Dear editor,
I read with sardonic humour the recent anti-bullying ads placed by local federal MP Rachael Blaney and provincial MLA Ronna-Rae Leonard.
While proudly adorning pink t-shirts, I wonder if either of these politicos can reflect on the irony of their message as elected members of the same party that had the RCMP CIRG (Community Industry Response Group) violently unleashed on land defenders both in the Fairy Creek and Kaykuse watersheds and continually on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory to enforce the construction of the contentious and illegal Coastal Gas Link pipeline?
Both of these instances of police brutality against non-violent land defenders were in gross violation of the charter of rights and freedoms and in particular with the Wet’suwet’en - international, federal and indigenous law - an expression of wholesale bullying of the state against its own people and a sovereign indigenous nation.
I wonder if MP Blaney and MLA Leonard (or other MPs and MLAs for that matter) will be wearing green shirts on Earth Day to greenwash their party’s image and that of the companies they work for - notably Teal Jones in Fairy Creek and TC Energy and RBC who are building and funding Coastal Gas Link?
Jesse Gentes,
Cumberland