VANCOUVER — Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer says anti-pipeline protests by “radical activists” are a warm-up act in the next battles against the Trans Mountain expansion project and the proposed Teck Frontier oilsands mine in northeastern Alberta.
Scheer told Parliament that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has encouraged these types of protests by cancelling other projects based on political considerations.
Scheer says every person has the right to free speech, but nobody has the right to hold the Canadian economy hostage.
Scheer says it’s time for the government to step in to do something about the protests that have been blocking rail traffic for more than a week.
A revision to the Commons agenda was announced Tuesday morning.
The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations is calling for calm and constructive dialogue to ease tensions over a British Columbia pipeline and the nationwide protests the project has spawned.
National Chief Perry Bellegarde says governments and industry need to give the time and space to work with the Wet’suwet’en.
Hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation oppose the pipeline through their traditional territory, though it’s received approval from elected band councils.
Bellegarde says it’s vital that honest political activism not be criminalized.
Protesters have blocked rail lines in several parts of Canada to show solidarity with hereditary Wet’suwet’en chiefs opposed to construction of the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline through their traditional territories in northwestern B.C.
