People across Canada demonstrated today outside 44 MP offices, including the Ministers Carr, McKenna, Bennett and Wilson-Raybould, to demand Prime Minister Trudeau stop pushing the Kinder Morgan pipeline through without the consent of local First Nations.
“Opposition to the Kinder Morgan pipeline is ramping up in BC and spreading across the country,” said Logan McIntosh, Campaigns Director at Leadnow. “We plan to tap into this growing concern so that Trudeau understands he made a mistake approving a carbon polluting oil pipeline that local First Nations don’t want.”
Leadnow has a proven track record of moving the needle in elections. In the 2015 federal election, Leadnow organized a campaign for a change in government in which Leadnow members endorsed 15 Liberal and 9 NDP candidates who successfully defeated their opponents. In this year’s B.C. election, the group led a successful campaign for a change in government that helped a new NDP-Green alliance take power.
Stopping the Kinder Morgan pipeline is a top priority for Leadnow’s 500,000 strong membership, and the organization will be tapping into voters’ growing concerns about the pipeline through riding-by-riding organizing.
Today’s National Day of Action comes after a 10,000 person march led by Indigenous leaders from across North America, and weeks of peaceful protests at a Kinder Morgan construction site in Burnaby, B.C., where dozens have been arrested in acts of civil disobedience ahead of a tree clearing deadline.
“When Justin Trudeau approved Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in the midst of the resistance in Standing Rock, he and his government knew to expect a moral crisis of that magnitude here in Canada,” said Clayton Thomas-Muller, Stop It At The Source Campaigner with 350.org. “As the next federal elections loom, a massive uprising of Indigenous-led resistance has begun – and Trudeau will begin to pay the price for gambling with Indigenous consent, environmental devastation, and climate catastrophe.”
Demonstrators also delivered samples of water taken from along the pipeline and tanker route to their MPs to highlight the risk of oil spills.
Events took place at 44 MP offices, including 29 Liberal MPs.
Those targeted included key Liberal ministers:
• Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna (Ottawa Centre);
• Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett (Toronto–St. Paul’s);
• Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr (Winnipeg Centre); and
• Justice Minister and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould.
(Leadnow)
