Juno News - February 16, 2020
What is Canada going to do about the pipeline protesters?
Episode Stats
Words per minute
201.55652
Harmful content
Misogyny
1
sentences flagged
Hate speech
3
sentences flagged
Summary
As we speak, the country is spiralling into crisis. Blockades continue, rail lines, streets, intersections, people cannot access buildings like the BC legislature, Chrystia Freeland blocked from getting into a Halifax government building, and the law enforcement is doing nothing about it.
Transcript
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As we speak, the country is spiraling into crisis, blockades continue, rail lines, streets,
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intersections. People cannot access buildings like the BC legislature. Chrystia Freeland blocked
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from getting into a Halifax government building to meet with the mayor. And the law enforcement
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is doing nothing about it being served court injunctions in places like Ontario, Belleville,
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along that via rail line, CN Rail as well, going across those tracks. And the OPP do nothing.
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They get multiple court injunctions. They do not enforce it. When is lawlessness going to stop?
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When are we going to enforce the law here? Well, we have politicians currently passing the buck.
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he's been out of the country for most of this. And he just speaks
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in sort of vague platitudes. Yes, rule of law is important, but we must allow people their
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opportunity to speak and et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, that's why we have things like the public
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square where you can go to city hall and you can go in front of the parliament buildings and hold
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up your little sign and have your say. You can email and tweet at people if you're unhappy about
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their political priorities. But can you do this? No, you certainly shouldn't be able to. And yet so
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many people are getting away with it. I'm reminded of an anecdote back from when I was a teenager.
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My friend and I were in downtown Toronto and he was a big, a trains aficionado. He really liked
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transit, trains and planes and all that stuff. And he said, Hey, let's go up to Union Station.
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Just take a look at some of these trains. And I said, okay, fine, whatever. We weren't planning
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to catch a train. We just went up and we walked up the steps. There was no barrier saying, don't
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go here. And we were looking around at the trains. Now this was very shortly after 9-11 and we were up
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there. And then these two guards came, these two security guards or sort of delegated policing
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officers, CN cops. I can't remember what role they played. And they said, what are you guys doing here?
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We said, we're just looking at the trains. And they said, sorry, boys, we're going to have
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to write you up. And they wrote us this little sort of yellow ticket that they had there at
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the Union Station. And they said, if you come back again, we're going to find you or arrest
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you or whatever it was I have. Man, these guys mean business. I didn't know you could be
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up there on the track. So they'll, you know, kind of make sense. Now we went on our merry
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way. So they did that to me, two teenage guys just looking around, wanted to see a train.
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You have people blockading rail lines saying, we're going to grind this country to a halt.
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They do nothing. These guys are getting much more of a free pass than I did just wanting to
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see a train pass you by. But here's the added frustration in all of this. The stakes are actually
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very low. I would understand a little bit more if we had First Nations people taking to our streets
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like they did in Idle No More to say, we've got some horrible conditions in our communities
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and we want them to be addressed. Now, I didn't necessarily agree with all the ways that Idle
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No More unfolded and so forth and who was to blame for this problem and that problem. But you could
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at least take the point that, yes, there was a bona fide issue. And these were First Nations
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people. And they were articulating grievances that were true to them. Is that the situation
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here? What's the problem? They're not protesting boiled water advisories. They're not protesting
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the lack of food or something like that in their community. These are people who are saying,
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we are standing in solidarity with Wet'suwetwin people in the interior of British Columbia over
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the coastal link pipeline. And that is bringing a bunch of allies to go and blockade other things
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throughout the country. Little problem in all of this. The Wet'suwetwin First Nations people
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support the coastal link pipeline. The majority of them, about 80 percent opinion polling has shown
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there. The elected bound council openly support them. And quite a number of the hereditary chiefs
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support it. It's just that four or five hereditary chiefs aggressively do not. I think that's their
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right and a free society have their views, but they are vastly outnumbered. And who are the people
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taking to the streets? Well, in Belleville area, the people there who are protesting, they are
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self-described Mohawk warriors. Although they do not speak for that community, the Mohawk-Tayandanaga
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community. The chief has made that clear. He says, these aren't our guys, or at least we didn't tell
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these guys to come here. They're part of our band council. We don't know what they're doing. And one
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journalist on the ground actually told me, get this folks, that at least four or five of the license
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plates of the couple dozen cars that are there for protesters have New York state plates. These are
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Americans driving up to participate in all of this. What on earth is going on here? But some of those,
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at least the people in Belleville, they are First Nations persons. When you watch those video clips of
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Christy Freeland being blocked, or people who are not being let into the BC legislature, I gotta say,
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some of those First Nations elders, well, they look a whole hell of a lot like college-age
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Caucasian blonde girls. What's going on? Yes, there's a few First Nations people in the mix there,
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but for the most part, these appear to me to be white liberals, or SJWs, or whatever, Antifa-in-training
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individuals. Are we going to accept this? Are we going to tolerate this? First Nations people, by and large,
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say, we would like to see this project come about. And because some sort of unclear exactly who they are
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activists have glommed onto this, and are using the name of First Nations activists to shut this down,
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we let this happen. We should not let this happen. This should not be allowed to stand. So what do we
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do? Everybody says, what do we possibly do? It's pretty simple. We do what would happen if,
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say, a couple teenagers went up to the tracks to look at a train. You remove them.