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 northwestern British Columbia.
The controversy has stalled transport, disrupted business operations, created 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.
Canadian National Railway Co. said this week that it was laying off about 450 employees temporarily as a result of the travel stoppage created by the blockades. Via Rail Canada, which operates passenger service, also is cutting 1,000 employees.
It also illustrates continuing conflicts over the rights of businesses to conduct their affairs in lands that native Canadians consider theirs and thus should be controlled by them. Long-standing property and civic issues date to colonial times — and grow out of conflicting views of the Mounties, who have roamed the Canadian West since the country’s confederation in 1867, when they were known as the North-West Mounted Rifles.
This week he pleaded for calm, arguing 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.” Meanwhile, sympathetic groups were recruiting allies to participate in the protests, even promising travel stipends.protesters descended on the home of British Columbia Premier John Horgan, whose budget they argued would ‘’fund further injury’’ to indigenous peoples and threatened to make a citizen’s arrest.
Solidarity love and peace to all first nations ✌️
WetsuwetenStrong
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