refining company and one of the industries Parras monitors. In 2013 Parras got a text from a friend, Tish Stringer, saying that an agent had visited her home and wanted to know about her relationship with him. The Coast Guard special agent, David Pileggi, told Stringer he’d been tipped off by Valero.
“It’s nothing new,” Parras says. “Since 9/11 we’ve been harassed repeatedly and pulled over for taking pictures or video of the facilities.”
In an emailed statement, Bill Day, vice president of communications at Valero, said the Houston refinery is designated by Homeland Security as “critical infrastructure” and therefore must meet enhanced security requirements. “One of those requirements,” he wrote, “is that when we see people taking photos or video of our facilities, we ascertain the purpose of that activity and then report it to DHS.” According to Shauna Dunlap, media coordinator for the FBI’s Houston Division, photographing and videotaping of critical infrastructures “can be a precursor of potential criminal activity.” The Joint Terrorism Task Force, she says, is “obligated to look into each and every suspicious activity report.”
This kind of surveillance and intimidation, Parras says, is particularly chilling in an area with a large number of undocumented residents. Not only are they vulnerable to threats of deportation, but also they’re quite literally at the crossroads of environmental destruction and the risks associated with climate change. East Houston is home to a disproportionate number of the city’s largest sources of industrial pollution, four major highways, and the shipping channel that feeds into the Port of Houston. If built, the Keystone XL pipeline would terminate in East Houston; Valero has a contract with TransCanada to receive most of the oil. “On the basis of location alone these neighborhoods appear far more vulnerable to health risks than others in Greater Houston,” a 2006 study commissioned by the mayor’s office concluded. In addition, rising sea levels threaten to inundate the heavily industrialized shoreline. “It puts us at even higher risk because we’re on the coast,” says Parras. “All these facilities are right on the water.”
original photo Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN)
In many ways, for activists like Parras the last line of defense lies in taking photos, documenting the impacts of industrial pollution, and simply bearing witness. TEJAS hasn’t even engaged in civil disobedience or direct action, he says. Still, his organization is on Valero’s watch list. TEJAS organizers have been followed and photographed or videoed by Valero security personnel. Local teachers who joined Parras on one of his toxic tours were bullied into deleting photos and video they had taken of the refinery. Journalists he has shown around have been threatened by Valero that they’ll be reported to the FBI.
In the eyes of the oil and gas industry this is the new environmental extremism. And that view is being shared with law enforcement at every level.
The intimidation and surveillance have had an impact. Parras says his advocacy has been compromised by Valero’s scrutiny of his organization and the refinery’s close relationship with law enforcement. “It’s difficult to get neighbors to want to engage and speak out,” he says. SOURCE
Adam Federman, a Journal contributing editor, covers the intersection between law enforcement and the environment.
You’ll never believe what a leaked RCMP memo from last week says about you. If you oppose the furious rush to build pipelines and expand the tar sands like I do, then you’re considered to be a “violent anti-petroleum extremist.”
The Harper government will stop at nothing to bully and silence its critics. The memo literally says that those of us who oppose pipelines should be seen and treated as potential criminal and security threats. I honestly could not believe what I was reading.
We all know that the proposed pipelines are the real threat – not responsible Canadians standing up for their coastlines and the climate.
Canada is supposed to be a free country where we have the right to disagree with our government without the fear of being treated like criminals.If we don’t stand up now and make our voices heard, who knows what the future will hold for Canadians who stand up to our government.
Refuse to be bullied and sign this petition telling Mr. Harper and the RCMP that opposing pipelines is not a criminal activity.
The Bank of Canada, unlike the Federal Reserve in the U.S., is wholly owned by the people of Canada. It was nationalized in 1938 and was used very successfully to fund infrastructure, social programs, education, etc, for the benefit of all Canadians. It was used to bring us out of the depression, funded WWII, to build highways such as the McDonald-Cartier freeway, public transportation systems, subway lines, airports, the St. Lawrence Seaway, our universal healthcare system and our Canada Pension Plan.
Unfortunately, since Canada adopted economist Milton Friedman’s theory of monetarism in 1974 this has not been the case and one can track the progression of the dismantling of Canada since then.
By 1974, Canada’s accumulated federal debt since confederation was 18 billion. By 1977, after the government reduced its use of the Bank of Canada to carry public debt, it had risen 3000% to 588 billion. Today the debt is 500 billion, 95% which is compound interest owed to private banks and investors. Currently Canadian pay 37 billion approximately per year in debt servicing.
Canada Debt Free.. is it possible?
Did you know that the Bank of Canada used to make interest free loans to municipal/provincial/federal governments before 1974 ,when the total national debt was only 18 billion dollars and you could still buy a good house for under 20 thousand, inflation was just a word. Then it seems our officials decided to stop using the Bank of Canada’s ability to print interest free money and to borrow money from private foreign banks, that love compound interest .
Does that explain our ballooning NATIONAL DEBT problem? As well as the never ending call from all governments for more and more of our hard earned money. So what can we do about it? Well a few Canadians have filed an action in Federal Court to restore the use of the Bank of Canada. The crime of this story is that none of the mainstream media has covered it.
Restore the Bank of Canada – COMER VS BOC
1) Canadian constitutional lawyer, Rocco Galati , on behalf of Canadians William Krehm ,and Ann Emmett ,and COMER (Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform) on December 12th, 20011 filed an action in Federal Court, to restore the use of the Bank of Canada to its original purpose , by exercising its public statutory duty and responsibility. That purpose includes making interest free loans to the municipal/provincial/federal governments for “human capital” expenditures (education health, other social services) and / or infrastructure expenditures .
2) The Plaintiffs state that since 1974 there has been a gradual but sure slide into the reality that the Bank of Canada and Canada’s monetary and financial policy are dictated by private foreign banks and financial interests contrary to the Bank of Canada Act.
3) The plaintiffs state that the defendants (officials) are unwittingly and/ or wittingly , in varying degrees, knowledge and intent engaged in a conspiracy, along with the Bank of International Settlements(BIS),Financial Stability Forum (FSF), International Monetary Fund (IMF) to render impotent the Bank of Canada Act as well as Canadian sovereignty over financial , monetary , and socio-economic policy, and bypass the sovereign rule of Canada through its parliament by means of the banking and financial systems.https://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/10573-confronting-global-finance-in-canadas-courts.html
Due to the fact that main stream media has not picked up this story, it will all sound foreign to you, If you would like to learn more on the Bank of Canada , I recommend that you take the time to watch, what I consider to be the best documentaries on the subject, Oh Canada Movie Our bought and sold out land .
* Here are three quotes from the Oh Canada Movie and the times in the movie to view them.
1) At 37min .08 sec into the movie Elizabeth May of the Green Party Leader says,
“The reality is the Bank of Canada has by legislation the ability to make what ever money needed, to loan the money to the government of Canada without interest .”
2) At 37min .50sec into the movie Late Jack Layton, Federal MP Leader of the NDP says “We never should have privatized our debt and turned it over to the private banks . We should have kept it in the hands of the Bank of Canada.”
3) At 42min into the movie, Paul Martin our former Prime Minister is asked if the Prime Minister has the ability to create debt free currency? “Absolutely”, Martin responds then adds,” But you have to ask the Question. Why don’t they?” Martin answers his own question “because its inflationary, it would drive inflation through the roof.”
I hope that last paragraph didn’t confuse you. I can’t believe he said it myself, I had to listen to it again . You see, we had very little inflation prior to 1974 while the Bank of Canada was creating debt free currency Inflation started with the borrowing of fiatfractional reserve money from the private banks . (Fiat money is Currency that a government has declared to be legal tender, despite the fact that it has no intrinsic value)
So if you are tired of paying these never ending taxes I do encourage you to research the above.
Update COMER VS BOC Jan 2015
Jan 26 2015 COMER (Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform EST. 1986) and constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati won yet another round of appeals. Galati the most prominent constitutional lawyer in the country says he does not believe Canada is a democracy any longer.
