Pipeline protesters get financial support ahead of injunction application

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Protesters conducting an around-the-clock vigil against Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline in Metro Vancouver say they’re facing an uphill battle ahead of an injunction hearing today, but claim growing public support will let them continue their fight.

Protest spokesman Stephen Collis says the group, called the Caretakers, has already raised $40,000 from 600 separate donors for legal costs, and has the support from 100 environmental and labour organizations.

Collis, a Simon Fraser University professor, was among a noisy crowd who rallied outside BC Supreme Court ahead of the hearing aimed stopping protesters from blocking Trans Mountain survey work on Burnaby Mountain.

Speakers were met with loud cheers from placard-waving supporters as they pronounced the pipeline to be against the public interest.

The court action by Trans Mountain names five defendants in a $5.6 million lawsuit claiming trespass, assault and intimidation by activists who have prevented workers from conducting field studies for the pipeline expansion project.

Professor Lynne Quarmby of Simon Fraser University wants the BC government to ban so-called SLAPP suits — that’s an acronym for strategic lawsuits against public participation.

Quarmby says those suits used to be illegal here, and in Quebec that province prohibits them, with similar laws on the books in many US states.

“We all need to be asking [Premier] Christy Clark what happened,” Quarmby says. “Where is that legislation? We need protection. Why don’t we have anti-SLAPP legislation in British Columbia?”

Toby Mendel is the executive director with the Halifax-based Centre for Law and Democracy and says he has concerns with these sorts of lawsuits.

“They have a very serious chilling effect on free speech,” Mendel says of SLAPP suits. “They can be very intimidating for the party that has been threatened with the lawsuit. They have a much wider effect than that, because they basically tell the public that this is a company that is prepared to use essentially illegimate means to pursue its activities and remain free of criticism. They make it difficult for media people, civil society activists, to criticize these sorts of companies.”

About nine people have mounted a 24-hour protest in the conservation area, while scores more have participated in protests since early September, camping around bore hole sites on the mountain.

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