Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information

Call to Action Against the PRGT Pipeline

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Nov 022024
 

Anonymous submission to BC Counter-info

As of August 2024, construction work has started on the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline. The project is owned by Western LNG and the Nisgaa Nation, the latter which has allowed for construction to start on their land first, the rural Nass river valley that sits adjacent to the Pacific ocean. State and industry are committed to developing an “energy corridor” through the remote region. The nearly completed and fiercely contested Coastal Gas Link pipeline was the first pipeline in the southern energy corridor, and PRGT is the first pipeline projected for the northern energy corridor. The line is set to end at Ksi Lisims LNG terminal (Nisgaa owned as well) where liquid and natural gas would be stored and prepared for export to international markets by tankers. LNG is being sold as a green alternative for those looking to shift away from coal. But the green transition is a lie. We know that energy, and its current reorganization, is inseparable from domination, capitalist exploitation and the extractivist logic that devastates the land. We propose attack.

Social tension is rising against PRGT. Multiple sites of resistance have been brewing across North-Central BC. In 2016, during the first attempts at construction, the Madii Lii camp was set up to blockade access to the pipeline right of way in the Suskwa valley in Gitxan territory. The camp remains to this day. Northwest of there, another Gitxsan blockade has been set up on the Cranberry Connector, the northern of the two roads into the Nass valley. Gitxsan people have a long history of defending their land, notably some anti-logging struggles in the 80-90’s, and expressing their solidarity with their Wet’swuwet’en neighbors by blockading railways. We stand in solidarity with native resistance, which will likely snowball into more blockades in key areas of the project. Conjointly, as anarchists we have our own projects of destruction. Autonomous attacks allow us to expand the methods of struggle, to engage in conflict at our own pace, how and where we sit fit, and to not compromise our visions and values. We propose an offensive struggle of diffuse blows carried out by affinity groups in dispersed formation, as others have said, to act without forming compact columns, without building permanent indefensible encampments. Instead, we seek to extend diffuse hostilities over a large terrain. 

An autonomous struggle against the PRGT pipeline project begins by looking at the tool and capacities we currently have, identifying what we need to learn and acting from that without delay. The project spans thousands of kilometers, the offices, homes and interests of the companies behind it are spread throughout Canada and beyond. An expansive practice of attack can identify and target these diverse sites. Below are lists of companies involved in the project as well as links to a map of the project’s right of way. More work should be done to identify additional companies involved and the findings should be shared via counter info sites.

Companies involved in PRGT project

  • Ledcor – Is a construction company operating primarily in Canada and United States. Ledcor operates in a wide range of industries, including the construction of buildings and civil infrastructure, technical services such as communication networks, forestry, mining, property development and management, transportation, marine operations, and several energy projects, including oil, gas, and Liquefied Natural Gas. Ledcor is leading the current phase of infrastructure upgrades necessary to begin pipeline construction. Ledcor is currently upgrading or maintaining roads, bridges, man camp sites etc.
  • Bechtel– Is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company. Bechtel is managing the construction of the PRGT pipeline.
  • McElhanney – provides surveying, engineering, GIS & remote sensing, community & transportation planning, landscape architecture, environmental services, and more. McElhanney has been and continues to be responsible for surveying and monitoring of environment for the PRGT project. They have over 30+ locations across Western Canada. A McElhanney office near the PRGT project was the target of an anonymous arson in late September: https://bccounterinfo.org/2024/10/12/arson-attack-in-terrace-bc/

Resources

Arson attack in Terrace BC

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Oct 182024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

On the morning September 26th four vehicles were severely damaged as well as buildings nearby in an arson attack in Terrace BC.

With a little investigation we realized the vehicles attacked belong to McElhanney a company with a large portfolio providing surveying, engineering, GIS & remote sensing, landscape architecture, environmental services across western Canada. Near Terrace, McElhanney is working on the controversial PRGT pipeline, which has seen resistance via occupations and blockades. Further south the company has used GIS data to help plan work for the controversial TMX pipeline. In north eastern BC, McElhanney has worked on providing data and plans for the expansion of LNG well sites and pipelines.

We stumbled across this information via local media’s republishing of RCMP reports. It seems very little information has been shared by the RCMP. They chose to not publish photos or exact details. This is surprising considering the scale of the attack. Perhaps they would like to keep this news quiet.

Berlin, Germany: Attack on Bauer drills and extractivist infrastructures! Solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en anti-colonial struggle!

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Jul 162024
 

From Indymedia.de, translated by Act For Freedom Now!

May 6, 2024

Around the world, countless indigenous communities are fighting extractivist projects and infrastructures, such as mining projects, hydraulic fracking, deforestation and pipelines. In the territory occupied by the Canadian state, for example, a huge project is currently under construction: the Coastal GasLink Pipeline, designed to transport gas extracted by hydraulic fracking. This project not only destroys entire regions, but also threatens the Wet’suwet’en indigenous way of life. The pipeline is to be built on their territory, crossing the Wedzin Kwa River, which is essential to their way of life as a source of water and fish. That’s why the Wet’suwet’en have long opposed this project with fierce resistance, defending their land. Their resistance is met with strong repression, but also benefits from great solidarity.

We want to show that the fight against colonization, and therefore against industrialization and destructive extractivism, knows no borders. That’s why we have attacked a company that participates and enriches itself directly on the destruction of indigenous territories: the Bauer company supplies the drilling rigs needed for the Coastal GasLink pipeline. On May 6, we set fire to two of their huge drilling machines at a construction site in Berlin. To do this, we placed incendiary devices, accelerant and a tire on their cables.

The Coastal-Gaslink pipeline is just one of many extractivist projects on stolen indigenous lands in Canada and around the world. Whether it’s oil, gas, coal, gold, lithium or hydroelectricity and wind power (now expected to produce “green” hydrogen in Canada, of great interest to Germany), all these industrial projects are part of a colonial system that destroys the land and eliminates indigenous ways of life.

We stand in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en struggles against the colonial Coastal-Gaslink pipeline project.

Whether in Canada, Chile, Peru, the Hambach forest or northern Portugal, let’s fight destructive extractivist projects and connect our struggles!

Switch off the system of destruction and colonisation!

Northvolt: the poison-tree will fall

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May 152024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Let the axe
Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall

On Sunday, May 5th, five incendiary devices were placed at the Northvolt construction site in Quebec. This action was taken to damage machinery and reduce the project’s ability to continue. Unfortunately, these devices failed to ignite. If there is one takeaway to share, when choosing materials consider how weather (high humidity or rain) might decrease the chances of a device igniting. The longer the timer, the longer the device will be exposed to environmental factors thereby decreasing the window of success.

Why choosing to attack and damage property? While Northvolt, a transnational corporation, sells themselves as the leader of the green transition, they are in fact its headstone. The electric vehicles the company plans to provide with their batteries are a false solution to the environmental destruction caused by industrial society; rather this expension of the automotive industry is only allowing the devastating impact of car infrastructure to continue. With this project, Canada’s insatiable appetite for natural resources will only grow. Lithium mining, which is essential in the process of producing Northvolt’s “green” Lithium Ion batteries, is poisoning human communities and entire ecosystems across the land. Lithium is already being extracted from unceded Indigenous territories here in “Quebec”, with many new mines planning to start operating in the next few years. With this kind of mega project, lakes, forests and wetlands will disappear under new roads and pit mines. First Nations will loose access to their traditional territories and with that loss, the ability to practice and sustain their ancestral ways of living and relating to the land. They will be surveilled and harassed by workers and security. The animals of these territories will die or will have to migrate elsewhere as their homes are destroyed.

Has anyone else noticed how quiet the land around Northvolt has become since they chopped down the trees and destroyed the wetlands? It’s eerily silent.

Capitalism and the State are in league, dumping public funds into private corporations that will only worsen the ecological crisis across the globe. This is why we must act, and more often than not, we must act beyond the laws imposed on these lands by governments. The Quebec government has already dropped regulations put in place to protect the environment and looked the other way while Northvolt violates numerous laws and codes. This is because Legault’s government (like any colonial gorvernment), is politically invested in making this project happen. However, the future remains to be written. We still have choices to make. We still can act! We must not be guided by crooked laws, but by the love and care we and others have for the collective health of all beings, the land, the water and the desire for a better world through struggle against colonial structures. Armed with our convictions, let us go into the night and choose to take the necessary risks to fight for a livable future.

Fuck Highway 20

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Apr 182024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Despite opposition from the local community, concerns of environmental degradation and the utter futility of such a project, the government of Quebec insists on extending a highway from Notre-Dame-des-Neiges to Saint-Simon, which involves building a bridge over the Trois Pistoles River. Ministère des Transports du Québec’s (MTQ) blind persistence to extend the tentacles of the state and industry heavily relies on contractors like EnGlobe, a multinational engineering firm with offices in Quebec. As of this writing, geotechnical surveys are being conducted on both sides of the River. The surveys involve drilling for soil samples with heavy but vulnerable equipment kept overnight in the city of Trois Pistoles.

In the night during the 2nd week of April, anarchists sabotaged the truck transporting the surveying drill and covered it with tags letting MTQ know they were unwelcome in the area.

Anarchists in Quebec and elsewhere are invited to do the same to EnGlobe equipment and property. We must reject the highway, destroy the tendrils of capitalism and colonialism to save our forests and rivers, the true arteries that sustain us.

Earth Night Call To Action

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Apr 182024
 

Anonymous submission to Scenes from the Atlanta Forest

As the sun sets on Earth Day, April 22nd, Earth Night begins…

It is time for the sun to set also on the brand of environmentalist activism that always accompanies Earth Day. We have no use for false political fixes or publicity stunts, and nothing but hostility for campaigns which pretend that we can make everything right if we just practice the right habits or lifestyles. We know that the relentless monster of industry is responsible for environmental devestation. Our responsibility is its immediate destruction. 

The wild is under constant attack. We see all that is wild being destroyed by the machines of industry. The creeping domestication of civilization would tame the wildness in our hearts, would have us forget that we are animals too, that our flesh and blood are of this Earth. Make Earth Night a night to remind each other how wild we can still be. Lets break with old habits and embrace creativity, take up playful experimentation against the forces of industry. Light fires to gather around or to burn what destroys the Earth. Walk the land, look up at the stars, and think of some way to move towards freedom this night, alone or with friends, in ways big or small. Breaking free of the inertia of daily inaction, let’s rekindle the flames of freedom with the fierce burning joy of seeing our desires realized, seeing ourselves and others transformed through the choice to act. For life, for joy, for freedom, for anarchy!

This Earth Night, let that wildness out of its cage, and leap into action. Let’s sink our teeth into that which destroys us, and have some fun doing it. See you in the darkness!

Carpe noctem 😉

New Sabotage Against Northvolt – No Capitalist is Safe

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Mar 082024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

This week marked the return of migratory birds to the Montérégie region and the start of nesting season for several species. The Northvolt worksite is now racing against the clock to fill in as many wetlands as possible by March 10, before being prevented from doing so by federal regulations protecting migratory birds. While deforestation work has been completed on the Saint-Basile-le-Grand side (8700 trees cut down), similar work is now underway in the eastern part of the land owned by McMasterville. This section contains the last remaining intact woodland, perhaps preserved from felling by the repeated spiking that took place there.

To stop the destruction of natural habitats, activists have targeted the Michaudville group’s Mont-St-Hilaire quarry, which to date has been responsible for filling in over ten hectares of marshland essential to the survival of vulnerable species such as the least bittern, the spiny softshell turtle and the eastern red bat. As a result of land artificialisation and urban sprawl, only 5% of wetlands remain in the watershed today. Not only will this industrial project do nothing to decarbonize our economy (as our ministers claim), it will also be carried out at the expense of local biodiversity. Let’s not forget that the ecological crisis is not just a climate crisis, but also an equally threatening biodiversity crisis. It’s thanks to our relationships with other species that we live, eat and breathe. We are entirely dependent on these ecosystems.

At the beginning of the week, around a hundred studded devices were spread along the road leading to the quarry to target the trucks transporting the earth and gravel used for backfilling. Over the past few weeks, more than a hundred return trips have been made daily, with a truck passing every 3 minutes. Any action that disrupts traffic and obstructs the only access road to the quarry will cause financial losses and affect the profitability of the project. Every hour of work lost is a victory for Northvolt’s opponents.

The Northvolt project will never be green. With the battery industry, the CAQ government is taking advantage of climate change to do business. While the government is currently injecting billions of dollars to save the automotive industry, these investments force us to ensure, for decades to come, the growth of an economic sector just as destructive as the fossil fuel economy. The massive electrification of transport and the car-centric model require the multiplication of mines in the Global South and on First Nations territory. Everywhere, farmland, waterways and the populations that depend on them will be poisoned by toxic waste. Entire forests will be laid waste, mountains torn open. The ecological crisis is insoluble under capitalism: our only way out is through mutual aid, the creation of resilient communities and degrowth.

To the companies that work with Northvolt: no one is safe!

Let’s Attack Northvolt, Always, Everywhere

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Feb 282024
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Anarchists again attacked the capitalist machine of destruction at the Northvolt site. Steel spikes were placed on the various paths used by the machinery. In addition, new nails were put into trees, this time without identifying them, to maximize the potential for destruction on the ecocidal machinery. The people who did the action are not afraid of getting caught. Even if they did, they would ask to be judged by their peers. By the spiny softshell turtles, little bitterns and copper redhorses. By all the species that die because the destruction of the planet is profitable as hell.

Indeed, to maintain capitalist economic growth, it takes bigger and bigger pitiful suburban bungalows and bigger and bigger cars. Meanwhile, we close our eyes and let ourselves be lulled by the nursery rhymes of capitalists who claim that electric cars reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Under the hypocritical pretext of environmental protection, the State and its friends of industry are attempting a desperate rescue of the automobile industry. For it to survive after 2035, the time when the feds will ban the sale of gas cars, they are replacing gas cars with electric cars. Governments then manage to reduce the price of electric cars, through direct and indirect subsidies, so that they remain accessible to the middle class. In short, the battery sector is the plundering of green funds by governments to finance economic growth, to allow the automobile industry to survive the climate changes it has caused. The development of the battery sector is so that we continue to live in noisy, unpleasant, dangerous cities, where city centers have been transformed into highways and parking lots. Anarchists want no part of this world, and that’s why they wanted to grind an extra shovelful of sand into its gears.

And we must remember that it is only in the city that the electric car can claim to be green. All around, there are mines, always on indigenous lands, all over the world. It’s the toxic Rouyn-Noranda refinery. It’s the extensions of ports along the St. Lawrence River. From Africa to South America, it’s executions of trade unionists and defenders of nature carried out in the name of Canadian mining companies. By defending nature here, we do not risk death. Using our privileges to defend the most vulnerable means taking action here. This is a problem caused by white people, and it’s about time we took responsibility.

It was a sad time to take action. At the Northvolt site, barely a few trees remain, including those that were identified as having been the target of spiking last time. This shows that direct action works. Indeed, these nails have probably done more for the protection of biodiversity than COP15, and the whole string of other COPs. We clearly see in action the ridiculous compensation mechanisms for biodiversity: on the one hand, mass deforestation, while in 4-5-6 years, or when they have time, they’ll plant a monoculture of black spruce on 20 hectares, an army of small trees in rows that will be cut down – enough to make toilet paper barely strong enough to wipe yourself with — don’t ask why your fingers go right through it. On the one hand, backfilling wetlands, while in 4-5-6 years, or when they have time, they’ll dig a hole in a patch of sand and put two or three fish and algae there, and give themselves a pat on the back. They’ll create a pond somewhere else for the animals that have already been lost. Dead animals in a puddle are a soup at best and can never compensate for a living ecosystem. And that is if there is actually compensation, because it is the first thing that will be cut if profitability is threatened.

The fight against Northvolt has only just begun. There are still 2 years left before the plant enters service. The profit margins will not be extravagant. Security, public relations and crisis management costs are already starting to pile up. Already, the company’s image is seriously damaged, and it’s a safe bet that investors will become disillusioned. There are still 2 years left to fight, and the enemy is vulnerable. We can still enter the property like a sieve: they cannot protect over a square kilometer with some rusty fences and a stationary security guard playing 2048 and sleeping in his car. Subcontractors risk reconsidering their relationships given the dangers involved. We must not let them go. The Northvolt site had been ransacked for the CIL factory, but nature took back its rights. Let’s continue the fight until life returns.

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