Alberta’s proposed Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, also known as Bill 1, amplifies punishments given to protesters who obstruct and damage essential infrastructure. The bill is an attempt to silence the voices of dissent in Alberta, but its impacts spread farther than the province’s borders.
The bill was proposed amidst the rail blockades across the country in February, during a time of economic tension — which is difficult to imagine now that COVID-19 has left our economies in a worsened state.
The conflict on Wet’suwet’en territory reached a tipping point on Feb. 6 when the RCMP arrested multiple Indigenous land defenders on their own territory. Demonstrations soon popped up across the country as activists and land defenders expressed their support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs.
For Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, the demonstrations were acts of aggression rather than a peaceful means of pressuring the government to demilitarize the conflict and consult with the hereditary chiefs.
The bill doles out a minimum of $1,000 to $10,000 in fines or imprisonment of up to six months instead of a maximum fine in earlier bills. If an individual is charged with a second offence, fines can reach up to $25,000. Under Bill 1, each passing day of occupation is another offence. Fines and jail time can build up under Bill 1, and it is easy for protesters to rack up more charges than they were prepared for.
While there are many resources that discuss the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act in more depth, one primary concern is Section 5 of the bill that grants the Lieutenant Governor the power to make any buildings, structures, devices or other things “essential infrastructure.”
The bill does not distinguish between marked and unmarked infrastructure or land. As long as individuals are willfully entering a space where their presence is prohibited, the government can press charges. Nothing is stopping the government from charging individuals who are blocking traffic by picketing down a main road or those who joined a vigil that spilled onto the sidewalk.
The Alberta government has the power to spontaneously change what qualifies as “critical infrastructure” without having to mark off the land. This is problematic because they can use it to catch peaceful protesters without warning of the change to the law. It blurs the lines between legal and illegal protests, making them indistinguishable. These changes could scare new activists into silence. It has the power to slow down the fight for environmental action in Alberta, which was already a slow fight to begin with.
During readings of Bill 1 in parliament, Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) Michaela Glasgo and Prasad Panda both described the Indigenous land defenders as “eco-radical thugs” who disregard the rule of law. Similar name-calling has been used by Premier Kenney himself, who referred to protesters as “zealots of the green left” and continuously emphasized the lawlessness of their actions.
This name-calling is disrespectful. It discredits the arguments of these protestors and shrinks their motivations down to a purely environmental issue. These representatives in the legislature blame the conflict on their “urban green zealots” instead of confronting the main issue at hand — Indigenous sovereignty.
This bill gives Alberta the power to decide which voices matter and which do not deserve to be heard. Premier Kenney’s so-called “war room” at the Canadian Energy Center served the solitary purpose of fighting misinformation surrounding the oil sector and promoting “energy literacy,” which some critics interpreted as propaganda. Alberta’s perspective is already clear: they are dedicated to the petroleum industry and are threatening the democratic freedoms of dissenting voices.
Alberta only saw a handful of protests in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en and the rail blockade outside of Edmonton lasted less than 12 hours before it was forcibly dismantled by counter-protestors. The MLA for Central Peace-Notley — Todd Loewen — recalled Edmonton’s rail blockade and said that it demonstrated that “Albertans decided that they’d had enough.” The twenty protestors lost their freedom of expression when the blockade was dismantled while the government used the voice of 30 violent counter-protestors to support Bill 1, rather than elaborate on the consultation process involved in the bill’s creation.
The bill faced its second and third reading a few days after Alberta’s Energy Minister Sonja Savage said that because of the crowd limits amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, “it is a great time to be building a pipeline.”
Despite the pandemic, reconciliation and the climate crisis are still pressing concerns. Climate action in Canada must include its biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses — Alberta.
Alberta’s response is not just an obvious rejection of the environmental interest — Bill 1 turns into a conversation of reconciliation with the nations who lost their voices in colonization and are still having to fight for them.
Featured image from file.
