The RCMP’s recently disclosed Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Assessment of Criminal Threats to the Canadian Petroleum Industry might be dismissed as a joke if its implications weren’t so disturbing.
Given the sweeping nature of proposed anti-terrorism legislation, what does this assessment reveal of attitudes about the environmental movement inside government?
The RCMP assessment lists several incidents of criminal activity directed at the petroleum industry. Fair enough. We all likely agree those involved in actual crimes, such as bombings and threats of violence, should be prosecuted.
But the police force then launches into a pro-petroleum polemic that tars the “broadly based anti-petroleum opposition” — hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Canadians — with the same brush as it does a handful of violent criminals.
The RCMP’s assumption that it’s somehow “anti-Canadian” to oppose the expansion of fossil-fuel infrastructure is simply wrong. It is also wrong that Canada’s police force should indulge in an ideologically based critique of a legitimate social movement. Its job is to enforce laws, not take ideological positions.
Beyond that, the report is rubbish. Its assessment of risk is not based on an investigation of actual threats but on comments from dubious media and industry sources. If this is what passes as “intelligence,” it makes one question the RCMP’s capacity to judge any threat.
Its first biased assumption is that opposition to the development of petroleum infrastructure runs counter to the national interest. It does not.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and even the International Energy Agency — Canada is a member of both — say it’s critical that we stop investing in infrastructure that locks us into the continued use of fossil fuels.
The next assumption by police is that there is something sinister about non-Canadians contributing money to environmental groups in this country or about foreigners coming here to protest large resource developments that could affect their country.
If there is something wrong with such foreign “interference,” then there surely must be something wrong with our prime minister or a premier travelling to the United States to promote Canadian pipelines. Or with Canadian companies lobbying for the Keystone pipeline in the U.S., or with foreigners investing in Canadian oil or pipeline companies.
The RCMP finds it menacing that some environmental groups have collected a lot of money to support their anti-petroleum activities. However, don’t such donations indicate substantial public support for these groups and the anti-petroleum movement?
The RCMP makes much of a report from an academic source about the nefarious use of social media by environmental groups to “dominate” the Internet and “recruit impressionable students” to “help save the planet.” How shocking!
How stupid can this thing get? Well, the RCMP goes on to cite a paper from a university student who made the startling discovery that Twitter is being used to mobilize people. That finding leads to this revelation: “Environmentalists are no longer confined to simply waving banners and yelling through megaphones: They have gone online.”
We actually pay people to churn out this nonsense?
If using social media is a sin, I guess the pro-petroleum movement will be cast into hell with the greens.
Any university instructor who receives a paper of this quality would give it a failing grade. Let’s hope this nonsense is not used as justification to impose Canada’s growing security apparatus on a legitimate environmental movement.
If this is what passes for intelligence, Canada is in danger.
Paul Hanley is a Saskatoon StarPhoenix columnist.
