[IPSM] (no subject)

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Quote from the article below:
"It could also, conceivably, shut down Canada's only tactical bombing
range at Cold Lake."

This is incredibly important for many reasons. One, Canada only bombs in
places like Afghanistan, where the perversity of having practiced in
territory belonging to Dene & Cree (totaling up the bombing range) how to
exterminate weddings from above in Kandahar should be rather obvious.
Secondly, this range has recently involved Israeli aircraft practicing
alongside their colonial brothers and sisters from Canada. While Dene and
Cree territories are torn up and made poisonous with help from
Caterpillar-- who exclusively have contracts to make HUGE profits from
building the bulk of the equipment that we know of as the largest in the
world such as the giant trucks that hold hundreds of tonnes of earth per
run-- Caterpillar also helps Israel by exclusively constructing the
massive bull-dozers that raze the homes of Palestinian civilians for their
colonial project.

To have Dene and Cree de facto shut down tar sands development
successfully and simultaneously help defend innocent civilians against
Israeli atrocities would be one of the greater anti-war acts carried out
in North America in recent memory-- while also striking a massive blow
against the largest and worst industrial project in human history.

Or, put another way, decolonization here can move forward anti-colonial
resistance elsewhere.

--M

***

Law Suit a Tar Sands Stopper?

Win for Alberta Cree band could clog up oil ambitions.
By Tom Sandborn
Published: July 28, 2008

Jack Woodward and the Beaver Lake Cree aim to change Canadian law -- and
their success likely would throw a huge wrench into Alberta's tar-sands
oil production.

The suit pits the Beaver Lake Cree band against the governments of Canada
and Alberta, asking the court to rule invalid the government authorization
for thousands of petroleum projects on the band's core territory.

Woodward, a Victoria-based Aboriginal-law expert, filed the suit on behalf
of his clients this May, and says its intent is to lay the groundwork for
a new legal regime governing resource extraction on land reserved for or
claimed by Canada's First Nations.

A victory would allow the Beaver Lake Cree to demand much higher levels of
accommodation and consultation from government and industry on oil and gas
operations on their territory.

Woodward thinks a win could create a precedent that will allow other bands
to enforce similar demands across the multi-billion-dollar oil-sands
projects in Alberta's north.

It could also, conceivably, shut down Canada's only tactical bombing range
at Cold Lake.

Woodward has a track record to be taken seriously. In November of last
year, as lawyer for the Tsilhqot'in First Nations, he helped win a
landmark B.C. Supreme Court decision that said the provincial government
had overstepped its authority in granting land-use rights to firms without
Tislhqot'in approval.

Woodward believes the Tsilhqot'in case, also known as the 'Xeni decision,'
underscores the point that Aboriginal rights to hunt, trap and fish create
an obligation on government to proceed in ways that do not make those
rights meaningless by reckless authorization of resource exploitation.

Cynthia Dickens of Justice Canada in Edmonton will act as lead counsel for
the federal Crown in defending against the claims of the Beaver Lake Cree.
Speaking from her offices in Edmonton, Dickens told The Tyee that neither
she nor the representatives of the Alberta government had yet filed
statements of defence in the matter.

Mike Hudema, tar-sands campaigner for Greenpeace in Alberta, thinks the
case could have immense implications. "If the Beaver Lake Cree win clearly
in this case, it could mean an end to development on their territory,"
Hudema told The Tyee.

"The precedent could slow tar-sands development across Alberta. The
consultation process with First Nations before development began has been
absolutely terrible. I'd love to see them win, not only for their own
interests, but also for the sake of everyone in Canada," Hudema said.

'We will fight as long as it takes'

"All of the animals are starting to deplete," said Beaver Lake Chief
Alphonse Lameman, in whose name the action was launched, on the day his
people went to court. "Soon there will be nothing. We will fight as long
as it takes to get justice. The governments of Canada and Alberta have
made a lot of promises to our people, and we intend to see those promises
kept."

The ancestors of the Beaver Lake Cree people signed a treaty with the
federal government in September of 1876, a deal that guaranteed them
reserves and some other benefits, including the right to hunt and fish
throughout the tract surrendered, "saving and excepting such tracts as may
from time to time be required or taken up for settlement, mining,
lumbering or other purposes...."

Since then, the governments of Canada and Alberta have authorized over
16,000 projects, mainly oil and gas exploration and extraction, on the
core territories of the Beaver Lake Cree.

The governments have also arranged the leasing of land within the
territory to the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range, Canada's only tactical
bombing range. The Cree band has gone to court to argue that development
has occurred without proper consultation with them, without proper caution
about protecting the habitats necessary to make their treaty rights to
hunt, fish and trap meaningful, and without proper environmental and
species inventories.

Win could spill into oil sands

The core traditional territory of the Beaver Lake Cree lies near Lac
LaBiche on the margins of oil sand development, but if the band wins this
case at the Supreme Court level, it could create precedents for other
First Nations in Canada, including those whose claimed territories are
where the tar-sands oil rush is underway in Northern Alberta.

The oil sands, viscous deposits of tar-like bitumen underlying areas of
Alberta larger than Florida, are estimated to contain over 175 billion
barrels of proven oil reserves, with at least one oil company spokesman
estimating the total reserves at up to two trillion barrels, or eight
times the size of all Saudi Arabia's oil supplies.

Husky: 'We take it seriously'

One of the installations on Beaver Lake Cree land targeted by the May
legal action is Husky Energy's Tucker Oil Sands Project north of Cold
Lake. When the company announced the opening of the project, its press
release estimated that the Tucker lease contained 1.27 billion barrels of
discovered resource, and that the project would recover approximately 352
million barrels of oil over a 35-year project life.

Contacted in his Calgary office last week, Graham White, who speaks for
Husky, declined to comment on the court action, but did confirm that
Husky's Tucker Oil Sands Project lies within the area disputed by the
Cree.

Nadine Barber, who speaks for Devon Canada Corporation, a firm with many
projects within the Beaver Lake Cree territory, says that her firm will
not intervene in the court action.

"The filing is with the two governments," she told The Tyee. "Devon will
take no role during the trial. After the decision is rendered, we'll
discuss whether to intervene. We do, however, take Aboriginal matters very
seriously. We try to deal with all such matters consistently and
respectfully."

Huge stakes on both sides

Exploitation of the tar sands is now seen in industry circles as
economically viable in an era of steeply rising oil costs, while
environmentalists worry about the pollution created in cooking the oil out
of the tar sands, as well as global warming effects as more oil and gas go
into the global pipeline.

Politicians foresee a fortune in tax revenues, but most of Canada's
leading environmental groups are calling for a moratorium on further
development until or unless the tar sands projects can be made genuinely
sustainable.

"Anything that slows down tar-sands development would absolutely be a good
thing," says David Suzuki Foundation climate-change campaigner Dale
Marshall. "Greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands are three times the
volume per barrel extracted at conventional wells. These are huge
strip-mining operations with terrible impacts on biodiversity."

Greenpeace campaigner Hudema agrees. He said tar-sands development
represents an environmental and human-rights crisis for Canada,
threatening to destroy two river systems, dump double the emissions
currently generated by Canada's car and light trucks into the air by 2020
and cover more than 50 square kilometres of Alberta with toxic tailing
ponds by 2015.

Hudema is also worried about the potential health impacts on those who
live downstream from tar-sands development, pointing to increased rates of
rare cancers in Fort Chipewyan.

Precedents cited by Cree counsel

"Given that we now have federal and provincial governments across Canada
willing to back mining and tar-sands exploitation against Aboriginal
rights, we can look for no statutory relief," Beaver Lake Cree counsel
Woodward told The Tyee.

"Both levels of government have been passing legislation to make stopping
these projects impossible. Only First Nations can stop or force
modifications to them now," Woodward said. "We all depend on First Nations
to do the heavy lifting on environmental protection."

Woodward said he believes that precedents created by a 2005 Supreme Court
of Canada ruling in a case brought by the Mikisew Cree nation will support
a win for his Beaver Lake clients. The court ruled, he says, that a First
Nation can oppose industrial activity on its land if that activity makes
the treaty rights to hunt, fish and trap meaningless by destroying the
healthy habitats necessary for the rights to be exercised.

Stuart Rush, Q.C., a distinguished senior member of the Aboriginal law
bench and one of the leading counsels in the precedent-setting Delgamuukw
case, thinks that the Mikisew case is an appropriate precedent for
Woodward to cite.

"Mikisew is a powerful authority," he told The Tyee. "This is a strong
precedent. Tsilhqot'in, on the other hand, is obiter dicta, not precedent.
That said, this new case represents the cutting edge on Aboriginal law. No
court in Canada is going to give a First Nation an absolute veto on
resource extraction, but levels of consultation and accommodation could
well be strengthened by a win at Beaver Lake."

'Impressive' claim: enviro law expert

David Boyd, an environmental expert based in Victoria with affiliations
with the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and the
University of Victoria, says that the statement of claim prepared by
Woodward for the Beaver Lake Cree is "impressive."

"The Beaver Lake Cree are the latest David to challenge the tar-sands
Goliath, and while the odds are stacked against them, you've got to admire
their courage," Boyd said in an e-mail to The Tyee. "Even if they
eventually emerge victorious, no single lawsuit is likely to strike a
decisive blow against the tar sands. Instead, Aboriginal people,
environmentalists, judges and politicians (both in Canada and around the
world) will have to join forces to slow down the reckless expansion of
Alberta's dirty oil juggernaut."

"Governments and industry ignore our concerns," Beaver Lake Chief Lameman
said. "This is our home. This is where we live. We have a responsibility
to our children, and to our children's children, to see that the lands
where the Cree live, and will always live, remain inhabitable."

The case is now in a case-management process overseen by Justice K.D.
Yamauchi, and a first meeting of all counsel and Justice Yamauchi will be
held August 18 to determine timelines. Dickens of Justice Canada said she
expects that both Canada and Alberta will file their statements of defence
sometime in the fall. Dickens declined to comment on what might be at
stake for the Crown in the matter.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/07/28/LawSuit/



--
Macdonald Stainsby
Co-ordinator,
http://oilsandstruth.org
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In the contradiction lies the hope.
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