The day in protests and rail blockades did not improve much, with more temporary layoffs announced, and new blockades were erected across the country, one of them near Edmonton, which sparked locals going in to try and dismantle it themselves – the kind of escalating behaviour that could get out of hand very quickly, and yet several prominent Conservative voices were either cheering on that kind of behaviour, or “warning” that more of this would happen because people were “frustrated.” Meanwhile, in Parliament, Andrew Scheer threatened to move a vote of non-confidence as part of the Conservatives’ Supply Day today, but decided to withdraw it late in the day, planning instead on a motion to condemn the current handling of the blockades. One suspects he may have overplayed his hand by threatening non-confidence, but the performative outrage continues to roll along. The premiers are also agitating for a teleconference with Trudeau, which could also happen today, for what it’s worth. As for Jody Wilson-Raybould, she continues to insert herself into this discussion, as though anyone would trust her.

Deleted tweet. Peter MacKay got into a lot less trouble when his tweets were silly, trite tautologies about Canada being strong because strong is Canada be. pic.twitter.com/4JLLUelaN1

— Jason Markusoff (@markusoff) February 20, 2020

As for the underlying situation, here is look over the history of the consultations with the Wet’suwet’en, and how the company appeared to have cut some corners when it came to the hereditary chiefs and their concerns. Here is a look over some of the issues with the different types of chiefs, and what is known about the agreements with the elected chiefs, as well as some additional context on how Indigenous law interacts with Canadian law. As for the RCMP presence, the hereditary chiefs want them and any company personnel gone from the work site before they hold any negotiations, citing that their presence acts as duress otherwise, and no, replacing the RCMP with some kind of Indigenous police force would not change that situation. What could also complicate things further is that four of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have arrived in Ontario to meet with the Mohawks leading the blockades here (while the one Mohawk grand chief who counselled them to dismantle the blockades has now publicly walked back his comments).

So where to from here? It seems to me that given that the government cannot order the RCMP or other police forces to clear the blockades – particularly without escalating the situation and creating a series of Oka or Ipperwash crises across the country – nor can they order the RCMP to withdraw from Wet’suwet’en territory, it means that it’s up to Coastal GasLink to swallow the losses and go to the court to withdraw the court order that the RCMP went in to enforce that touched off this whole mess. One has to wonder whether anyone is counselling them to that very effect, but if that’s the way out of this situation, then they may have to take their lumps and do their part to walk the country back from the brink, because there don’t appear to be any clear paths out of this particular mess otherwise. It should also be a warning to other developers that they can’t keep cutting corners, particularly with regards to Indigenous peoples. CGL should have consulted the hereditary chiefs as well as the elected ones, provided proper reassurances that no, this was not a stealthy way to put a bitumen pipeline through their territory (because yes, that conspiracy theory is floating around), and done that work ahead of time. The days of cutting these corners has to stop, or we’ll keep going through this exercise time and again.

Good reads:

• Jonathan Wilkinson is formally asking Alberta to put meaningful regulations in place to enforce their planned 100 Mt cap on GHG emissions.
• Canada nearly lost out on a UN mission in 2018 because the Canadian Forces has trouble keeping enough women deployed at a time.
• Marilyn Gladu is now officially a candidate for the Conservative leadership, after her paperwork was approved.
• Natan Obed says that any UNDRIP legislation should include an Indigenous Human Rights Commission to ensure government compliance.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column walks through the threatened non-confidence motion that Scheer put forward and then didn’t run with.
• Kevin Carmichael pans the “tweaks” to the mortgage stress test, and teases out how this kind of counter-productive policy ends up coming to be.
• Economist Trevor Tombe shows how the Alberta budget is well below their projections because of persistently low oil prices, and that will have consequences.
• Colby Cosh notes that the current rail blockade situation has actually laid bare political philosophies between the parties, which can be a rarity.

Odds and ends:

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