Mounties Beef up Presence at Blockade

Jan 6, 2019 | 9:09 AM

PRINCE GEORGE – A three week old court injuction with a respect to a blockade 60 kilometres southwest of the town Houston may soon be acted on.

RCMP are explaining their beefed up presence at the site near the Morice River Bridge and the area accessed by the Morice West Forest Service Road. Police say they have maintained a dialogue with the protestors who set up the Unist’ot’en camp several months ago in the path of the Coastal GasLink LNG contruction project.

Mounties say should enforcement take place the number one concern is safety of all involved.  The media release states  “In planning for the enforcement of this injunction, police are taking the remote location of the Morice River Bridge into account and will be ensuring that enough police officers will be present in the area to keep the peace and ensure everyone’s safety. We also want to assure the residents that the day to day policing operations within the Houston area will be unaffected throughout the enforcement of the injunction.”

A statement on the Unist’ot’en Camp Facebook page this morning says “Tensions are high this snowy morning in Northern BC. We are peaceful, we are strong, and we are resolved to assert our rights to make our own decisions about what happens in our own territories. We have participated in your consultation processes and our answer has been, and always will be NO.”

Back on December 14th, 2018 an interim injunction was granted to Coastal GasLink through the BC Supreme Court to move ahead with pre construction activities,  which were blocked by the camp next to the Morice River Bridge.  Coastal GasLink is a 670-kilometre (420 mile) pipeline designed to transport natural gas from the Montney gas-producing region near Dawson Creek, B.C. to the LNG Canada facility in Kitimat.

There were reports on social media of a bus load of Mounties heading to the site last night. 

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