On the same day NDP leader Jagmeet Singh
revealed that he was open to Canada footing the security bill for Royal castaways Harry and Meghan, he also came a little more out of the shadows in de facto support of fellow NDPer and BC Premier John Horgan's colonialist line on Wet'suwet'en and the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
Singh has tried to deflect any blame for the standoff from Horgan and his social democratic swamp of deepening hypocrisy by expressing
"concern" over the actions of the RCMP which he paints as the fault of the federal Trudeau government.
Hence,
as we have pointed out before, the farce of tweets like this one:
First, Singh himself,
unlike the federal Green Party, is not actually yet calling for the RCMP to withdraw from Wet'suwet'en territory. He has only said they “should be careful,” and, as we all know, that is sure to make the RCMP think twice before acting.
Further, Singh is now echoing the misleading propaganda of folks like Horgan and Trudeau that tries to divide and conquer with rhetoric of how
"“the vast majority” of elected First Nations officials and communities along the proposed route support the project" as if that somehow overrides the concerns and opposition of the Hereditary Chiefs who do not. This is an old and ugly tactic.
It is difficult to reconcile this with Singh's role as federal NDP Indigenous affairs critic, especially given ongoing protests such as the
temporary occupation of the office for the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources on Wednesday and the statement of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) that unequivocally noted that the
"Wet’suwet’en Jurisdiction and Governance Must be Upheld".
Horgan has made his commitment to pushing the project through very clear. He was profoundly dismissive of the Hereditary Chiefs in his
comments on Monday saying "I'm not going to drop everything I'm doing to come running when someone is saying they need to speak with me...I'm not being disrespectful, I'm just saying be realistic here" as if the chiefs are somehow cranks or lobbyists demanding unreasonable attention from the imperial overlord.
Of course, were they actually industry lobbyists Horgan probably would meet with them, though the
$10,000 dinner fee getting a one-on-one with him for resource industry corporate talking heads that was the price tag back in 2016 is not the option it once was.
Horgan also tried to say that his government's alleged commitment to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) does not apply in this case since it was "meant to be forward looking, not backward looking"
as the CBC paraphrased it, meaning projects that violate it that have already been approved must barrel ahead.
"There is no negotiating to be done,"
he claimed.
Perhaps sensing that this is not playing terribly well with significant sections of the NDP's voting base, Horgan
did soften this stance somewhat when later on Monday he "sent a letter to Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief Nam’oks on Monday, saying he would like to send the province’s minister of Indigenous relations and reconciliation" for talks in his stead.
The NDP leadership both federally and in BC should be concerned with the federal Green Party being far stronger in its support for both the rights of the Hereditary Chiefs and the principles of UNDRIP.
In a press release
Green Party MP Paul Manly said:
The fact that the RCMP have been sent in shows that this is a political failure on the part of the provincial and federal governments. The Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs provided alternative routes to Coastal GasLink that would have been acceptable to them as a pipeline corridor. Coastal GasLink decided that it did not want to take those acceptable options and instead insisted on a route that drives the pipeline through ecologically pristine and culturally important areas...
...Greens call on B.C. Premier Horgan to meet with the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs as quickly as possible. We also want the B.C. government to address this situation through the lens of UNDRIP. Since UNDRIP was brought in to address historic injustice, how can it be ignored in order to allow this injustice to persist? The Wet'sowet'en hereditary chiefs have jurisdiction over their traditional territories, and they clearly have not given their consent.
Green Party Parliamentary Leader Elizabeth May stated further that “British Columbia recently enacted new legislation in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). This situation undermines the constitutional role played by the hereditary chiefs."
Prime Minister Trudeau, of course, is very happy to leave the ball entirely in
Horgan's court stating “It’s a provincial project and provincial processes. It is being well taken care of by the provincial government.” This is mildly clever, if typically disingenuous.
Still, despite all of Horgan's attempts to claim matters as somehow out of his hands due to the "rule of law", it is a provincial project that would never have gone ahead without the NDP offering up billions of dollars in tax and other incentives and issuing all the necessary permits. The NDP provided all of these incentives despite also turning around and telling BC teachers that their "
demands for (a) pay increase don’t square with balanced budget".
Meanwhile the RCMP, having set up roadblocks, now also "
admits it’s deploying “air assets” to monitor Indigenous land defenders". Matters are coming to a head and if history is any guide the RCMP, when it acts, will do so with great violence, threats, arrests and brutality. Future progressives will likely not judge Trudeau, Horgan or Singh too kindly unless they take steps now to force a change of course.
NDP partisans have long sought to portray the Green Party as little more than "conservatives with composters". Whatever the accuracy of that moniker, Singh and Horgan had best watch out as they are increasingly -- along with the best past efforts of former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley -- making the NDP look like the corporate apologists the Liberals are, only with dusty old copies of the Regina Manifesto hidden in a desk drawer somewhere.
Further Readings:
Horgan, Trudeau and Singh show once more "progressive" rhetoric about reconciliation is a sham
Open Letter to Jagmeet Singh regarding Trans Mountain, Site C and Coastal GasLink
