Mozambican slave descendants fight for ‘full victory’ after Durban land claim win

Bureaucracy, disagreements keep Makua from their property

BY KIM HARRISBERG -08 October 2021 - 

The KwaZulu-Natal Land Claims Commission ruled in 2004 that the Makua were the rightful owners of the land..

Image: 123RF:/ginasanders

Abey Canthitoo was eight when tractors roared in to demolish his home and turn his neighbourhood into a whites-only area during SA’s apartheid regime. Six decades on, his community is reviving its fight to get back the confiscated land.

Canthitoo is one of thousands of descendants of freed northern Mozambican slaves - known as the Makua people - brought to SA by the British in the 1870s after they intercepted illegal slave ships en route to Zanzibar.

Now 67, Canthitoo said his memories of the eviction forever called to mind his great-grandmother’s kidnapping by slave traders in Mozambique - and her struggle to build a new life in Durban.

“I remember children screaming and crying and my parents having to throw our belongings into a truck,” said Canthitoo from his home in Bluff - the neighbourhood his family was forced to leave and where Canthitoo later returned to buy a house.

“That’s why this land claim means so much, we need a place for all of us to call our own,” Canthitoo, a businessman, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, as his grandchildren ran and played through his house.

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The Makua were taken to Bluff in what is now KwaZulu-Natal to fill the province’s labour shortage - an idea British Empire officials found so useful that they sent for more Makua to expand this growing labour force, according to community elders.

From the Ogiek in Kenya to the Hai//om in Namibia, the Makua are one of many African communities still battling the after-effects of colonial rule including slavery, land grabs and racial classification.

The KwaZulu-Natal Land Claims Commission ruled in 2004 that the Makua were the rightful owners of the land. But Makua elders say that the handover process has been unclear and that reaching an agreement with some of the current land owners has stalled.

When contacted, Durban authorities and the commission said they thought the land had already been handed back to the community.

“We would like an opportunity to go back and find out what is going on so we can try and do some mediation for parties involved and figure out why it has been delayed for so long,” said Nokuthokoza Zulu, a commission spokesperson.

Frustrated by the impasse, in August some Makua elders asked the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), an independent institution, to help facilitate the land handover.

The SAHRC acknowledged receipt of the complaint and said they were assessing the information provided.

“Winning the land claim was a partial victory, but we want a full victory, we want what is due to us,” said Canthitoo, adding that they plan to build housing, a business park and a cultural centre for the country’s 200 Makua families.

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Divide and rule

Though Britain once enthusiastically promoted the slave trade, the Slave Abolition Act in 1833 outlawed slavery throughout the Empire, so naval patrols were set up to intercept illegal traders, according to Durban-based researchers.

The interception of the Makua - also known as the Zanzibaris because some passed through or were en route to the Tanzanian island - changed their descendants’ lives forever as they were pulled into the beginnings of white-minority rule.

SA became a nation state within the British monarchy in 1934 and over a decade later, after earlier wars between the British and Afrikaans Dutch descendants, the country was ruled by Afrikaner nationalism and racial segregation.

The Group Areas Act of 1950 used a divide-and-rule method to physically segregate racial groups into specific residential and business areas. For the Makua - as with other communities in SA - the forced racial classification split up families with different shades of skin or hair types.

“They wanted us to fit into boxes, families were torn apart,” said Alpha Franks, a Makua leader and activist from his home in Chatsworth, a township established by the apartheid government in the 1950s to segregate the Indian population.

Despite being uprooted, more than once, and segregated from family, the Makua held onto their traditions and culture, said Franks, pointing to the vegetable patch he had set up on his street where cassava and other traditional crops are grown.

The Makua are now one of SA’s smallest and lesser-known minorities - many still speak the Makua language alongside Zulu or Afrikaans and practice their ancestral traditions.

“Land would afford us the chance to keep our community together and our culture alive,” said 64-year-old Franks, sitting in his family lounge.

Justice

When the KwaZulu-Natal Land Claims Commission handed over title deeds to 5.2-hectares (12.8 acres) of land in Bluff, it felt “like a dream”, said Canthitoo, who has been working with an attorney since the late 1980s to pull together a case.

But logistics, bureaucracy and failed talks with some of the landowners - as well as what the Makua view as suspicion from surrounding homeowners - have prevented the Makua’s return.

The delay has left many members of the community “disillusioned and divided”, said Franks.

“We’re trying to rekindle the passion,” he said.

Canthitoo often visits the cemetery where some of his ancestors are buried in Bluff, as well as the mosque built on the original worship site of his Makua forebears.

“What keeps me going is justice for my community. We were robbed of something and this land won’t heal us, but it will help us close an ugly chapter,” he said. 

Thomson Reuters Foundation 

UN deforestation scheme under scrutiny after Indonesia debacle

By AFP
Published October 11, 2021


Protecting trees is key to meeting ambitious climate goals, with tropical rainforest loss accounting for about eight percent of annual carbon dioxide emissions, according to monitoring platform Global Forest Watch - Copyright AFP/File Romeo GACAD
Sam Reeves, with Lucie Godeau in Jakarta

The collapse of a $1-billion deal to curb Indonesian deforestation has highlighted the pitfalls of a UN-backed global initiative, which critics say has been ineffective and trampled on indigenous communities’ rights.

Protecting trees is key to meeting ambitious climate goals, with tropical rainforest loss accounting for about eight percent of annual carbon dioxide emissions, according to monitoring platform Global Forest Watch.

“This is make or break for the global climate,” said Frances Seymour, a forestry expert from US environmental think-tank the World Resources Institute.

A key tool in the fight has been the United Nations-backed REDD+ mechanism, a framework where public and private funds are paid to developing countries to curb emissions by reducing deforestation.

Hundreds of projects have sprung up worldwide under the initiative over the past decade and major donors include Norway, Germany and Britain.

Projects range from national-level schemes supported by foreign governments to smaller, private ones, which generate “carbon credits” to be sold to firms seeking to offset emissions.

But the initiative has been dogged by controversy, with environmentalists saying projects in some places, including Cambodia, Peru and the Democratic Republic of Congo have failed to involve local communities and deliver on promised benefits, in some cases leading to conflict.

Last month, Indonesia, home to the world’s third-largest expanse of tropical forest, walked away from the $1-billion deal with Norway, having received only a tiny fraction of the money.

– Fundamentally flawed –

Globally deforestation has only escalated in recent years — destruction of pristine rainforest was 12 percent higher in 2020 than the year before despite a global economic slowdown, according to Global Forest Watch.

Joe Eisen, executive director of Rainforest Foundation UK, said REDD+ is fundamentally flawed: “The architecture is wrong. It reduces forests down to their carbon values, rather than the intrinsic other values they have — like the people and nature.”

“Forests are so much more than the amount of carbon they absorb.”

For the initiative’s detractors, the collapse of Indonesia’s deal with Norway, which was agreed in 2010 in a bid to reduce the Asian nation’s rampant deforestation, has underlined REDD+ weaknesses.

The agreement outlined steps Jakarta needed to take, including developing a strategy to combat forest loss and come up with a monitoring system with the bulk of the payment to be based on deforestation reduction results.

But changes “advanced more slowly than expected” and deforestation actually increased initially, according to a 2015 report by the Center for Global Development.

And while figures show forest loss slowed in Indonesia in the past five years, authorities say they did not receive the expected first payment of $56 million for this success.

Indonesian officials told the Jakarta Post they terminated the deal because Norway had shown “no goodwill” and set additional requirements such as documentation on how the cash would be spent.

But Norway’s ministry of climate and environment told AFP they believed the “few issues that remained could have been resolved relatively quickly”.

Environmentalists fear the unravelling of the agreement is a blow to Indonesia’s climate efforts.

“Does this rejection of Indonesia’s most prominent international partnership signal a lack of ambition to reach… emissions reductions goals?” said Greenpeace forests campaigner Kiki Taufik.

– Ancient forests lost forever –

According to Global Forest Watch, Indonesia in 2001 had 93.8 million hectares (230 million acres) of primary forest — ancient forests which have largely not been disturbed by human activity — an area about the size of Egypt.

By 2020, this figure had decreased by about 10 percent, meaning the archipelago lost virgin forest cover the size of Portugal.

Although the rate of forest loss has slowed since 2016, experts are sceptical the Norway deal played a substantial role, pointing to other factors, such as slower economic growth and higher rainfall.

Another major criticism of REDD+ is that schemes often fail to consider indigenous groups, whose lands and rights are often affected, or to properly compensate them for their role in protecting forests.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, local communities were not consulted before projects began, leading to violence and bloodshed, according to a Rainforest Foundation UK report.

A report by NGO Fern found villagers in one Cambodian project said they had received little if any of the money for their work patrolling lands to help prevent trees being cut down.

“REDD+ has so far been pursued without really paying attention to (indigenous communities’) rights,” said Alain Frechette, from the Rights and Resources Initiative, which has studied some REDD+ schemes.

The Amazon Fund set up in 2008 to pay for curbing deforestation in Brazil, to which Norway contributed $1.2 billion, has been hailed as a REDD+ success by some.

Seymour said: “It was definitely a thumb on the scale in terms of getting international recognition and finance that solidified political support.”

But deforestation has escalated sharply since President Jair Bolsonaro came to power and rolled back environmental policies.

Seymour — who is also chair of the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions, which certifies national and provincial-scale credits under the mechanism — says the system should not be dumped but overhauled to focus on large-scale initiatives.

Referring to the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels, she said: “There’s no way you can meet the Paris temperature targets without stopping tropical deforestation.”

Africa: WHO: Global Health Community Prescribes Climate Action for Covid Recovery

Pixabay  (file photo)

11 OCTOBER 2021
UN News Service

Ambitious national climate commitments are crucial for States to sustain a healthy, green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new UN health agency report launched on Monday in the lead-up to the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Based on a growing body of research confirming numerous and inseparable links between climate and health, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) COP26 Special Report on Climate Change and Health spells out that transformational action in every sector, from energy, transport and nature to food systems and finance is needed to protect people.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the intimate and delicate links between humans, animals and our environment”, said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “The same unsustainable choices that are killing our planet are killing people”.

An urgent call

WHO’s report was launched at the same time as an open letter, signed by over two thirds of the global health workforce – 300 organizations representing at least 45 million doctors and health professionals worldwide – calling for national leaders and COP26 country delegations to step up climate action.

“Wherever we deliver care, in our hospitals, clinics and communities around the world, we are already responding to the health harms caused by climate change”, the letter from the health professionals reads.

“We call on the leaders of every country and their representatives at COP26 to avert the impending health catastrophe by limiting global warming to 1.5°C, and to make human health and equity central to all climate change mitigation and adaptation actions”.

Fossil fuels "killing us"

Both the report and open letter come as unprecedented extreme weather events and other climate impacts are taking a rising toll on everyone.

Heatwaves, storms and floods have taken thousands of lives and disrupted millions of others while also threatening healthcare systems and facilities when they are needed most, according to WHO.

Changes in weather and climate are threatening food security and driving up food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, while climate impacts are also negatively affecting mental health.

“The burning of fossil fuels is killing us. Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity”, states the WHO report. And while no one is safe from the health impacts of climate change, “they are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable and disadvantaged”.

10 Priorities to safeguard the world 

 

Commit to a healthy, green and just recovery from COVID-19.
Make COP26 the ‘Health COP’, placing health and social justice at the heart of discussions.
Prioritize climate interventions with the largest health-, social- and economic gains.
Build climate resilient health systems, and support health adaptation across sectors.
Transition to renewable energy, to save lives from air pollution.
Promote sustainable, healthy urban design and transport systems.
Protect and restore nature and ecosystems.
Promote sustainable food supply chains and diets for climate and health outcomes.
Transition towards a wellbeing economy.
Mobilize and support the health community on climate action.

Climate actions far outweigh costs

Meanwhile, air pollution, primarily the result of burning fossil fuels, which also drives climate change, causes 13 deaths per minute worldwide, according to WHO.

The report states clearly that the public health benefits from implementing ambitious climate actions far outweigh the costs.

“It has never been clearer that the climate crisis is one of the most urgent health emergencies we all face”, said Maria Neira, WHO Director of Environment, Climate Change and Health.

“Bringing down air pollution…would reduce the total number of global deaths from air pollution by 80 per cent while dramatically reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change”, she pointed out.

Dr. Neira added that a shift to more nutritious, plant-based diets “could reduce global emissions significantly, ensure more resilient food systems, and avoid up to 5.1 million diet-related deaths a year by 2050”.

Call to action

Although achieving the Paris Agreement on climate change would improve air quality, diet and physical activity – saving millions of lives a year – most climate decision-making processes currently do not account for these health co-benefits and their economic valuation.

Tedros underscored WHO’s call for all countries to “commit to decisive action at COP26 to limit global warming to 1.5°C – not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s in our own interests”, and highlighted 10 priorities in the report to safeguard “the health of people and the planet that sustains us.”

Indigenous leader warns Amazon ruin could spark global 'apocalypse'

Gregorio Mirabal says indigenous people living in the Amazon basin are fighting to save the massive tropical rainforest and prevent a global "apocalypse" - 

Copyright AFP John MACDOUGALL

By AFP
Published October 11, 2021

Santiago PIEDRA SILVA

Birds chirp near a river in the Ecuadorian jungle, five hours from the capital Quito, as Gregorio Mirabal expresses fear for the 500 tribes that often act as guardians of the Amazon rainforest and who face attacks, and even death, as a result.

Mirabel, the head of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA), calls on developed nations who will gather at the COP26 — the climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland — to collaborate with indigenous people to protect the 8.4 million square kilometers (3.2 million square miles) of the Amazon.

Mirabal is one representative of the 3.5 million indigenous people of the Amazon, who live across nine countries and territories — Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.

A member of the Wakuenai Kurripaco people, Mirabal, 54, says that 17 percent of the forest has already been wiped out by oil and mineral exploitation, as well as pollution and deforestation for agriculture and livestock.

— How do you see the future of the Amazon? —

There are two scenarios: (one is the) apocalypse, with no return. People will run out of oxygen, the planet will warm up in 50 years, by two or even three degrees. Life on this planet will not be possible if the Amazon disappears.

The other scenario (is) that our children can bathe in this river, learn about what is here, see the trees, the biodiversity, see this macaw fly. This is the scenario we propose to the world if it helps us protect 80 percent of the Amazon.

— Is the damage reversible? —

If Amazon deforestation reaches 20 percent, it will be very difficult to go back. The desertification, the lack of water, the fires will devastate the Amazon. We are at a turning point.

The Amazon is being murdered, its oil, its natural resources are being taken away, and they don’t want to leave the forest alive. They want to raze it. This is a cry from the forest, we say enough is enough!

— Why is it important to protect the Amazon? —

It’s one of the largest reserves of fresh water on the planet. It has the greatest biodiversity in the world, which guarantees the balance of the climate. Each tree generates clean air and collects the waste that comes from other countries, from the pollution, but for this we receive nothing.

If (world leaders) do not spend money on a missile but on the Amazon, that is fine with us. But this funding must be global, and distributed equally among the nine countries.

But there is no clear funding today in this sense. We don’t know how much money has been invested in the Amazon, if it gets here and when.

The vaccine (against Covid-19) still has not arrived in the communities, and it has been two years since the pandemic broke out. If we depended on governments, we would be dead already.

— What are the greatest dangers you face? —

The worst danger is our governments’ lack of political will, which goes hand-in-hand with corruption, the non-enforcement of our rights.

Developed countries must consider the Amazon as a territory that also supports them. We want to protect the Amazon to protect humanity.

— Who are the Amazon’s biggest enemies? —

The big banks of the planet are financing the destruction of the Amazon by providing the resources for oil exploitation and other forms of predatory activities.

It’s also up to our conscience to stop consuming so much plastic, so much energy. We do not realize that human beings have become the worst enemy of nature and life itself.

Brazil represents almost 60 percent of the whole Amazon basin. With President Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation, illegal mining and the killing of our brothers and sisters have increased. This is the worst government we have in the Amazon basin.

— Where is there the most risk for environmentalists? —

Brazil and Colombia are among the most dangerous places in the world if you’re a conservationist or indigenous leader.

Then comes Peru. This is because activists oppose oil, mining or logging companies. In 2020, there were 202 murders in the Amazon. The figure for 2019, which was 135, has been exceeded.

BC

Pipeline Standoff: Wet’suwet’en Block Effort to Tunnel under Morice River

On the scene where Coastal GasLink’s plan to install pipe under the river bed has been halted for 11 days.

Amanda Follett Hosgood 4 Oct 2021 | TheTyee.ca
Amanda Follett Hosgood is The Tyee’s northern B.C. reporter. She lives in Wet’suwet’en territory. Find her on Twitter @amandajfollett.

A roadblock preventing Coastal GasLink from accessing a site where it plans to drill under the Morice River, or Wedzin Kwa to the Wet’suwet’en. RCMP have visited the site several times since the camp was created on Sept. 24, making two arrests. Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.

At the turnoff, four workers with Coastal GasLink security gather in orange and yellow vests, their voices edged with frustration as they talk above four idling pickup trucks that release a haze of exhaust into the early morning light.

One very lucky Tyee reader will receive full access to the city’s hottest literary event.

Another pickup faces off against the group, blocking access to the rough and muddy spur road that leads to the pipeline worksite.

It’s a scene that has played out every day for the past week and a half on Wet’suwet’en territory, as land defenders block pipeline workers from accessing a site where Coastal GasLink is preparing to drill under the Morice River and install the pipeline.

On Sept. 24, protesters used Coastal GasLink’s own machinery to dig up the rough resource road that connects this junction to a worksite two kilometres beyond. A camp was established at the site and a school bus used to block access. The school bus has since been removed — twice — by RCMP and Coastal GasLink before being returned to its place in the road, which has been roughly repaired by the pipeline company.

Known to the Wet’suwet’en as Wedzin Kwa, the Morice River becomes the Bulkley, eventually flowing into the Skeena River at Hazelton. It’s a major artery through the territory and source of sustenance and tradition for the nation, as well as the territorial boundary between the Gidimt’en Clan’s Cas Yikh house and the Unist’ot’en, a house group belonging to Gilseyhu Clan.
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According to Molly Wickham, a Cas Yikh house member whose Wet’suwet’en name is Sleydo’, it was never a question of whether they would fight to protect Wedzin Kwa. Only a question of when.

“It’s always been about Wedzin Kwa,” she says. “Everything that’s happened up until now has been about Wedzin Kwa.”

Molly Wickham, whose Wet’suwet’en name is Sleydo’, stands next to Coastal GasLink’s pipeline right-of-way where she and other land defenders have built a camp on Gidimt’en Clan territory. 

Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.

The current standoff takes place 63 kilometres down the Morice West Forest Service Road south of Houston, B.C., the site of two past police actions. In early 2019, RCMP arrested 14 people, including Wickham, when they raided a roadblock at Kilometre 44, where members of the Gidimt’en Clan had erected a camp to re-occupy the land and keep pipeline workers out.

A year later, in February 2020, four camps along the Morice were raided after Coastal GasLink was granted a permanent injunction to continue its work on Wet’suwet’en territory. The final day of arrests took place at the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre, just a few kilometres from the current roadblock, where Wet’suwet’en resistance to pipelines began more than a decade ago. In total, 28 people were arrested over five days, seven of them at the healing centre.

Police have already arrested two people in the latest standoff. But today, the camp and blockade two kilometres beyond the turnoff from the forest service road are quiet. It’s the first day that RCMP haven’t arrived to read the injunction or threaten arrests, and the land defenders busy themselves working on projects around the camp as a raven hops brazenly nearby, the inquisitive tilt of its head appearing to ask what’s for breakfast.

The camp has been established on a muddy site intended as a helipad next to Coastal GasLink’s right-of-way. The pipeline route, which the company says is more than 90 per cent cleared through this section, extends 670 kilometres from northeast B.C. to Kitimat, where it will connect with LNG Canada’s processing and export facility.

It’s only by walking the right-of-way to where clearing stops about a kilometre below camp that you hear Wedzin Kwa gurgling beyond. Here, the 30-metre-wide route expands several times over, its surface scraped bare and mud threatening to consume a rubber boot. Deer and bear have left their marks in its surface.

It’s here that Coastal GasLink plans to stage its drilling operation, the vast expanse of muck a holding area for lengths of 48-inch pipe. Slash piles and dirt mounds tower several times the height of a person. An abandoned bulldozer sits idly nearby, a sign reading “Active Work Site” appearing to mock the scene

.

A cleared area several hundred metres wide just above the Morice River, Wedzin Kwa, is intended to store lengths of 48-inch pipe during Coastal GasLink’s drilling process. 

Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.

Where the clearing ends, a narrow trail begins. It leads to Wedzin Kwa, where the river’s edge is quiet, continuing as it has for millennia. A pair of seagulls dip and dive over the river.

“That’s our main river, Wedzin Kwa. That’s where our salmon are,” Hereditary Chief Na’Moks, John Ridsdale, says about the river’s significance as a food source and lifeblood for the nation. “We’re the Wet’suwet’en. This is who we are — the land, the air and the water.”

In its 135-kilometre journey through the Skeena watershed, the pipeline route crosses 206 watercourses, according to a technical data report submitted as part of its 2014 environmental assessment application, tributaries that offer vital spawning habitat for salmon.

This stretch of river below Morice Lake, Wedzin Bin, “supports important Chinook salmon spawning and holding areas,” according to the data report. Pink, coho and sockeye salmon are also found here, and steelhead and bull trout use the river on their way to spawning channels upstream.

“These areas and other accessible tributaries also provide critical rearing and overwintering habitat for juvenile salmon and resident char and trout,” the report says.

The report indicates there is no low-risk period for working within the waterways. Salmon occupy Wedzin Kwa up to 11 months of the year, and other species fill the mid-summer gap when fry have left their spawning ground in spring and the return of salmon in late summer.

“There are fish of one species or another that are in that waterway at all times of the year,” says Michael Price, a fisheries biologist and researcher with Simon Fraser University who co-authored a sockeye-recovery plan with the Office of the Wet’suwet’en.

Price says sockeye returns in Wedzin Kwa plummeted in the mid-20th century, from an estimated 70,000 a year to an all-time low of about 1,000 in the mid-1950s. Work to recover salmon populations has been ongoing for more than 50 years, with moderate success. By the early 2000s, returns appeared to rebound, levelling off at between 10,000 and 20,000 returning sockeye each year — still well below historic numbers

.

Below Coastal GasLink’s drill site, Wedzin Kwa continues as it has for millennia. ‘This is who we are,’ says Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Na’Moks, ‘the land, the air and the water.’ 

Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.

But even as the nation, in partnership with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, works on a strategy to rebuild salmon stocks, industry continues to impact salmon habitat.

This spring, Wickham says the river’s silty runoff season, when people avoid drinking its water, lasted several months instead of the usual several weeks. She suspects it was the result of industrial logging in the watershed. Trenching through creeks and streams in preparation to lay pipe beneath the riverbed will likely also release silt and sand into the waterway.

“My biggest fear is that we’re never going to be able to drink from Wedzin Kwa again... and that it will impact spawning salmon,” Wickham says.

Price says the continued effects on the watershed — things like habitat destruction, overfishing and climate change — act as a “death by a thousand cuts.”

“Fish need cold, clean, contaminant-free water. Whenever you have industrial projects that take place in or near water, there’s a high potential for damage,” he says.

“I’m amazed that a project like this has been allowed to go ahead given that there’s at least one endangered population of salmon up there. There’s a rebuilding plan that Fisheries and Oceans was part of, and we can’t even stop an industrial project like this from taking place.”

Workers with Coastal GasLink security placed an orange T-shirt, symbolic of Indigenous children who died at residential schools, at the junction of Morice West Forest Service Road and a spur road leading to a pipeline worksite. Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.

In an email to The Tyee, Coastal GasLink says it’s not required to limit work on river crossings to least-risk windows — June and July — under its environmental assessment application if it’s using trenchless crossings, where a tunnel is bored below the river rather than disturbing the riverbed.

The company says its plans to use micro-tunnelling, which uses a hydraulic jack to force pipe into the ground behind the boring machine, is “the most precise and state-of-the-art” drilling method available. The almost 900-metre span is expected to take 10 months to complete, the company says. It did not respond to The Tyee’s question about how deep the drilling would go.

This is the only trenchless crossing in Wet’suwet’en territory.

“Nothing like that’s ever happened along that river system, ever,” Chief Na’Moks says about the company’s plans to drill under Wedzin Kwa. He says something as simple as a bridge constructed over a river can be enough to keep salmon from migrating upstream.

A hereditary Chief recently met with the BC Oil and Gas Commission and Ministry of Energy and Mines to request a moratorium on the drilling, he says. When asked about the request, the Oil and Gas Commission says that any changes in the project’s timeline are up to Coastal GasLink.


‘If They Destroy This, They’re Wiping Us off This Territory

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It’s unlikely that Coastal GasLink would voluntarily agree to further delays. The project has been plagued with cost overruns and setbacks, largely due to protests and the pandemic. The delays have led to tensions with LNG Canada.

With drilling already a year behind schedule, Wickham speculates the company is feeling anxious to regain access and begin the work.

“They cannot afford this conflict or any delays,” she says.

Wickham says the land defenders’ ability to delay the project is a testament to the strength of these occupations, which have been backed by hereditary Chiefs from all five Wet’suwet’en clans, and sends a cautionary tale to industry attempting to work in Indigenous territories without explicit consent.

“What happens here is going to set a precedent for all other industries that want to trespass on our land without free, prior and informed consent from our hereditary governance system,” Wickham says. “Industry needs free, prior and informed consent from Indigenous people.”


Coastal GasLink Spills More Contaminants in Wet’suwet’en Territory

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Coastal GasLink did not address The Tyee’s questions about the delays, project timelines or how significant the current setback is for the project, saying only that progress continues with almost 50 per cent of construction complete. It has already done five trenchless crossings of other rivers, it says.

Back at the turnoff, the workers, who say they are with Coastal GasLink security, have hung an orange shirt from a pylon next to the road. On the eve of Canada’s first Reconciliation Day, the symbol recognizes Indigenous children who were forcibly taken from their families, many of whom died at residential schools.

When approached, the workers pull out video cameras and decline to answer questions.

A fifth man arrives in another pickup, wearing an identical orange T-shirt. When asked about the shirt’s message, his response is brisk.

“To show our support for the missing children,” he says, edging toward his vehicle as he speaks. “We all have children and we all know. That’s why we’re doing it. Just to show support.”

The man declines to give his name.

Shaylynn Sampson, from the Gitxsan Nation, drums as she and Molly Wickham, who carries the Wet’suwet’en name Sleydo’, sing together at a camp designed to block access to Coastal GasLink workers. 

Photo by Amanda Follett Hosgood.

Back at camp, Wickham is thinking about her own children and their future here on the territory. It’s been a week in camp and she doesn’t know when she’ll see her family. It all seems really crazy, she acknowledges, recalling a recent moment when she left her cabin in the dead of night.

As she stared into the darkness, her headlamp beam caught the nearby right-of-way, its trees razed by machinery.

“And I was like, no, that’s crazy,” she says.

“I feel like it’s so normalized to see the destruction of the land that it doesn’t feel absurd to people... What we’re doing should be normal and destruction of the land should not be what seems normal.”

BC
A New Squamish Study Puts an Actual Price on Nature

It found a local estuary delivers more than $12 million a year in benefits. And it keeps appreciating.

Amanda Follett Hosgood 6 Oct 2021 | TheTyee.ca
Amanda Follett Hosgood is The Tyee’s northern B.C. reporter. She lives in Wet’suwet’en territory. Find her on Twitter @amandajfollett.

The 150-hectare Squamish estuary runs roughly five kilometres along the town’s western flanks. All photos courtesy of the Squamish River Watershed Society.

How much is a thriving ecosystem worth?

How do you do a cost-benefit analysis of healthy salmon stocks, flood prevention, bird watching, carbon sequestration or the ability of eelgrass to filter pollutants from the marine environment?

How do you place a dollar value on something that is, in fact, priceless?

A new report attempts to do just that by placing a monetary value on natural assets in the Squamish River estuary, tallying local and global benefits, direct economic contributions derived from use, and the value of not using some resources at all.

Its conclusion: The Squamish River estuary is worth over $12.6 million a year.

For the record, that’s roughly equal to 10 single-dwelling Vancouver homes, a luxury yacht, Drake’s car collection or a dead shark.

Clearly, placing monetary value is tricky business. So why attempt to try and place it on something as invaluable as nature?

“This is just a way of starting the conversation about understanding and valuing nature, not only for its beauty and how it nourishes our soul, but also its inherent monetary value and its function,” says Patricia Heintzman, spokesperson for Squamish River Watershed Society. “It’s so complex that we haven’t even begun to figure out how to actually put a real number on that.”

The society released the report, called “Natural Capital Assets: The Squamish Estuary” last month in partnership with the Squamish Nation, the Healthy Watersheds Initiative and the Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program.

It itemizes things like habitat, fisheries, clean water and carbon storage in an attempt to value natural capital and raise awareness of the important role natural assets play in the wider ecosystem.

The organizations hope the document will provide a starting point for a larger discussion about the health and value of the estuary, Heintzman says.

“The challenge, I think, is to express the complexity and the interdependence of it, but unfortunately the way we currently analyze and study this kind of thing isn’t fully developed,” she says. “It’s an emerging new economic science.”

Estimated at almost 150 hectares — equal to 200 soccer fields, Heintzman notes — the estuary runs roughly five kilometres along Squamish’s western flanks. The community is known as a destination for things like fishing, water sports and birding.

The estuary itself provides a home for wildlife like juvenile salmon, river otters and seals, along with bird species that include great blue herons, eagles, turkey vultures, trumpeter swans and purple martens.

It also provides global benefits in the form of carbon capture and sequestration.

The estuary was altered back in the early 1970s, when an attempt to build a deep-sea coal port resulted in the construction of a dike meant to divert the Squamish River. The port never happened — the environmental assessments found the estuary was being greatly undervalued, Heintzman says — but 50 years later, the remaining berm continues to impact the estuary.

“In the past, natural assets have not been viewed equally to engineered assets, nor have they been included in financial management plans,” the report says. “Like any asset, natural assets need to be carefully protected and managed to ensure a sustainable supply of services.”

The report attempts to value the goods and services provided by the estuary by tallying costs for each asset’s use, indirect use, future use and value when not used as all — for example, protecting a species at risk.

It divides natural resources into ecosystem goods (quantifiable things like fish and water) and ecosystem services, such as flood mitigation and carbon sequestration.

According to the report, the ocean’s vegetated habitats are among the most productive carbon sinks on the planet, with aquatic environments like estuaries sequestering carbon at 90 times the rate of forested areas. It places the value of carbon storage and sequestration at over $60,000 a year.

Past flooding has cost residents tens of millions of dollars, the report notes, and climate change is increasing risks. An intact estuary ecosystem acts as a buffer, estimating the estuary’s value for “disturbance regulation” at between $1 million and $5 million per year.

It also includes a dollar value for clean water ($289,025 per year), nature-based educational opportunities ($22,209 per year), and habitat ($195,170 per year). Recreation and tourism are estimated at $400,000 a year, and the market value of fisheries is $3 million a year, it says.

Although the report recognizes the estuary’s “significant value for the Squamish Nation since time immemorial,” it does not attempt to put a dollar value on it, simply labelling the value “unknown.”

No one from the nation was available to comment. However, the report recognizes the shortcomings of placing dollar value on cultural assets.

“By identifying culturally significant sites, using archaeological techniques, other Indigenous values have been lost,” it says. “There are currently limited methods to evaluate Indigenous cultural and environmental values, so they are likely being undervalued.”

It says a First Nations Cultural Assets Tool is being developed to better assess Indigenous values.


New Model Helps Cities Value Natural Assets, Like Wetlands, as Infrastructure\

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In recent decades, attempts have been made to rehabilitate the Squamish River estuary, Heintzman says. Most recently, the Central Estuary Restoration Project has worked to restore fish habitat, tidal connectivity and the estuary’s overall function. For example, Chinook salmon in the estuary once numbered 15,000 a year. That plummeted in the 1980s to about 500 a year but has rebounded to 5,000 a year with restoration work.

That restoration not only creates an argument for investing in the estuary; it indicates that its value is appreciating, Heintzman says. “This is absolutely a living document,” she says about the recent report.

Heintzman also admits that there’s a potential downside in placing monetary value on the estuary.

“But at the same time, we don’t have any conversation about the value of nature now, and if you just simply say something is priceless, then it often actually devalues it,” she says.

Left behind': Climate activists fight for inclusive COP26

By AFP
Published October 11, 2021

Greta Thunberg's Fridays For Future movement has drawn huge crowds into the streets. — © AFP Eléonore HUGHES

The Covid-19 pandemic offered young climate activists from Africa, Asia and South America a unique opportunity to connect online with their counterparts in the West and have their voices heard.

But now many are worried the pandemic may keep them from attending crucial climate talks in Glasgow, where they hope to push world leaders on issues facing poor countries on the frontlines of climate change.

Flooding, fires and extreme heat are just a few of the climate-change induced catastrophes that experts say will more adversely affect communities in lower-income countries as the planet steadily heats up.

Activists from those countries fear that without their presence, their voices will be ignored at the upcoming COP26 summit opening on October 31.

“We’re only going to be left behind again,” said Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a climate activist in the Philippines.

“We need leaders to hear our stories, they don’t know what it’s like to be afraid for your life because of floods,” the 23-year-old told AFP from Marikina city, regularly hit by typhoons made more powerful by rising seas.


Activists around the world, including Kenya, have linked up with the Fridays For Future movement. — © AFP

Tan is one of several climate activists AFP has been following in the lead-up to COP26, billed as humanity’s last chance to avoid catastrophic global warming.

She will be going to COP26, but many will be not, hampered by a lack of access to vaccines, travel restrictions and limited funding.

– ‘Systemic injustices’ –

Like hordes of other activists from the so-called global south — less industrialised, lower-income nations — Tan has linked up with Greta Thunberg’s Fridays For Future movement that has inspired massive street protests around the world.

But as the pandemic swept the globe, activists were forced off the streets.

They connected online, carving out a space for activists from lower-income countries to have their concerns heard.

“In online spaces, the distances between the global north and the global south become less relevant,” said Joost de Moor, an assistant professor at Sciences Po university in Paris.

Some created the Most Affected Peoples and Areas (MAPA) group within Fridays For Future, pushing for the climate crisis to be linked with other “systemic injustices” related to class, gender, race or disability.

“When we started, we just wanted a group chat to talk and feel safe with one another,” Tan said of the group, which started on WhatsApp.

It blossomed. Around 10 two-hour long calls were organised between activists across hemispheres.

They exchanged experiences and points of view, an opportunity to talk about the impact of climate change in lower-income countries.

“For young environmentalists in the global south, climate change directly affects their quality of life, housing and their capacity to provide food for themselves,” said Sarah Pickard, a researcher in youth political participation at Paris 3 University.

– Underrepresented, most affected –

Another issue that emerged: sourcing the natural resources required to shift to renewable energies.

Filipina climate activist Mitzi Jonelle Tan says ‘we need leaders to hear our stories’ 

— © AFP

The World Bank estimates that over three billion tonnes of minerals and metals will be needed to deploy wind, solar and geothermal power necessary for the green transition.

But many companies producing these resources — mostly operating in lower-income countries — are accused of rights abuses.

“It’s not just about reducing carbon emissions, it’s also about the way it’s done,” Tan said.

With COP26 around the corner, many are hoping these issues will be front-and-centre.

But few will get the chance to travel to Glasgow.

“Underrepresented groups are left out, yet they are the groups who are already the most affected by the climate crisis,” Nigerian climate activist Kelo Uchendu told AFP from the southern city of Enugu.

In the north of his country, droughts and desertification have pushed herders to migrate in search of forage and water to feed their cows, leading to conflict over scarce natural resources.

The 25-year-old mechanical engineering graduate hopes issues like this will be brought to the attention of the head of COP26, Alok Sharma.

He has helped collect activists’ input to local COPs (Conference of the Parties) across Africa to be handed to Sharma at the meeting.

But he might not be the one to do it. He has only secured partial funding to travel, and has not yet received his Covid-19 jab.

– ‘Can’t ignore us’ –

Having a global voice extends beyond the COP26 summit for Kenyan activist Kevin Mtai.

Without international support, local projects can be tough to implement.

“You are on your own or maybe with some volunteers,” the 26-year-old said, referring to the gardening project in orphanages and schools he set up in Kenya to teach children how to plant vegetables sustainably.

But when he hosts events linked to Fridays For Future, organisations often help with funding and media coverage.

Despite the groundswell of climate awareness, optimism is tempered ahead of COP26, with many activists sceptical the high-level talks will deliver.

“We have to pay a lot of attention to what is said, but most of the work is going to come from climate activists,” 25-year-old biology teacher Catalina Reyes Vargas told AFP from Colombia.

She won’t be attending because she has not received a second Covid-19 jab and her country is on Britain’s travel red list.

Filipina activist Tan says regardless of what happens, they won’t be silenced.

“True change comes from the streets,” she said.

“We have to be so loud they can’t ignore us.”

Southwest says staffing shortages contributed to flight snarls

By AFP
Published October 11, 2021

After initially blaming air traffic control issues and weather for thousands of flight cancelations, Southwest Airlines on Monday acknowledged that staffing shortages also played a role in the service disruption.

The carrier cancelled 1,124 flights on Sunday — by far the highest rate of any airline — 800 the day before and another 326 on Monday, according to airline tracker FlightAware.

“On Friday evening, the airline ended the day with numerous cancellations, primarily created by weather and other external constraints, which left aircraft and crews out of pre-planned positions to operate our schedule on Saturday,” the low-cost carrier said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, the out-of-place aircraft and continued strain on our crew resources created additional cancelations across our point-to-point network that cascaded throughout the weekend and into Monday.”

CNBC reported Southwest Chief Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven acknowledged to employees that the company “is still not where we need to be on staffing, and in particular with flight crews.”

Like most airlines, Southwest let employees go when air traffic collapsed as the Covid-19 pandemic began, but has seen business surge this year as vaccinations spur people to travel again.

The weekend’s snarls caused speculation that some pilots or other Southwest staff were participating in a work slowdown as a way to express opposition to the company’s decision to require its employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

In their statement, Southwest said “the operational challenges were not a result of Southwest employee demonstrations” and they hope to restore normal operations “as soon as possible.”

The Southwest pilots union has also denied the speculation.

Southwest had earlier blamed air traffic control issues for the delays, but on Sunday, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Twitter: “No FAA air traffic staffing shortages have been reported since Friday.”

“Some airlines continue to experience scheduling challenges due to aircraft and crews being out of place,” the agency added.

Southwest, airline pilots union deny claims that anti-vaccine walkouts prompted cancellations

October 10, 2021 in a tweet:
“Countless Southwest Airlines employees have walked out of their jobs to oppose the vaccine mandate, causing operations to effectively shut down.”

A Southwest Airlines jetliner takes off from a runway at Denver International Airport on Sept. 14, 2021, in Denver. (AP)


By Bill McCarthyOctober 11, 2021


IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT

Southwest Airlines said its thousands of recent flight cancellations “were not a result of employee demonstrations.”

The president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, which has taken legal action to temporarily block the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, called claims about a pilot walkout or sickout “false” and said the union is forbidden to take such actions.

Flight disruptions such as bad weather can have a cascading effect and lead to many more delays and cancellations.

See the sources for this fact-check

In separate statements to the press, Southwest Airlines and the union representing its pilots denied the widespread internet rumors that claimed the airline canceled thousands of flights because crew members walked off the job or called in sick to protest the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Southwest canceled more than 1,000 flights scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 10, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking service, even as competing airlines called off relatively few flights. Between the evening of Friday, Oct. 8, and the morning of Monday, Oct. 11, the Dallas-based airline dropped more than 2,000 flights nationwide, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The airline said that air traffic control issues and weather challenges in Florida disrupted flights on Oct. 8, setting off a cascade of cancellations and delays nationwide that compounded as the airline scrambled to recover from crews, aircrafts and customers that were displaced.

But the cancellations occurred shortly after the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association petitioned a court to temporarily block the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, prompting speculation among some social media users that the flights were dropped not because of bad weather or other issues, but because Southwest pilots staged a walkout or sickout in a protest against the mandate. The unsubstantiated posts were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)



An Oct. 10 tweet claiming Southwest Airlines cancellations were due to pilot walkouts in protest of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

"Countless Southwest Airlines employees have walked out of their jobs to oppose the vaccine mandate, causing operations to effectively shut down," said one Oct. 10 tweet.

"Southwest is canceling flights and blaming the weather because their employees are saying NO to the authoritarian vaccine mandate," said another post on Instagram.

"Pilots are using their sick time before they are terminated on Nov. 24 due to the (vaccine) mandate," said a post on Facebook.

The posts received hundreds of thousands of engagements across Facebook and Instagram, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool. They were buoyed by conservative influencers such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who tweeted that the cancellations were President Joe Biden’s "vaccine mandate at work." (The CNBC report Cruz shared with his tweet included a statement from a Southwest spokesperson calling that rumor "inaccurate" and "unfounded.")

But the posts were refuted by several key groups, including the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. The union said in an Oct. 9 statement, "We can say with confidence that our pilots are not participating in any official or unofficial job actions." In a second statement Oct. 10, the union’s president, Casey Murray, addressed the rumors more directly:

"There are false claims of job actions by Southwest pilots currently gaining traction on social media and making their way into mainstream news. I can say with certainty that there are no work slowdowns or sickouts either related to the recent mandatory vaccine mandate or otherwise. Under the (Railway Labor Act), our Union is forbidden from taking job action to resolve labor disputes under these circumstances. SWAPA has not authorized, and will not condone, any job action.

"SWA has claimed that the immediate causes of this weekend’s meltdown were staffing at Jacksonville Center and weather in the southeast U.S., but what was a minor temporary event for other carriers devastated Southwest Airlines because our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure."

The union said Oct. 5 that it is not against vaccines, but it decided to take legal action against Southwest’s requirement because the airline made the decision without negotiating.

Murray told the Dallas Morning News that the data showed that pilot sick rates during the heavy cancellation days were "exactly in line with where they were all summer with the same kind of operational disasters."

"The weekend challenges were not a result of employee demonstrations, as some have reported," Southwest Airlines added in an Oct. 11 statement to PolitiFact.

The airline said its operations were returning to normal. It pinned the weekend cancellations on the weather and air traffic control issues in Florida the evening of Oct. 8, saying the combination "created significant flight disruptions throughout our network and we spent the weekend working to recover from the high number of displaced crews, aircraft, and customers."

Similarly, the Federal Aviation Administration tweeted that there have been no air traffic staffing shortages reported since Oct. 8 — contradicting related social media rumors, which claimed air traffic controllers had also staged walkouts or sickouts to protest the vaccine mandates. An FAA spokesperson told PolitiFact that any staffing issues would be seen on the agency’s website.’

The FAA’s tweet said the problems the evening of Oct. 8 were "due to widespread severe weather, military training, & limited staffing in one area of the Jacksonville en route center."

The chief operating officer of the Jacksonville Aviation Authority also refuted the rumor about a walkout led by air traffic controllers in an internal email, which was obtained by a local reporter. The COO said the Jacksonville staff was limited Oct. 8 because of a combination of controllers who were on normal, approved leave, or at home because they had just been vaccinated.

On Twitter, Southwest initially attributed the dropped flights to "(air traffic control) issues and disruptive weather," although other airlines did not have to cancel nearly as many flights. In an Oct. 10 memo to Southwest employees, Alan Kasher, Southwest’s executive vice president of daily operations, described a domino effect triggered by the problems from that evening.



In this frame grab from cellphone video, passengers look for information on their flights on Oct. 10, 2021, at Dallas Love Field. (AP)

A delay or a cancellation in one place can cause a delay or a cancellation elsewhere, as pilots, flight attendants and planes get displaced and struggle to stay on schedule. That can snowball to create further staffing shortages as flight crews time out and can’t operate planned flights.

There are fewer flight options than usual to reroute crews and passengers who encounter problems, Kasher said.

Southwest had been slated to run its highest number of scheduled flights on Oct. 10 since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the Dallas Morning News reported. After the disruptions on Oct. 8, the airline cancelled more than 800 flights on Oct. 9, and then over 1,000 on Oct. 10.

Similar issues plagued airlines over the summer. Social media users claimed that widespread cancellations from Spirit Airlines and American Airlines in August were the result of walkouts from crew members protesting the vaccine mandates. PolitiFact rated those claims False.
Our ruling

A tweet said, "Countless Southwest Airlines employees have walked out of their jobs to oppose the vaccine mandate, causing operations to effectively shut down."

The claim — along with other variations circulating online — is unsubstantiated. Southwest and the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association denied that Southwest pilots led any such walkout or sickout to protest the vaccine mandate. They attributed the flight cancellations to other factors, including bad weather and other issues on Friday that prompted a wave of cancellations.

Without evidence, we rate this claim False.

Our Sources

Tweets, Oct. 10, 2021

Facebook and Instagram posts, Oct. 10, 2021

CrowdTangle, accessed Oct. 11, 2021

The Associated Press, "Southwest cancels hundreds more flights, denies sickout," Oct. 11, 2021

The Dallas Morning News, "Southwest Airlines, union insist pilots didn’t walk out to protest vaccine mandates," Oct. 11, 2021

The Dallas Morning News, "Here’s why Southwest Airlines had to cancel more than 1,000 flights Sunday," Oct. 11, 2021

Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, "SWA in the News," Oct. 10, 2021

The FAA on Twitter, Oct. 10, 2021

Ben Becker on Twitter, Oct. 10, 2021

Errol Barnett on Twitter, Oct. 10, 2021

Ted Cruz on Twitter, Oct. 10, 2021

CNBC, "Southwest Airlines cancels 1,800 flights, blaming weather and staffing," Oct. 10, 2021

Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, "Press Release: Operational Difficulties," Oct. 9, 2021

Southwest Airlines on Twitter, Oct. 9, 2021

Bloomberg, "Southwest Air Pilots Seek to Block Covid Vaccination Mandate," Oct. 9, 2021

Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, "Leadership Update: Vaccine Mandate," Oct. 5, 2021

Reuters, "Southwest Airlines to comply with Biden vaccine mandate by Dec. 8," Oct. 4, 2021

The Associated Press, "Southwest, American delays hint at hard summer for air travelers," July 6, 2021

PolitiFact, "No evidence airline crews walking off flights to protest vaccine mandate," Aug. 12, 2021

Statement from Southwest Airlines, Oct. 11, 2021

Email correspondence with the Federal Aviation Administration, Oct. 11, 2021

#DECRIMINALIZEDRUGS
Vancouver Council Supports Compassion Club for Heroin, Cocaine and Meth

As six people die every day from overdoses in BC, one group wants to hand out tested, clearly labelled drugs.

Jen St. Denis 8 Oct 2021 | TheTyee.ca
Jen St. Denis is The Tyee’s Downtown Eastside reporter. Find her on Twitter @JenStDen.

Vancouver’s council has backed a proposal that could help the Drug User Liberation Front provide safer drugs like heroin. The organization has already successfully provided tested drugs on three occasions. Photo by Maggie MacPherson.

Vancouver city council voted Thursday to support an attempt to start a compassion club that would provide drug users with untainted heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines in the midst of B.C.’s deadly overdose crisis.

Mayor Kennedy Stewart said he will now advocate for the model when he visits Ottawa Monday and meets with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Health Canada staff.

Dozens of speakers called in to tell councillors about their experiences responding to hundreds of overdoses, often getting there too late and finding their lifeless bodies, and of losing friends who had themselves saved others from overdoses before succumbing to tainted drugs.

The motion, brought forward by COPE Coun. Jean Swanson, asked the mayor and councillors to support a request for exemption from Canada’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that would let the compassion club procure drugs.

Vancouver Coastal Health also supports the application and will help implement the compassion club model if the exemption is granted.

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A group called the Drug User Liberation Front has applied for the exemption after running on three events in the Downtown Eastside where organizers handed out packages of tested and labelled heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, with no overdoses recorded.

But with no legal, regulated supply of those drugs available in Canada, DULF organizers have had to buy the drugs for each of those events from the dark web.

That was a concern for some councillors, who said they could not support a program that would buy drugs from an unknown source, potentially funding organized crime groups or terrorists.

“It would be disingenuous or naive to suggest that the dark web is not a vehicle for organized crime and people who perpetuate violence on other people, so what it amounts to is: should we endorse that particular model?” said Green Coun. Pete Fry.

“It’s endorsing a harm reduction for some, but (is harm) being perpetuated for others… by the people who are organizing on the dark web? How we get around this to support it in a way that does not endorse that?”

NPA Coun. Melissa de Genova repeatedly raised concerns about the dark web in response to many of the speakers who called in to support the motion, raising the spectre of child pornography and terrorism as well as the illicit drug trade. Independent Coun. Lisa Dominato also said she was concerned that buying from the dark web could support organized crime.

British Columbia’s tainted drug supply is becoming deadlier by the month. In 2020, drug toxicity deaths shot up and they’ve continued to steadily increase this year: 184 people died in July, the deadliest month recorded in 2021. In 2020, 1,734 people died of overdoses. If current trends continue, over 2,000 British Columbians could lose their lives by the end of 2021.

B.C. has the highest rate of drug deaths in Canada, at 40 deaths per 100,000 people — a higher rate than 48 U.S. states, including some of those hardest hit by the crisis like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The province’s illicit supply is now contaminated with fentanyl — a powerful synthetic opioid — as well as benzodiazepines and other dangerous additives. The mix is unpredictable and changes all the time, making it impossible for drug users to know what will happen when they take drugs.

Donald MacPherson, the executive director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, told council he supports DULF’s application for an exemption and the compassion club model.

MacPherson reminded councillors that other efforts like needle exchanges and safe injection sites were once illegal. But drug user activists persisted and showed how the services could operate and save lives even though they were breaking the law to do so — just as DULF is doing now.

The leadership of civic politicians, like former mayor Philip Owen, also helped to pave the way for Vancouver to adopt harm reduction services that were once taboo, MacPherson said.


In response to Fry and de Genova’s concerns about using the dark web to source drugs, MacPherson said in the absence of a safe, regulated and legal supply of drugs like heroin and cocaine, the DULF model presents a safer choice.

“We’re stuck with a tough dilemma. People are going to go buy drugs tonight from the illegal market, whatever that looks like — they will do that,” MacPherson said.

“The proposal before you acknowledges that that’s very dangerous and presents a way of making it safer, without having the ideal fix — which would be accessing legal regulated drugs, which we’re all trying to get to.”

Safe consumption sites, where drug users take drugs while trained staff or volunteers are on hand to prevent overdoses, work well to prevent death, but they don’t prevent overdoses to begin with.

Drug checking can tell users what’s in their drugs, but it’s also inadequate, Sarah Guzman told council. Guzman, who has worked as a drug checker, said she’s had the experience of telling people what’s in their drugs, but knowing they’ll take them anyway. In one case, she ran after someone to tell them how strong their drugs were, but found the person already overdosing.

Canada’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act allows the federal health minister to issue an exemption from any part of the legislation “for a medical or scientific purpose or is otherwise in the public interest.”

This Overdose Awareness Day, Activists Will Again Hand Out Safe Drugs

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Eris Nyx, one of the founders of DULF, said getting the Section 56 exemption is key to being able to move towards getting the drugs from a regulated and legal supplier.

One of those suppliers could be Fair Price Pharma, a non-profit company set up by former B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall to manufacture injectable heroin. However, those legal supplies are not yet available in Canada.

The end goal for many of the supporters of DULF who spoke to council is legalizing the currently illicit drug supply.

“It is the unpredictability of the drug supply that is killing people,” Jeremy Kalicum, a co-founder of DULF, told council.


NDP and Greens Push Trudeau to Answer Vancouver’s Call to Decriminalize Drugs

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“Drug prices are set not at fair market, but at prices that allow maximum financial exploitation, which in turn drives crime.”

In response to the concerns raised about buying drugs from the dark web, Swanson introduced an amendment to her motion, stating that council would support the exemption request as long as DULF gets its supply from a legal, regulated source.

De Genova voted in favour of endorsing DULF’s application for the Section 56 exemption, but against writing to Ottawa to support it and against asking city staff to look at other ways safe drug supply could be provided. The mayor and all other councillors voted in support of the entire motion.

Nyx said council’s support will help, but DULF is committed to running the compassion club with or without the political help.

“We’re going to run this program by hell or high water because it will save lives,” Nyx said. “We’re a radical organization. We don’t need state sanctioning — but it helps. Safe supply by any means necessary.”

* Story updated on Oct. 8 at 12:19 p.m. to correct Lisa Dominato’s party affiliation. In April 2021, Dominato left the Non-Partisan Association to sit as an independent councillor.