They really have nothing better to do.

Today, two more court challenges against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion were tossed out of court. One from the Squamish First Nation and one from the city of Vancouver. 

It is becoming increasingly clear that the law is fully on the side of Kinder Morgan in their efforts to expand the capacity of a pipeline that has operated safely for over 50 years. Horgan and other environmental ideologues will continue to waste the court’s time and the taxpayer’s money on more court challenges but they will eventually all be tossed out. They know this of course but their hope is that in delaying this legal project long enough that investors will flee. They may be right and Canada will lose untold other billions as we become an international investment pariah of a nation who allows themselves to be led by the nose by environmental extremists.

Assuming that Notley and Trudeau manage through promises and tax dollar backing to convince Kinder Morgan to continue with the project by the deadline next week and assuming the court cases get settled to the point where we can finally break ground on construction there still remains one huge problem, the protesters.

There is a subculture of career protesters in North America who wander aimlessly from cause to cause. It morphs identities. One year it is “occupy”, then “idle no more”, then “black lives matter” and lately they are self-styled “water protectors”. Its all the same group. Some of the faces come and go but at its core it is always the same group of people. Transients with little sense of purpose who have found a social group that accepts their pointless lifestyle as they pick a site to squat upon and protest against whatever their perceived cause of the day is.

There is no reasoning with these people because they are beyond reason. They latch on with causes but usually don’t even really understand what the cause is or what the outcome of their protest may be. Their demands are mixed, addled and often outright bizarre. They don’t want actual resolution to any cause. They just want to gather and feel a sense of purpose. Unfortunately their pursuit of this feeling of purpose is hindering some very important infrastructure projects.

I spent a fair amount of time around the squatters taking part in “Occupy” Calgary a few years ago. Below is a video with some dialog of an exchange that I recorded from what was very much a typical “occupier” and it demonstrates just how rational these people are.

How do you reason with people like this? How do you negotiate?

You don’t!

Lets not beat around the bush. If the Trans Mountain pipeline is ever going to be built, these protesters are going to have to be removed and with force.

Sadly, years of cowardly appeasement from governments at various levels has emboldened these people to the point where they have utterly no fear of legal authority. I honestly will never understand why governments fear this tiny subculture of bums so much but they will only enforce the law with them when utterly forced to do so if at all.

They laugh while literally giving the finger to cops who have been essentially neutered by politicians.

They giggle and take selfies in front of police lines comfortable in the knowledge that the police are about as empowered as a typical mall security guard despite flagrant lawbreaking happening all around them.

Again, why shouldn’t they?

In Burnaby the bums have been erecting buildings on the pipeline right of way and along the roadway leading to the Kinder Morgan terminal with utter impunity.

When I worked as a surveyor in the oilfield, I could not leave so much as an equipment trailer parked on a pipeline right of way. It is a safety hazard and I would have found myself fined and removed from the site if I refused to comply.

If you are a protester however, apparently you can build a “watch house” on the right of way with impunity. If an accident does happen, we can rest assured that these assholes will sue Kinder Morgan.

Ugly structures are being erected while junk and literal shit piles up in what once was a nice neighborhood. Local residents are petitioning to have this squatter encampment removed but their request to have the laws enforced have been ignored.

If I build so much as a large garden shed on my own property without a permit I can face fines. If I am a transient protester however, it appears that I can turn any residential neighborhood into my own little private garbage dump of a hobo camp.

This is all before the construction of the pipeline has even begun. Can you imagine how bad it will get once the equipment gets moving?

It is not just fiscal or legal security that Kinder Morgan needs. They need to know that they will be able to build their legal pipeline under the protection of the law of the land.

The government needs to clean out these squatters now as they will only multiply and entrench themselves further. It is a national embarrassment that Trudeau has let things go this far. He has plenty of tools to exert pressure upon municipalities and provinces to encourage them to enforce the law. He needs the will and the balls to do so however.

If for no other reason, these protesters need to be removed and charged for the protection of the environment itself.

Few things demonstrate the hypocrisy of these bums better than seeing the mess they leave behind after one of their squatting efforts. No person who truly cares about the earth would leave such a mess. As I said though, these people don’t really have a cause.

The above pictures are of what protesters left behind while protesting Kinder Morgan doing preliminary drilling a few years ago.

The bunch of pics above are from the Burnaby Mountain protest along with some “occupy” sites.

Rather consistent pattern.

Who can forget the million dollar cleanup of the mess left behind by the pigs protesting the Dakota Access pipeline? They even abandoned a number of dogs there.

Rapes, assaults and drug use are rampant in these camps as well. Calgary’s small “occupy” camp had not one but two different pedophiles amidst them who were charged during their stint in a downtown Calgary park.

As the title of this posting states, these people really have nothing better to do. The bums in the encampments are enabled by a variety of American activist groups along with individual hippies who won’t put their own necks on the line but will happily fund things so that others will. It is the free tents and food that draws these bums to these encampments. These are not friends of the earth. They are a tiny dispossessed minority who are being used by larger activist interests for their ideological ends. We need to remove these protesters for their sake and our own.

The hippies and hipsters from the city love coming out to these demonstrations. They love putting some token natives in the front of the line and they love letting somebody else take the brunt of the cost when the arrests actually begin.

Yes there have been some arrests and charges but in looking at the mess at the Burnaby terminal it is clear that we need more arrests and more serious charges. Rest assured the hipster crowd will vanish from the support ranks fast enough when their own criminal record free histories are are on the line.

First and foremost though the squatters need to be moved and the encampments totally removed. They won’t leave any other way as they indeed have nothing better to do.

 

Rally 4 Resources. A true grassroots movement.

I rarely cross post other people’s writings. My insecure vanity doesn’t let me share my space and limited readership with others often. 😉

The group “Rally 4 Resources” has really impressed me of late. They are a small group of people with limited resources but with their dedication they have been managing to make a good splash in support of resource development when we really need it.

They are organizing counter rallies at energy related events and they have been working to document and expose what the anti-energy movement is really all about.

Recently, Rally 4 Resources went to visit “Camp Cloud”. This is an encampment of protest squatters which is very reminiscent of the baseless “occupy” movement of the past. It is ramshackle, disorganized and over run with substance abuse. Despite that, they present themselves as a rational movement when they are anything but.

Enough out of me. I will let Rally 4 resources take it from here. Their pictures and video tell the tale better than I.

Their facebook page is here.   Their website is here.


Our visit to Camp Cloud on May 2nd was a complete eye-opener.

We had expectations from media reports of a large protest community. The media had been talking about thousands on Burnaby Mountain protesting Trans Mountain expansion and that idea was driving the national news narrative that BCers were against the project.

Reality was so far from that. We found 8 sketchy people in various stages of intoxication at 5 pm on a Wednesday afternoon. I gave them pet names like Punchy, Slurry, Ranty, Angry, Phony, Sell-out, Teen Rebellion and Rage Machine. But watching the video later we recognize some of these people from previous thug incidents in Northern BC. These aren’t protesters, they are known agitators like Matt Danes. Funny how the same people are never busy and are flown around to be involved in every issue in every city. Most of the tents and shacks were empty, just sitting there to be props in this piece of protest theatre, derelict vehicles, gas cans and propane tanks littered their camp and the irony was lost on no one in our small group of four.

We drove through it first to see if we were safe to approach our actual destination, the Kinder Morgan Burnaby Terminal security gate. We were kind of amazed looking at the garbage and not finding any people. We found one person on our first pass, he was using an electric saw to cut lumber for their newest feature, a carver’s cabin. Yes, an electric saw used to build a cabin on the shoulder of a highway in an anti-pipeline camp set up to protest oil and gas. So the reports of the camp using gas powered generators were confirmed right off the hop.

We carried on up the road to a park to check out the site of their Camp Cloud fb star filming herself kicking a RCMP officer while he made an arrest. There was indeed protesters’ motorhomes parked on the soccer field away from the protest camp like the video had shown. The man there was hostile so we went back down the road to the gate.

Along the way we stopped to talk to the locals walking and biking about their feelings on the camp. People were scared to be on camera, fearing retribution, and spoke of anger directed at the Burnaby Mayor and Premier Horgan, both were called some nasty names, complaints about the noise, traffic concerns, feeling under seige, and fearful of even walking their dogs alone. This is a beautiful residential neighbourhood surrounded by the green bush and park like space of the Kinder Morgan property. Some residents were concerned as their jobs were tied to the Vancouver ports and they openly wondered what the protesters would go after next.

We asked permission to be at the terminal gate and security obliged us to speak to workers as they left the facility and to present a banner “Pipelines to Tidewater” signed by pro-resource Canadians from across the country. The workers were hurting from the announcement the delays caused by the dithering and uncertainty necessitated 18 layoffs on site. They were very welcoming and appreciative to finally have a public show of support from the majority of Canadians on their site. Unfurling the banner stirred up Camp Cloud though.

They crossed the highway and demanded we leave in not so polite terms. They claim we were “trespassing on Salish unceded territory” despite the court order barring them from trespassing on Kinder Morgan property. Two men were instantly flexing and raging while a older man lectured us on how the world doesn’t have a demand for oil (false) and how oil gave all his dogs cancer(false and crazy). I giggled at the ridiculousness of his drunken claims but the laughing stopped fast as his camp mates circled around to flank us. Being circled and yelled at was definately overkill for just taking pics at the gate and ignoring them totally. This did not stop until I started filming with my cellphone. Once I was filming they retreated for a minute to get a phone to take our pictures and call in support from the city. We were soon accused of being from The Rebel (we’re not) and then accused of being paid professionals (we’re not).

So once again the whole crew crosses the street to bring their elder Rose Desjarlais to berate us. Their crew are extra cranky because we arrived during happy hour. She yells and tells us we cannot speak, we have no right to be there, and we don’t have the same right to protest as they do. She rambles on a story about how oil poisoned Alberta and her late mother, but fact is she lived to a grand old age of 96. She then says her family made good money working in oil and gas. Then switches back to saying she doesn’t care who loses their jobs. She did confirm her relationship to Chief Allen Adam, he’s her cousin. Her son is with her too. We perk up, a lot. Chief Adam is pro-oil. He’s so pro-oil he’s trying to build his own pipeline. Why is his family trying to shut down Kinder Morgan expansion and representing themselves as 1st Nations water protectors if he is trying to build pipe too? Oh because this is business. They are trying to shut down the competition of their family’s proposed pipeline. Suddenly it dawns on me this place has nothing to do with their cries of “leave it in the ground” or “water protectors”. They use propane, gas, drive F350s with Alberta plates and their cousins own projects that are Kinder Morgans’s competitors. What fools we were to think this was about the environment. It’s about money and power.

A Volkswagen pulls up quick and two young Starbucks looking hipster chicks hop out and start fixing their hair without putting down their mason jar drinks. Oh look, it’s the RCMP assaulting, previously arrested, facebook live attention seeking, Greenpeace Idol wannabee phony alias Uni Urchin. She sees the phone recording and fluffs her hair before giving us a valley girl line ” I hope, you like, you know, have water to drink…with your kids” followed by “Thanks but no thanks” and a smirk. So at this moment one of the hotheads is darting between vehicles on the highway. An older red compact car honks at him. He kicks the moving car and screams “F*ck you bitch”. He crosses back to us. Again the glowering teenager wrongly accuses us of being paid professionals before Uni herds her tipsy charges back across the road.

We look at each other very bemused since they came to the gate to harrass us. That’s all they’ve got, Chief Adam’s cousin, some muscle and the Greenpeace Idol valley girls that drove out to get on film. The two hotheads are still yelling, the girls get back in the Volkswagen and we thanked Rose for sharing her stories. We start the walk back to our car, a local stopped in his vehicle at the corner stop sign yells at the camp inhabitants to “get the f*ck out”. We are all a little relieved filming caused a signifigant change in their attitude and tactics towards us. We are all also stunned such a rag tag posse could be used by media to create the narrative Camp Cloud is a water protectors’ protest community impeding the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. We assume it must grow on weekends when the paid US organizers email their databases to get the Hastings social justice scene and Green politicians out to attend media events. It’s a nightmare for the usually peaceful suburban neighbourhood. It’s best called a grievance industry hobo circus taking US dollars to organize and some pretty bold home grown nepotism to shut down this Canadian resource project. Nothing more.

Respect the Burnaby residents who want the almost empty shanty town and garbage removed.

Respect the rule of law, get out of the way and let these hard working BC engineers, contractors and labourers earn a living. #buildKM

Respect the principle of our cooperative polite Canadian federation and let the west work and provide for their famillies, communities and transfer dependant have not provinces. #buildKM

Camp Cloud was a joke. End it before you have all of Vancouver’s street scene squatting there permanently.

Time to take back Olympic Plaza!

This embarrassing and expensive scene has gone on long enough. A small collection of squatters has been camped in our taxfunded park illegally for weeks now and the damages and costs are beginning to mount up. These kids have done an estimated $40,000 in damage alone to our park and the costs will only rise.

The Muslim Heritage day event which was booked and paid for in good faith will now have to hold their event in a dirty park (cant maintain and clean properly with squatters camping) and they will have less space than anticipated due to these tenters. Another group that had booked the plaza for Monday is now seeking a new location as will another group that is booked for Wednesday if we do not kick these kids out of our park.

Olympic Plaza was never designed for camping and due to that the damages are mounting up fast. Costs for extra policing and additional maintenance are building up. How many thousands of dollars will have to be refunded to the legitimate groups that have booked and paid for the plaza that will have to relocated due to the city allowing illegal squatting in our park?

This is a sad and expensive joke and is an embarrassment to our city. There is NO reason that we can’t evict these squatters from our park. There is a hollow and weak case being made that these squatters are protected by the Canadian Charter in this. That again is simply a load of BS. Speech is protected as is expression. Both speech and expression are possible without illegally camping in a downtown park. No rights are being repressed through evicting these kids.

If indeed that cowardly excuse of possible charter issues is valid, then I suggest that none of us in the entire city of Calgary need abide by bylaws ever again. The “occupy” group has never really explained exactly what they are protesting. I guess those of us who ignore other bylaws will not need a real reason for our protest either. If I refuse to licence my dog, I have a charter defense in it. I need only say “I don’t like social inequity and I am not licencing in protest”. By city council logic I am covered by the charter. Can I use this defense if I don’t pay parking tickets? Can I occupy a free seat on the C-Train in protest and make a charter challenge if I get a ticket?

Storage is expensive. I suggest that people should park their RVs and fifth-wheels in Calgary parks. Heck you can even camp there when you please. Dig a firepit for yourself. Vandalize the local bathrooms and displace other people using the park. It is OK. Just claim some vapid complaint about the way the world is and claim your action is your means of expression.

Is it becoming clear yet why making an exception in our bylaws for this gang of camping kids is a big deal? To most people it is something of a no-brainer.

Our city council is hiding in collective fear of the potentially poor optics that may happen if we actually enforce the law and kick these kids from the park. We need to take away their excuses. The fear of a charter challenge is utter BS as demonstrated above. I don’t think we really need to sweat a bunch of ragtag hipsters organizing and taking the city to court on a charter challenge anyway. That is simply way too much work for them. There is no charter right for squatting.

Another common dodge used by city councilors is claiming that there have been few complaints. From what I heard from the person on the other end of a 311 call, there have been many complaints already. Still, we need to ramp up the complaints.

Don’t let our city officials hide on this issue and lets not let these squatters cost the taxpayers any more than they already have!!

We must register our complaints and it must spread. Below are the means to contact city hall and your councilors. Use them and spread the word to neighbors and coworkers who are tired of this. Clearly city hall won’t move without some heavy prodding on this issue.

To begin with, simply call 311. There is an option for bylaw complaints. While on a coffee break give the number a dial and make a formal complaint of people camping after-hours in Olympic Plaza.

Calling is most effective but online complaints can be filed here if that is preferred.

Contacting the aldermen themselves is effective as well. They do try to hide direct contact information when possible. The beginnings of contact information for aldermen can be found here and here though.

On twitter many of our aldermen follow the #yyccc hashtag. Tweet them directly if you are on and demand that our park be cleaned up. Some but not all of our city council is on twitter. Their twitter handles are below.

@nenshi @yycgael @councilorkeats @pootmans @aldjonmar @bpincott @bigredyyc @peterdemong @druhfarrell

This issue will not go away until we as citizens make it go away. We can’t let city hall bury their heads on this while countless thousands of dollars are wasted, our park gets further damaged and innocent groups get displaced from events booked and paid for in good faith. Email tweet and call whoever you can on this folks. It has to come to an end and soon.