Canada on the brink of terminal gridlock | Chris Selley

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When it comes to the rail blockade, the message boils down: ‘We hope they lose interest and leave.’ If that’s the best-case scenario, Canada is screwed

The majority of Wet’suwet’en First Nation members support the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline project, and they are in an objectively peculiar situation. On the one hand, the RCMP is doing its best to clear away the protesters and let construction proceed. On the other hand, anti-pipeline protesters claiming solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en have created chaos in their name — most notably the total shutdown of CN Rail’s eastern Canadian network, the cancellation of nearly every Canadian passenger train, and the layoffs and untold economic costs that go with that.

If protesters acknowledge the diversity of opinion among the Wet’suwet’en at all, they will defer to the authority of five hereditary chiefs who oppose the project, or observe that the five elected Wet’suwet’en band councils — all of which have signed community benefits agreements — represent a form of settler democracy imposed by the Indian Act.

They’re not wrong. But had Cabot and Cartier stayed home and farmed potatoes, surely Canada’s First Nations would not govern themselves today as they did 450 years ago. Settler Canadians know something of hereditary rule, after all: It tends to evolve, and often in the direction of democracy. You don’t have to like Western democracy to deplore the tyranny of a minority.

Read full article here.

Chris Selley – National Post – February 14, 2020.

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