Seven people, including a candidate for Vancouver city council, have been sentenced to a week in jail for blocking access to Kinder Morgan’s tank farm on Burnaby Mountain.
The protesters were in violation of an injunction ordered in March, which bars protesters from blocking access to or coming within five metres of the Trans Mountain parent company’s Burnaby facility.
More than 100 people have already been arrested for violating the injunction.
On Wednesday, the group of seven — who were arrested on June 30 — became the latest to learn their fate for crossing the court order.
Among them was Jean Swanson, a Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) city council candidate and Order of Canada recipient.
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“This pipeline that we’re protesting today is dangerous. It’s dangerous because it’s contributing to global warming. It’s dangerous because it can spill on the land and the sea, and it’s dangerous because it’s trampling on Indigenous rights by going through Indigenous territory without consent,” Swanson told supporters outside the BC Supreme Court in Vancouver.
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“Laws can be bad. Laws permitted slavery. Laws permitted the theft of Indigenous land. The laws that let the Trudeau government buy this pipeline are bad laws.”
Also sentenced were former BC Teachers Federation president Susan Lambert, Charlotte Gyoba, Hisao Ichikawa, Heather Martin-McNab, Kathleen Flaherty and Adrian Long.
So far, 12 people have been sentenced to jail time for breaking the injunction.
“One of the institutions of a civil society is the justice system. I respect the rule of law,” said Lambert in a statement. “But I also know that throughout history, laws have been used to bolster the rights of some and injure others.”
WATCH: Kinder Morgan protesters remain defiant despite court order
Earlier this year, federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and former NDP MP and Vancouver Mayoral candidate Kennedy Stewart pleaded guilty to criminal contempt for violating the injunction.
May was fined $1,500 and Stewart was fined $500.
Meanwhile, a group of protesters who have built an encampment known as “Camp Cloud” near the Kinder Morgan facility continue to defy a separate injunction granted to the City of Burnaby.
The city issued an eviction order to the campers last month for violating numerous bylaws and for maintaining a fire that Indigenous groups say is sacred, but the city says is a hazard.
A BC Supreme Court judge granted an order last week requiring the campers to clear out by Sunday evening.
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