|
Canada sees security threat RCMP labels ‘anti-petroleum’ activists potential security threat, noting they represent ‘highly organized, well-financed’ movement Gary Park For Petroleum News
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have labeled a loose-knit “anti-petroleum” movement as a potential security threat at the same time the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is responding to a public demand for tough measures aimed at snuffing out a terrorism threat.
Prepared by the RCMP’s critical infrastructure intelligence team, the threat assessment is rated as “growing, highly organized and well-financed, (including) peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society’s reliance on fossil fuels.”
The document, dated January 2014 and obtained by a Quebec newspaper, said climate change activists are disconnected from Canadian public opinion.
It points to a small number of criminal acts between 2006 and 2013, notably anti-fracking protests in New Brunswick that turned violent.
The RCMP predicts that as pipeline and hydraulic fracturing operations expand across Canada “criminal activity associated with the anti-petroleum movement will increase nationally,” suggesting the extremists pose a “realistic criminal threat.”
New legislation Disclosure of the report coincides with the Harper administration’s introduction of new anti-terrorism legislation, which a new poll by the Angus Reid Institute shows has the support of 82 percent of Canadians, although Harper told Parliament that the bill does not make “lawful advocacy, protest, dissent or artistic expression” illegal.
The legislation identifies “activity that undermines the security of Canada” as anything that interferes with the economic or financial stability of Canada or with the country’s critical infrastructure, though it excludes lawful protest or dissent.
It includes provisions allowing the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service to reduce or eliminate what it perceives to be threats to the national security.
He brushed off the concerns of the opposition New Democratic Party and its leader Tom Mulcair as another attempt to argue that measures in “defense of our security somehow undermines our freedoms.”
He said the NDP position “on this issue is becoming more and more irrelevant, more and more unconnected to Canada’s real concerns.”
Poll shows unprecedented support The Angus Reid poll of 1,509 Canadians showed that not only is there unprecedented support to expand the powers of intelligence agencies and the police to “disrupt” terror activity inside and outside of Canada, but 36 percent believe the legislation does not go far enough.
Mulcair said the “problem is that it’s the prime minister who sees enemies everywhere.”
The RCMP assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are determined to stop oil sands development and related pipeline construction and that the extremists in the movement are willing to take violent action.
“If violent environmental extremist engage in unlawful activity, it jeopardizes the health and safety of its participants, the general public and the natural environment,” the RCMP said.
Blockades in British Columbia There has already been a taste in British Columbia of what might happen as First Nations and environmentalists have set up blockades and driven away survey crews along the proposed routes of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline and Kinder Morgan’s planned expansion of its Trans Mountain system.
Leaders of those protest movements have threatened to take even more extreme measures if full-scale construction starts on either pipeline, or TransCanada gets the go ahead for its Energy East pipeline across the Canadian Prairies to Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association has initiated challenges to the RCMP complaints commission and Security Intelligence Review Committee (which oversees the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service) over alleged surveillance of groups opposed to Northern Gateway.
Paul Champ, a civil liberties attorney who is handling the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association complaints, said the actions on behalf of environmental groups are “really the sharp end of the stick” in terms the anti-terrorism legislation.
“I and other groups have real concerns that the (legislation) is going to target not just terrorists who are involved in criminal activity, but people who are protesting against different Canadian government policies.”
RCMP says surveillance limited A spokesman for the RCMP insisted the national police force only conducts surveillance when there is a suspicion of criminal conduct.
“As part of its law enforcement mandate the RCMP does have a requirement to identify and investigate criminal threats,” he said in an email to the Globe and Mail. “There is no focus on environmental groups, but rather on the broader criminal threats to Canada’s critical infrastructure. The RCMP does not monitor any environmental group.”
The RCMP assessment document defends the value of the oil and natural gas sector to the Canadian economy, noting that many environmentalists “claim” that climate change is a global environmental threat that is linked to the use of fossil fuels.
Keith Stewart, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace, said the “alarming” aspect of the RCMP document is that it lays the foundation for “all kinds of state-sanctioned surveillance and dirty tricks” should the legislation become law.
| 