Brian Zinchuk: While police prepared to shut down trucker protests in Ottawa, a pipeline site was attacked at night. Where is the real emergency now?

On a day when police in Ottawa continued to prepare to break up the trucker protest near Parliament Hill, and Parliament, itself, was debating the necessity of implementing the Emergencies Act, news emerged of a true emergency that occurred half a continent away. During the middle of the night, a pipeline site was supposedly violently attacked.

Coastal GasLink put out this statement:

During the early morning hours of Feb. 17, 2022, approximately 20 masked and violent attackers wearing camouflage surrounded and attacked Coastal GasLink workers in a highly planned and dangerous unprovoked assault. It happened near the Morice River drill pad site off the Marten Forest Service Road — the location of a former blockade and opposition camp last year that lasted 59 days. This coordinated and criminal attack from multiple directions threatened the lives of several workers. In one of the most concerning acts, an attempt was made to set a vehicle on fire while workers were inside. The attackers also wielded axes, swinging them at vehicles and through a truck’s window. Flare guns were also fired at workers. Workers fled the site for their own safety and remain shaken by this violent incident. Fortunately, there were no physical injuries to Coastal GasLink workers.

The attackers used grinders to cut locks on a permitted gate to the active construction site and continued to vandalize and attack heavy equipment and construction trailers on-site, causing millions of dollars in damage to Coastal GasLink contractor equipment and property. Equipment hydraulic and fuel lines were also cut, causing dangerous leaks. Damage and environmental impacts are still being assessed. We are working to contain and clean up the environmental damage caused by the attackers. We also understand the attackers felled trees, placed tire spikes and lit fires on roads in an effort to impede access to the remote worksite.

It’s apparent from the photos someone fired up multiple pieces of equipment and went to town in what can only be described as a melee of destruction.

In the meantime, truckers protesting in downtown Ottawa were apparently the real emergency for this government. The bouncy castles may not be as prominent now, but there are a few protesters who have the audacity to sit in a little hot tub on an Ottawa street.

Notice how Coastal GasLink pointed out this attack occurred, “near the Morice River drill pad site off the Marten Forest Service Road — the location of a former blockade and opposition camp last year that lasted 59 days.”

Did we hear any talk of the Emergencies Act in dealing with that blockade? Of workers essentially being held against their will? Did they declare that act when the pipeline company said, “Coastal GasLink remains very concerned for the safety of our over 500 workers who are currently stranded at our two lodges in the area as illegal blockades on the Morice River public forest service road continue to block all exits and access. It has now been three days and supplies, including water, are at risk of running out and access to medical care in the event of an emergency continues to be obstructed.”

Were the licence plates being taken of all the protesters there, at that time? Will the banks freeze the accounts of all the participants? Will the insurance of every vehicle which was parked there be suspended?

Why the hell not?

How is it that blockade in the B.C. hinterland was not a big deal, but honking horns in Ottawa – well, that was the end of the world? I have two friends who live in Ottawa, and to hear them talk, you would have thought the Visigoths were sacking Rome, I mean Ottawa.

Will the Trudeau government, which saw the necessity of invoking the Emergencies Act, order an immediate deployment of RCMP from Ottawa to where the real threat apparently is – northern British Columbia? Will those Mounties now guard workers at night, or take away jerry cans from protesters in Ottawa?

Can the Liberals, or anyone in Ottawa, please point to destroyed rock trucks, the toppled excavator or loader on Ottawa Streets?

Can they please show us the axe holes in vehicles?

How about the destroyed buildings, like the shacks in B.C.?

“The illegal blockades and occupations, are not peaceful protests. They have to stop,” Trudeau said in Parliament supporting the Emergencies act. He tweeted as such on Thursday night. He did not, however, tweet about the attack on B.C. pipeline workers.

While the words “terrorist” have been loosely used to describe the Ottawa protesters, and anti-terrorism legislation used to counter them, a crew of pipeline workers were truly terrorized in B.C.

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The National Post reported, “RCMP Chief Supt. Warren Brown, commander of the northern district, called the attack a ‘calculated and organized violent attack that left its victims shaken and a multi-million dollar path of destruction.’”

Please, Mr. Prime Minister, point to the organized violent attack that occurred in the middle of the night in Ottawa, or Coutts, Emerson or Windsor. You can’t, because it didn’t happen. Nor did a multi-million dollar path of destruction.

But it apparently has happened in B.C., and against a pipeline. And we all know, for the last decade, pipelines have been fair game, as have railways, as long as you were protesting against pipelines.

I really did not want to write about this protest movement. I want to write about energy. That’s what I’ve been telling everyone when they ask me about it.

But this alleged night attack on pipeline workers (which I used to be one), with weapons, that’s enough.

Prior to this violent attack, my mind has been consumed with an attack of a different kind – the one the federal government is making against the finances of the protesters.

I am not writing about the rightness or wrongness of the trucker protests, either. I’m writing about the governments actions.

I listened to Deputy Prime Minister Freeland live as she announced they were going to compel the banks to freeze the bank accounts of those associated with the protest, and suspend their insurance. This would be done without warrant or court order, but by fiat, because they were invoking the Emergencies Act. And they would be putting the screws to crowd funding as well.

Think about that for a second: without any judicial input or due process of law, the government can now freeze the finances of anyone who disagrees with them. And if you try to give money to a protest movement the government doesn’t like, they can seize that, too.

Was this considered during the 59-day blockade in B.C.? When people tried to set trains on fire?

This prime minister could take a knee with Black Lives Matter protesters, but would not once talk to the trucker protesters.

What the hell happened to our democracy?

On this, alone, this government must fall in a vote of non-confidence. Any member of Parliament who can support this government and its actions should be handed a copy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, and not be allowed to re-enter the Commons until they’ve read all three volumes. This is the kind of stuff the Communists did to the Kulaks, before they packed them off to the Gulag, or dispensed a bullet to the back of the head.

Democratic governments don’t freeze finances, essentially seizing people’s income and capacity to earn an income. And they sure as hell don’t do anything of the sort without due process. Only authoritarian governments do. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone the president of El Salvador, of all places, is calling the Canadian government out.

 

If you don’t know your history, not too long ago, El Salvador was known for its death squads.

Will the threatened pipeline workers be given the protection of downtown Ottawa? Will this government come to its senses?

It is time for Parliament to vote non-confidence in the Trudeau government, before they get any more ideas on what constitutes an emergency, and which rights they’re going to take away next.

 

Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@pipelineonline.ca.

 

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