CANADA: Anti-pipeline protests

In Canada, as in previous years, a key focus of protest was against the construction of oil pipelines. In protests in February against the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia, people blockaded railway lines and blocked access to a construction site. Members of the Indigenous Wet’suwet’en Nation made clear that they had not given their consent to the project. A protest camp was aggressively cleared by militarised police with dogs, and six people were detained, while numerous journalists reported that the police had prevented them from covering the raid. The raid however had the opposite effect to that intended, sparking wider protests across Canada, as multiple further rail barricades were set up, causing weeks of disruption.