Good Sunday Morning - September 15

Good Sunday Morning!

I want to start with a tribute to one of our most amazing Green volunteers in Saanich Gulf Islands (SGI)! This weekly missive is a 100% volunteer effort from the SGI team. I write it and send at all hours to a team of four volunteers who handle the formatting and organizing to send via NationBuilder to all of you. Bob, Brian, Linda and Karen take turns, and our amazing backstop is Robyn who handles incoming mail, subscriptions and questions. I am deeply grateful to each of them. Getting out Good Sunday Morning is just one of a zillion other volunteer tasks they take on for Greens in BC and nationally as well as for other important crusades. This week, Brian struck a blow for old growth forests and civil liberties and against the excessive and brutal actions of the RCMP Community-Industry Response Group.

You may have read in the news that this week the review body that handles complaints against the RCMP, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, ruled that the RCMP had violated the Charter rights of a man described as a “hiker”, subjected to a groundless arrest near Fairy Creek. That hiker is one of the Good Sunday Morning crew and one of the finest people I have ever known. Brian Smallshaw lives on Salt Spring Island and – like a great number of my dearest friends – is originally from Saskatchewan. He and another several dozen of my good friends and hundreds more tried to defend some of the very last old growth forests on Vancouver Island, at Fairy Creek. As you know, Green Deputy leader Rainbow Eyes is an Indigenous land defender arrested multiple times at Fairy Creek, and is now appealing a jail sentence.

Over three years ago, on September 7 2021, Brian was walking on a public forest road when the RCMP stopped him at what they called a “checkpoint.” They demanded he allow a search of his backpack and to provide his name (which, by the way, the officers refused to do themselves). In fact, the officers wore no identification at all. They gave him their badge numbers verbally only. They wore the “thin blue line” patch that is identified with white supremacists and police rule, which Brian pointed out in his complaint was also against RCMP policy. .

The officers demanded to see ID – that and a bag search without cause are a violation of Section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Brian knew his rights and stuck to them. They held him on the road for 90 minutes, handcuffed him, were unable to give him any clear reason why he was under arrest, put him in a police van and drove him to Port Renfrew, where he was released without charges. After being arrested, he launched a complaint that has taken over three years to reach resolution. The deflections and rejections of his initial complaint, of which he kept me updated at the time, seemed to me an impenetrable bramble. A lesser person would have lost heart and abandoned the complaint. His persistence paid off with an important ruling that will, no doubt, be part of the larger review of the millions of public dollars wasted, as current injunction law allows public keepers of the peace to be converted to a private police force to protect the corporate interests of forest companies and fossil fuel expansion projects. While the RCMP is federal, it is the BC government that has directed the Community-Industry Response Group.

This is excerpted from the CBC article:

“The judge found in 2021 that “exclusion zones, checkpoints, searches, and restrictions on media members clearly interfere with important liberties.”

“Justice Douglas Thompson ruled that “the degree of interference with liberties of members of the public and members of the media is substantial and serious.”

“The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP is still working on completing a review of the actions of the Mounties’ community industry response group in a “systemic investigation,” after the judge threw out numerous cases against logging protesters for police failures in properly enforcing the court injunction in Fairy Creek.”

The ongoing and larger review of the outrageous conduct of the Community-Industry Response Group is ongoing. Meanwhile I will continue to push for real action for the reform of the RCMP.I stand by the words of the Globe and Mail editorial following the release of the Mass Casualties Report on the killings at Portapique in April 2020 – that the RCMP must be torn down to its foundations and then the foundations dynamited.

In other news this week, the NDP has decided to side with the Conservatives in BC and nationally, denouncing carbon taxes. I never thought Jagmeet Singh could remind me of Donald Trump.

“I have concepts of a plan. I’m not president right now, but if we come up with something…There are concepts and options we have to do that, and you’ll be hearing about it in the not-too-distant future,” Trump said on September 11.

And Jagmeet said on Thursday, “We’ve been working on a [climate] plan, and we’ll be releasing our plan, our vision for how we can do that in a stronger way, in the coming months,”

Here is the press release the Green Party of Canada issued in response.

“This week, both the federal and BC NDP abandoned even their hypocrisy on climate. The No-Discernible-Principles Party has reminded BC voters that it was the BC NDP who coined the slogan “Axe the Tax” nearly two decades before Pierre Poilievre. In fact, that anti-climate action campaign backfired and BC voters voted for the carbon tax in 2009.”

For background on carbon pricing, here is a review of a new book by BC climate expert Tom Pedersen – it is highly recommended.

Today, I am campaigning in a very hot Montreal for my friend and urban bee-keeper, Jency Mercier, running in Monday’s by-election in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun.

Tomorrow, I will be in Ottawa for the first day of the fall session of Parliament. Mike Morrice and I will hold a morning press conference to set out our priorities for the fall sitting.

As ever, I am buoyed up by joy. I find it in bursts every day. My health-giving and life affirming practice is of daily gratitude and finding the most fun I can in whatever chance I get.

Being in touch with you every Sunday morning is one of them!

John is campaigning in the BC Green campaign for Cariboo-Chilcotin. He is doing a lot of interviews with local media, this one from Williams Lake (I love it!)

I really look forward to joining him in the Chilcotin in early October,

Have a wonderful week, wherever you are.

Love and thanks,

Elizabeth

P.S.

Rob Botterell, the BC Greens Candidate for MLA in Saanich North and the Islands, had a successful campaign launch this week! I had to miss it due to my communty meeting on Mayne Island, but caught up with Rob at other events on Pender and Salt Spring on Friday!

If you haven’t yet had a chance to meet Rob, he is hosting a Meet and Greet in the campaign office next to the Shoal Centre, this Thursday (and every Thursday from 11:15-1:45). You can RSVP here.

The writ is expected to be dropped on Saturday. If you live in BC please consider contacting the BC Green candidate in your area to offer help and support! https://www.bcgreens.ca/volunteer

The Botterell team hopes to “paint the town” – and islands! – green with signs. Have you requested your sign? Or, can you help them deliver signs or put up highway signs? If so, please contact to [email protected]

They will also have several signs waves, mainstreeting, and canvassing planned throughout the day. Check out the details and sign up here (events page is updated regularly).

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