Rafe Mair Online

They are pretty thick in central Canada – especially in the media. They simply do not understand what makes BC tick. There seems to be this misapprehension that large international predators can pounce upon British Columbia at will and hack and slash away to their hearts content.

The central Canadian media has chided us for opposing pipe lines. Little do they understand the extent of our opposition to anything that desecrates our beautiful province.

Back in 1992 you may remember the Charlottetown Accord referendum. I received many calls from Toronto writers asking if it was really true that BC would vote no. When I replied that it was certain, they were surprised and asked how wide the margin would be? I told them about two thirds against and they gasped in disbelief! I had the great privilege of being called Canada’s most dangerous man by a cabinet minister and by Prime Minister Mulroney, a traitor. But I was not wrong – I think I know British Columbians.

There is an apprehension that because so many British Columbians come from elsewhere that new communities will go along with whatever Toronto or Ottawa wants. During that referendum, Moe Sihota, an Indo-Canadian, the BC cabinet minister responsible for pushing the referendum, was often my guest on my radio show. After one such show, I asked Jas Johal, now a prominent news telecaster, what he thought the Indo-Canadian community would do. He opined that they would follow what Sihota told them to do. I told Jas that the Indo-Canadian community vote would break down just as every other community in British Columbia would.

On election night we learned that every constituency in British Columbia voted no and each one of them by almost the same percentage.

On the matter of pipelines, don’t believe the polls that show the split about even. I have no hesitation in saying that if there was a vote, it would be about 60 to 65% opposed.

We tend to think that pipelines are the only issue. As one who lives on the shores of Howe Sound I must point out that a lot of industrial development is planned there including an LNG plant in Squamish, a gravel pit on McNab Creek, and extensive logging on Gambier Island. There is more.

On July 5 more than 200 people jammed into the West Vancouver Memorial Library to protest the LNG plant for Squamish. When you consider the population along the shores of Howe Sound this is an enormous turn out.

Unfortunately, none of these protests are going to count for much. It is, you see, all a carefully played game. What is going on now, namely civilized public protest, is all part of what industry and their handmaidens the governments accept as something they simply must put up with before they can actually start to work.

The process is about as fair as an old Soviet show trial. The fix is in from the beginning.

Generally speaking the process starts with an environmental committee set up by the government, usually a joint federal provincial meeting because the Province hasn’t got the guts to hold its own.

Let us pause there.

The environmental meeting should be the second meeting, the first one being to determine whether or not citizens want the development in the first place. No such meeting ever takes place. At the environmental meetings that question is out of order. All one can speak on are environmental concerns. In other words, the fix is clearly in, it’s a done deal waiting only for the sham hearings to conclude.

I have been to these meetings and know what I’m talking about. They are nothing more nor less then shill sessions where the company, with a smiling government bureaucrat as chair, toots its projects and tells one lie after another.

At the end of the day, of course, the project is approved, sometimes with some environmental rules attached which, if they mean anything at all, are never enforced.

Let me just follow up on that last remark. With the gravel pit proposed for the McNab Creek, the president of the gravel company, under pressure from the public, promised to reduce the shift hours from 24 to 8 per day. Many of the public heaved sighs of relief and congratulated themselves on that victory.

Does anyone seriously think that, once permission is granted, the company is going to pay any attention to that promise? Even if that undertaking became a condition of their license, do you really think that somebody from the government is going to enforce it when the gravel pit goes flat out 24 hours a day? One need only look at the rules and regulations set up with “run of river” projects to see that not only are rules not enforced, even when breaches are so obvious that something must be done, nothing is. You might remember some years ago when fish farmers were found in breach of BC environmental laws, were charged and fined, and the government gave them their fines back!

What we must understand is that companies are incapable of telling the truth except by accident. They spend millions of dollars a year on PR companies and a glossy ads in newspapers and magazines. Their spokespeople at public meetings are professional liars. The material that they hand out are tissues of misrepresentations.

The sad part is, the government goes along with them, and provides them the process by which they can cheat their way to victory.

What I have just said will be regarded by some as cynical. That is certainly what the companies and the government would have you believe.

If you sit back and think about it and remind yourself of past projects you will see that it is not cynical at all. This is the way the game is played – the fix is in from the beginning.

This leaves the public of British Columbia with one option – civil disobedience.

In too many cases, in spite of very strong feelings indeed, the civil disobedience has been tepid. Some people stand in the way of a tractor, the company goes to court to get an injunction against them, a few protesters go back and protest, they are arrested and charged with contempt of court, and go to jail. This usually involves three or four very brave people, usually women.

It hardly costs the company more than a couple of days to get this nonsense over with, and  away they go.

There have been successful examples of civil disobedience, however, often with logging and often with First Nations involved. In those cases there have been many people involved all of whom are prepared to go to jail for as long as it takes.

Civil disobedience must be peaceful. Any violence is to be deprecated and is distinctly unhelpful. Furthermore, those who demonstrate must be prepared to accept the consequences. Those are the two basic rules.

Getting back to Howe Sound for a moment, this is a good example of a how major environmental assaults will involve only a very few local people. The fact is, however, that Howe Sound is everybody’s business. It is the most southerly fjord in North America and is extraordinarily beautiful and bountiful. It has already been saved once and in the last year or two there has been a return of sea life beyond anybody’s wildest imaginations. Not only are whales back but so are porpoises and herring. It is even hoped that salmon species long since gone, will start to return as well.

As I say, this makes it everybody’s business and everybody must be prepared to protest unto civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience is distasteful for most of us. We are brought up to believe in the law and that the policeman must be obeyed. To break the law runs against the grain. The thought of going to jail is horrifying.

The companies and governments know this to be true and play it to a fare thee well.

What really has happened is an abuse of process. The companies, by getting an injunction from the court, have changed what was a civil law matter into criminal law. This is, of course, what is really troubling to most Canadians. They are not one to disobey a judge. This unfairness is the way labour laws re picketing were once in British Columbia until the government realized that fairness demanded a change. Similar changes should apply to civil disobedience.

I set the problem before you squarely and fairly. The fact remains that unless we are prepared to go as far as civil disobedience, the companies and the government will do what ever they damn well please. They know about public reluctance to make waves and they certainly know about the desire not to go to jail. They use this to their own advantage and they consistently win by this sort of cheating.

I make the above statements knowing that they will be very unpopular with many who prefer peaceful negotiations. I love and admire those people but say to them that the only problem with peaceful negotiations under these circumstances is that you lose 100% of the time and the loss is permanent damage to your province.

Of course those who organize protests, letter writings, public demonstrations, public meetings and the like are very much to be commended. They use the enormous amounts of personal time and take a lot of abuse. They truly are first class citizens.

Unfortunately, they are also losers.

And that is the question we must ask ourselves – do we want to save our province from the predations of industrial and governmental assaults on our beautiful province or not?

If the answer is yes, unfortunately the only weapon that works is civil disobedience practiced by as many citizens as possible.