NativesVANCOUVER (CP) - The lawyer for a group of northern B.C. aboriginals says a mining company's attempt to extend an injunction against a road blockade is an "invidious and draconian weapon" used to criminalize opposition to resource development.
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Members of the Tahltan First Nation opposed a bid Monday by Fortune Minerals Ltd. of London, Ont., to extend an injunction granted in September against opponents of the company's plans for a coal mine on their traditional territory.
The injunction was set to expire Tuesday but Fortune lawyer Rosanne Kyle said preliminary drilling and environmental testing was not completed before winter set in because of delays in removing the blockade.
The RCMP arrested 15 people, most of them tribal elders, on Sept. 16 for defying the injunction two weeks after it was issued on Sept. 2.
"They really only had about two weeks of clear weather to do the drilling," Kyle told Justice Robert Bauman of B.C. Supreme Court.
Kyle said drilling can be wrapped up next spring but that opponents of the project have said publicly they intend to resume protests.
She conceded the reported statements don't mention the blockade but said the injunction is still necessary because "we cannot get into the heads of the defendants."
"I am troubled by the submission that the need for the injunction is at best speculative," Bauman commented.
The judge reserved his decision until Nov. 23, extending the injunction temporarily until then.
Lawyer Cameron Ward, acting for the protesters, urged Bauman to dismiss the extension application, saying it was "tantamount to an abuse of this court's process."
Such injunctions are "an invidious and draconian weapon (used) by big business to visit criminal sanctions on people," said Ward.
He noted that after obtaining the civil injunction, Fortune missed the deadline to file the required statement of claim detailing the damage caused by the protest.
Ward, who has represented environmental protesters since the mass arrests at Clayoquot Sound in 1993, said companies almost never follow up once they've succeeded in getting the courts to force police to arrest protesters.
Fortune is using the civil courts to make "ad hoc criminal law" that prevents people from asserting their rights, said Ward.
Kyle argued Fortune has the support of the local band councils, the native-owned Tahltan Resource Development Corp., and the Tahltan Central Council.
The blockaders represent a small minority mainly belonging to one family branch of Tahltan people, members of the Iskut band, who claim title to the Klappan Mountain area where the mine would be located, she said.
But Ward noted the Tahltan Central Council is not a governing body and that there are widespread divisions among the Tahltan people - 2,000 to 5,000 people depending on whose estimates are used - about how development should proceed on their traditional territory. The band council office was occupied for several months this year.
"This is, in short, a political issue, not an issue of civil litigation," Ward said.
The injunction extension should be adjourned until the province holds meaningful consultations with the Tahltan First Nation, he said.
Listening to the arguments, Bauman noted the hearing was not about the mining project or opposition to it, but concerned the company's legal right to use a public road.
The territory of the Tahltan Nation covers approximately 150,000 square kilometres in northwestern British Columbia and the Yukon, an area rich in wildlife and natural resources.
Besides Fortune, Shell Canada Ltd. tried to begin preliminary work on a project to extract coal gas from deposits there and several other companies have exploration permits in the region.
Opponents say resource development would defile the sacred headwaters of the Stikine, Skeena and Nass Rivers.
Kyle noted the area is not pristine. Fortune and its predecessors have spent $70 million exploring it and the 41 test holes the company was drilling were in an area "that's already like Swiss cheese."