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DORVAL, Canada —
The latest trouble began in
early February with rail
blockades in Canada over a
natural gas pipeline project
that crosses traditional
territory of the Wet’suwet’en
indigenous band in north-
western British Columbia.
Soon protesters created
a rail roadblock in Ontario,
and sympathy protests
popped up as far away as
the Maritime provinces,
hundreds of miles from the
site where Coastal GasLink
plans a $5-billion project.
Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau characterized the
situation as “a critical mo-
ment for our country and
our future.”
The controversy has
stalled transport, disrupted
business operations, cre-
ated new tensions between
Canada’s white majority
and its indigenous people —
and presented Trudeau
with the biggest challenge of
his more than four years in
office.
Besieged by demands
from business leaders,
criticized by political foes
and frustrated by his inabil-
ity to fulfill campaign prom-
ises to native Canadians,
the prime minister is losing
patience with the situation
and is struggling to deter-
mine how to disperse the
protesters who oppose the
pipeline. It would run 416
miles from northeastern
British Columbia to the
Pacific coast.
“Here’s the reality: Every
attempt at dialogue has
been made,” he said. “The
discussions have not been
productive. We can’t have
dialogue when only one
party is coming to the table.
For this reason, we have no
choice but to stop making
the same overtures. Of
course, we will never close
the door on dialogue, and
our hand remains extended
should someone want to
reach for it.”
Demonstrations have
clogged the streets of down-
town Montreal and the
highways of rural Manitoba.
And uncertainty remains
over whether chiefs in
northern British Columbia
will consent to a meeting
that might end the impasse
that has disrupted the
travel plans of tens of thou-
sands of people.
Canadian National Rail-
way Co. said it was laying off
about 450 employees tem-
porarily as a result of the
travel stoppage created by
the blockades. Via Rail
Canada, which operates
passenger service, also is
cutting 1,000 employees.
Business leaders claim
millions of dollars of com-
merce already has been lost,
energy company executives
say crucial supplies of
propane used in heating
homes are at risk, and fooddistributors worry that
perishable meat and poul-
try shipments are endan-
gered.
It is a classic imbroglio in
a country that can be preoc-
cupied with the ability to
move people and products
from place to place during
persistently cold and snowy
winters. It involves ques-
tions about who rightly
owns the vast continental
expanse of the country and
even the legitimacy of Royal
Canadian Mounted Police
checkpoints. Indeed, the
recent decision of the
Mounties to move off tribal
territory offered a glimmer
of hope that the impasse
might be broken with nego-
tiations.
A bewildering element of
the pipeline episode —
frustrating to Trudeau, to
First Nations National Chief
Perry Bellegarde, and to the
nearly three dozen business
associations that are de-
manding that the prime
minister bring the crisis to
an end — is confusion about
how to defuse the matter.
Individual provinces and
territories have a lot of
power— a phenomenon that
has been the subject of
continuing, and enormous,
contention for half a cen-
tury.
The current controversy
covers a lot of ground, in-
cluding environmental
concerns about the effect
the pipeline would have on
British Columbia’s rivers
and the risk of a rupture of
the gas pipeline; climate
activist Greta Thunberg has
demonstrated her support
to the protesters in a tweet
to her 4 million followers.
It also illustrates con-
tinuing conflicts over the
rights of businesses to con-
duct their affairs in lands
that native Canadians
consider theirs and thus
should be controlled by
them. Long-standing prop-
erty and civic issues date to
colonial times — and grow
out of conflicting views of
the Mounties, who have
roamed the Canadian West
since 1873, when they wereknown as the North-West
Mounted Rifles. They have
not been forgiven by the
tribes for their role in en-
forcing the residential
boarding school system in
which indigenous people
were abused and native
customs were erased.
The conflict has befud-
dled Trudeau, who favors a
light touch in politics and
who faced criticism in the
autumn election campaign
for failing to meet the ex-
pansive promises he made
to improve living and econo-
mic conditions for indige-
nous Canadians when he
first ran for prime minister
in 2015.
First, he pleaded for
calm, saying in the House of
Commons, “Those who
would want us to act in
haste, who want us to boil
this down to slogans and
ignore the complexities,
who think that using force is
helpful — it is not.”
Then, he abruptly
changed his tone, saying,
“The barricades must now
come down. The injunctions
must be obeyed and the law
must be upheld.”
He did not, however,
offer any solutions to the
problem. And his remarks
served only to inflame his
critics.
Andrew Scheer, the
Conservative leader whom
Trudeau defeated four
months ago and who bears
the title of opposition
leader, derided the prime
minister’s handling of the
matter as “the weakest
response to a national crisis
in Canadian history.”
Some of Trudeau’s Libe-
ral colleagues in Parliament
have grown impatient. And
in a front-page commentary
in the conservative National
Post newspaper last week,
columnist John Ivison, a
persistent critic of Trudeau,
pilloried the prime minister,
arguing, “Trudeau has been
prone to being prone on the
blockades. Anyone hoping
he’d condemn protests by a
tiny minority that threatens
real hardship for the vast
majority were sorely disap-pointed.”
Meanwhile, sympathetic
groups were recruiting allies
to participate in the pro-
tests, even promising travel
stipends.
On Tuesday, protesters
descended on the home of
British Columbia Premier
John Horgan, whose budget
they argued would “fund
further injury” to indige-
nous peoples and threat-
ened to make a citizen’s
arrest. Canadian author-
ities also have made threats,
though they have not
pressed a court injunction
to end the blockade on
Tyendinaga Mohawk terri-
tory near Belleville, Ontario,
the site of the original pro-
tests.
There are echoes from a
78-day episode in 1990, when
Mohawks, who have been in
the Montreal area since they
were lured there for reli-
gious conversion from an-
cient tribal lands by Jesuit
missionaries in the early
18th century, erected a
blockade to protest plans to
expand a golf course into
lands they claimed in Oka,
Quebec. That dispute
quickly become part of
Canadian popular culture,
spawning movies, books,
even a punk rock song.
The National Film Board
of Canada produced a docu-
mentary called “Acts of
Defiance” that itself
spawned protests, including
claims that the Mohawks
were portrayed in heroic
defiance of legitimate politi-
cal authority.
A second film, “Kanehsa-
take,” portrayed the con-
frontation — as character-
ized by Randolph Lewis, a
professor of American stud-
ies at the University of
Texas — as a conflict be-
tween “state violence and
indigenous sovereignty.”
That is precisely the
characterization that
Trudeau — who described
the pipeline dispute as
unacceptable — wants to
avoid three decades later.Shribman is a special
correspondent.BACK STORY
Pipeline plan roils Canada
Leader says protests and disruptions put nation at a ‘critical moment’
By David M. ShribmanTHE RAILblockade on Tyendinaga Mohawk territory in Ontario, Canada, is
part of the protests against the 416-mile-long Coastal GasLink pipeline project.Lars HagbergCanadian PressMembers of the Worcester Canoe Club paddle along the horse racing course at Worcester Racecourse on
Sunday in Worcester, England. Storms continue to batter west and northern England, bringing further
flooding to already sodden communities. Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces growing criticism of his han-
dling of weeks of flooding in England and Wales, as rain over the weekend threatens to wreak more dam-
age and disruption. During a visit to flood-hit areas of Wales last week, opposition Labor Party leader
Jeremy Corbyn criticized Johnson for failing to convene the emergency committee. Conservative Member
of Parliament Craig Whittaker, who represents one of the worst-hit constituencies, said he was “furious”
about the slow response, while the Fire Brigades Union accused Johnson of showing “zero leadership.”1,000 WORDS: WORCESTER, England
Jacob KingAssociated PressFLOODING IN THE U.K.