Those tasked with administering the law in B.C. have a different standard of how it is applied depending on whose rights are being violated and what they do for a living.
If you chose to defy a court order against resources workers the charge will be simple civil contempt with basically no consequences. When MP Elizebeth May pulled her public relations stunt and defied the Trans Mountain court injunction the judge gave her a pat on the head, with no consequences.
Given that example of the courts not respecting their own Court Injunction Fairy Creek protesters feel they have nothing to fear. When one of them appeared recently before Judge Davies he felt the need to apologize to her.
Local island politicians are tripping over each rushing to Fairy Creek hoping to get their name in the news. In reality they are telling the judges where to stick their court order.
If they Attorney General and his prosecutors had wanted to protect the rights of loggers to work they would have laid more serious criminal contempt charges. They failed them.
How would the law react if it was urbanites who were being blocked from going to work or getting their latte? If resources workers decided to protect our planet from green house gases and blocked the use of cars in and out of Victoria, how would the law be applied? The same as Blockades against resources workers? Could protesters expect to be left alone for months before the law applied for an injunction? Then weeks before an enforcement order issued. Charged with civil content only? Allow those on the blockade to keep changing? You get the picture. Not bloody likely.
Comedy hour will start when protesters start to appear in court. It will be interesting to see if the courts view themselves with the same level of respect Fairy Creek protesters have given their court order.
Art Duhame,
Campbell River
Founding Member Share BC, Past president,
North Island citizens for Shared Resources