The Crown is proceeding with charges against eight protesters who demonstrated against the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline project in Kamloops last October.
Appearing in B.C. Supreme Court in Kamloops — some in person and others via phone — the eight, who are part of the Secwépemc Unity Camp to Stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline, declared they would be representing themselves in court.
The Secwépemc eight have been charged with criminal contempt for breaching the court-ordered injunction against protests Trans Mountain has on its operational and project construction locations.
Trial dates are scheduled to be set on March 15. The trials, expected to be two, one-week endeavours, will be held for breaches the Crown alleged occurred on Oct. 15. 2020, and Oct. 17, 2020, at Trans Mountain worksites in Kamloops.
Prosecutor Neil Wiberg told KTW the Crown is proceeding with charges in the two instances in Kamloops as the facts of the cases met the standard for charge approval.
Asked what sort of repercussion would come from a conviction for the breaches, Wiberg said that is entirely at the court’s discretion.
“It could be fines, it could be jail, it’s totally up to the court,” he said.
Susan Bibbings, Romily Cavanaugh, Miranda Dick, Heather Lamoureux, Jocelyn Pierre, Henry Sauls — also known as Secwépemc hereditary Chief Sawses — April Thomas and Laura Zadorozny have all been charged with breaching the court injunction in October.
Pierre, Thomas, Sauls and Cavanaugh are charged in connection with a protest that occurred during work hours at a Trans Mountain construction site on Oct. 15. Video taken by members of the Secwépemc Unity Camp showed Pierre and Thomas atop an excavator on the south side of Mission Flats Road just west of Domtar. They refused to leave. That video showed RCMP officers struggle with Pierre and eventually carry her off the site to a police cruiser. Meanwhile, Cavanaugh and Sauls could be seen at an entrance to an adjacent beachside Trans Mountain worksite north of the road.
Two days later, on Oct. 17, police arrested Dick, the group’s spokesperson, along with Bibbings, Lamoureux and Zadorozny while they were at a the gate to the project worksite near Kamloops Airport during work hours.
Outside the courthouse on Monday (Mar. 1), people gathered peacefully in support of their fellow protesters, taping signs to a column at the front of the Kamloops Law Courts building and conducting a drumming circle.
In court, Thomas said she felt the charges should be stayed as the federal government purchased the pipeline from Kinder Morgan in August 2016 and is therefore in a conflict of interest in prosecuting them. She and others also called for the proceedings to be held before a third-party adjudicator.
In a press release, Dick said the gathering outside the courthouse was to support those charged as they assert their rights and take on the “systemic and environmental racism inherent to the same courts that continue assert jurisdiction with no legal rights to do so.”
The protesters set up an encampment near a Trans Mountain worksite off Mission Flats Road last fall. Intent on staying there permanently in a bid to stop the pipeline project, which is crossing the Thompson River at that location, the camp was dismantled by the protesters at the onset of winter, with a vow to return in the spring.
Work by Trans Mountain crews at that site to pull the new pipeline underneath the river was halted shortly afterwards when the company ordered a project-wide work stoppage to review its safety practices after an on-the-job death in Edmonton and serious injury to a person in Burnaby. There have also been more than 90 cases of COVID-19 workers along the Edmonton-to-Burnaby route.
Construction was scheduled to resume in early February, though some sites in Kamloops remain quiet.
The protesters argue the pipeline twinning project is being done on unceded Secwépemc territory. They have also cited safety concerns for the river and salmon populations within it, along with concerns about the safety of the ongoing project.
The protesters have said they represent the will of the Secwépemc people and contend First Nations band councils that do support the pipeline project have been bought off to do so. The Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation has a $3-million mutual benefits agreement with Trans Mountain.
