Front Burner - Rail blockades cause political impasse for Trudeau

Episode Date: February 19, 2020

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is asking Canadians to show "resolve" as he seeks an end to the rail blockades locking up trains in Canada. Hundreds of millions of dollars in goods are sitting idle on the tracks and CN Rail is laying off hundreds of workers as protesters demand police leave the territory of a B.C. First Nation. Trudeau is calling for dialogue, but offering few other details about his path to resolution. Today on Front Burner, CBC senior writer Aaron Wherry tells us how Trudeau's record on reconciliation frames — and complicates — the way forward.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Patience. That is what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is asking for. We also need Canadians to show both resolve and collaboration. Resolve and collaboration. But after several days of near-paralyzed rail transport,

hundreds of millions of dollars in goods sitting idle on the tracks, and rationing of the propane needed to heat homes in the Maritimes, patience seems to be growing well thin, at least in Ottawa. Dialogue is not going to pay the bills for people who are facing layoffs because of people breaking the law who have no connection to the protest. Mr. Speaker, we need a long-term constructive solution. The short-term forceful approaches proposed by the Conservatives would end up harming the very farmers, small business owners, and workers across this country. This, of course, all stems from protests in support of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs in B.C.

who opposed the coastal gas link pipeline project running through their traditional territory. So, how can a prime minister who made reconciliation a signature issue resolve this situation? who made reconciliation a signature issue, resolve this situation. Today, I'm talking to CBC senior writer Aaron Wary from our Ottawa bureau. This is Frontburner. Hi, Aaron. Hey. Great to have you here.

Great to be here. So, look, Trudeau did not have a ton to say about the Wet protests when police intervened in B.C. last week. But his priorities have clearly shifted in the wake of these rail blockades and the disruption to travelers and the flow of goods. And can you give me a sense of the stakes here? What are what is the actual impact of these blockades? Well, I mean, there's obviously the economic angle. There obviously are huge economic impacts in terms of, you know, goods that can't be transported, people that can't work. The demonstrations have had serious economic repercussions, mostly on a key route near Belleville, Ontario. Via Rail announced this afternoon it's resuming service in southwestern

Ontario on Thursday, but trains may encounter delays. And then just the sort of convenience, the interruptions that people are having when they want to just travel from one place to another. That is real. Just before I came over here, there was another letter from another business group urging the prime minister to get moving on this because, you know, middle class jobs are at stake and the economy suffers when things like this happen. So there's obviously that economic angle. There's also, I think, just a broader than that political issue here of reconciliation and Trudeau's agenda on reconciliation and his ability to argue that it's moving forward and that there's some path forward here. I think that that is to a certain degree on trial here or is sort of hanging in the balance. He's abandoned his travels this week

to Barbados in support of Canada's UN Security Council bid for this. We know he's been on this kind of worldwide tour. And what does that signal to you about how he's treating this situation? I mean, I think it signals that he couldn't afford to be anything but directly engaged in this. You know, sometimes I think people make a bit too much of the idea that a politician can't be out of the country and deal with a problem at home. You know, modern technology allows for these things. But it wasn't, just as a question of optics, it didn't look good that the prime minister was overseas last week

while all this was happening. And I think it goes to, you know, that urgency of the matter, both economic and political. For a while, I think this government sort of treated it as it is, which is the situation in BC is ultimately a provincial issue. It's a matter of provincial jurisdiction. And there was a hope that the BC government would work it out. And I think, you know, once the blockades got into Ontario, and once, you know, they kept going for a few days, I think it became apparent that the federal government couldn't just sort of put its hopes on the provincial government. It had to get directly involved. Right. And we even saw on Tuesday, there are protests in B.C.

Protesters showed up at Premier John Horgan's home. They say they were trying to present him with documents. When they refused to leave, three were arrested. So there is still a lot of pressure on BC to move in here, but there does seem to be this added pressure now on the federal government. So Trudeau spoke in the House of Commons on Tuesday about his efforts to resolve this. And let's talk about what he said. What did he say to you? Did he say anything concrete? You know, this was, it was an interesting speech insofar as, you know, he didn't What did he say to you? Did he say anything concrete? You know, this was,

it was an interesting speech insofar as, you know, he didn't come out and say, here exactly is the plan forward. He didn't come out. And as Andrew Scheer, the Conservative leader complained, he didn't come out and talk tough. There were no ultimatums. There were no sort of deadlines. There are those who would want us to act in haste, who want us to boil this down to slogans and ignore the complexities, who think that using force is helpful. It is not. It was very much a, I guess, a defense of reconciliation and then also an appeal for patience, for listening, for collaboration, for resolve, for trust. It felt like he was trying to sort of lower the temperature a bit and show some goodwill towards the people the federal government is trying to negotiate with.

We need to continue to walk this road together. To everyone, I say we are extending our hands in good faith for dialogue. The opportunity is there on the table right now. We are in this together. The worker, the senior, the Indigenous leader, the protester, and the police officer. Do we have a sense at all of what may or may not be going on behind the scenes here? It's hard to say. You get some sense that may not be going on behind the scenes here? It's hard to say. You get some sense that there are discussions going on, that there are conversations about what could happen.

It offers to talk more, but it's unclear exactly what's on the table. You know, Trudeau leaned pretty heavily on this entire idea of peaceful resolution, of talking through things, listening, trying to find ways forward together. But it's unclear from the outside what exactly that looks like. What exactly are we talking about the two sides doing or agreeing on? As much as that might be under negotiation, I think that is the one sort of tantalizing aspect of this is like, OK, well, what does that look like exactly? Chief Wose is one of the hereditary chiefs who opposes the coastal link gas leak gas coastal rather gas

pipeline all of the hereditary chiefs in in concert with each other uh we're all we're all deciding that um we will not talk with uh the ministers uh we will not talk with the government until uh the rcmp are completely out of our territorial lands. This is a question I have too, because as you mentioned before, the issue at the heart of this, this pipeline that goes through Wet'suwet'en territory that is being opposed by the hereditary chiefs, but of course, supported by 20 band councils, this is a provincial project. It was greenlit by the province. So it is unclear what the federal government can offer here to solve the issue at the core of this. Accord are very fraught options, to say the least. And the ideal option is this idea of peaceful resolution of talking things through, but it's not clear where that discussion goes or how it works, or if it can work. It's hard to know where the end of this is or to know whether there's an end in

sight. Like, is this going to end in a day? Is this going to end in a week? It's really hard to say. And I think that's something that was sort of missing from what the Prime Minister had to say. And I think that's something that was sort of missing from what the prime minister had to say today. I want to double back to this idea of it being fraught to order in the police. And Andrew Scheer is essentially saying that. He's saying, you know, you need to resolve this. The protesters need to be moved from the railways. Mr. Speaker, that was the weakest response to a national crisis in Canadian history. Now, I listened to the Prime Minister's word salad just now, Mr. Speaker, and at least two key things were missing. A clear denunciation that the actions of these radical activists are illegal.

And some kind of an action plan that would put an end to the illegal blockades and get our economy back on track. Why is it so fraught? So for a couple of reasons. Why is it so fraught? So for a couple reasons. One is historical precedent. We have the examples of Oka and Epperwash, two incidents where Indigenous protesters faced off against governments and force was used and people died.

31-year-old SWAT team member, Marcel Lemay, was shot in the mouth and died later in the day. Indigenous protesters in a standoff with armed police officers trying to take back their land from the military. An unarmed protester, Dudley George, shot and killed by an OPP officer. You know, those are incidents that have left pretty serious scars on the relationship. Then there's the sort of more theoretical

discussion, which is that political actors, politicians, governments shouldn't be ordering the police to do things. Right. This is something that Public Safety Minister Bill Blair certainly keeps suggesting. Right. And it's, you know, we in this country spent a good part of last year talking about how the government shouldn't be telling prosecutors what to do. This is sort of on the same wavelength. In terms of how a democracy and how the rule of law works, you know, you have to be pretty careful about the idea that politicians would start telling the police what to do and how to do it, and that there would be pressure on police to do things by, you know, political actors. It's just not something that should be done or, you know, is done, hopefully, in a functioning

democracy. Do we have a sense of why the police aren't moving in on their own volition here? There is a court injunction. Yeah, that's unclear, to be honest. I suspect that it's, you know, because in most cases, police and everyone wants to sort of find a peaceful resolution here. You know, there was a blockade in Sarnia in 2013, sort of connected to the Eid al-Din War protests. And in that case, it went on for 13 days. Now, it was probably able to go on for 13 days because it wasn't, with all due respect to Sarnia, it wasn't upsetting the entire national economy. But, you know, there's a situation where, you know, the police didn't rush in to arrest people. It was sort of negotiated to a resolution. So, Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet, he actually put a proposal on the table. He said,

look, what if to get the protesters to agree to leave the rail tracks, we could put on pause the construction of this pipeline, an exchange, essentially. I think that there is a clear measure that could be taken, which could be well received by First Nations. It could be perceived as real openness beyond words, which is that tenable. I think that would be hard for for any government to agree to, depending on a lot of things, right? Depending on exactly what the agreement is and is there the possibility of the pipeline would still move forward? And what exactly are we talking about? But in general, the idea that, you know, a pipeline would go through all of the sort of mandated rules and

process that governments and legislatures have set down, and then protests would happen and the government would say, okay, okay, nevermind, we won't do we won't go forward with the pipeline. It's that would be very, that would be a that would be a tough precedent for a government to set, both in terms of its own handling of the law and in terms of how companies approach projects. And so it does, obviously, it makes a certain amount of sense to go, okay, well, let's hit pause on this. But I imagine the government is if they were thinking of that proposal, would be worrying about the precedent and the message it would send to investors, to the country, to, you know, anyone who kind of wants to go forward with a project. I should say some First Nation leaders also spoke about this situation on Tuesday, and they're also asking for dialogue. Mohawk Chief Serge Simon spoke, and he's basically saying that removing the blockade doesn't necessarily mean anything is surrendered,

that it's not a sign of weakness, but could be a measure of good faith while talks progress. But keep this in mind. If you do not continue on a dialogue of respect with the hereditary chiefs, then we'll be back. But again, showing how intractable this issue is, there were protesters that then showed up and blockaded his office. And that's sort of the situation you get into, I suspect you get into in these situations a fair bit, which is that no one wants to back down, but somebody's got to back down. Essentially, everybody's going to kind of take a step back for there to kind of be a peaceful resolution here. And, you know, I can imagine the government trying to make that argument to people to say,

look, can we step back from the blockades and we will commit to continuing this discussion or working on this further? And then the protesters saying, well, why, you know, why should we trust that if we end this blockade, you're going to actually uphold your commitments? The Prime Minister referred to that a bit today when he talked about how trust has been broken in the past, and that makes it hard to trust now. But ultimately, you know, I suspect that's where you've got, if there is a hope here of finding some kind of peaceful resolution, it's based on that idea that you would sort of set aside the blockades now and move forward with something in the days, weeks and months ahead.

We saw on Tuesday as well, some of the ministers also talk about that lack of trust. Carolyn Bennett said she's trying to get a meeting with the hereditary chiefs on Wet'suwet'en territory, but she has not been invited yet because there is this lack of trust. We are now trying to establish again a conversation with other hereditary chiefs and eventually be able to have an invitation to have a meeting in the community with the hereditary chiefs as soon as possible. And, you know, of course, Mark Miller, the Indigenous Services Minister, he talked about how he had asked the protesters at Tynedinaga to step back. They declined. They had a meeting about it and that the tape of that meeting actually was leaked to the media, which I think is probably an indication of a bit of a lack of trust there. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Before we go today, you've mentioned a few times in this conversation, Trudeau's legacy when it comes to reconciliation, the promises that he's made around reconciliation, how that's playing into this crisis. I think it's fair to say that this is a mounting crisis. Remind me in 2015, when he was elected, what he promised and how he's lived up to those promises to today. So if you go back to 2015, the election happens kind of after, in the wake of the Idle No More protests and in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on residential schools.

And so there's a new sort of awareness of reconciliation as an issue, as an idea, and Trudeau really champions it. There's some specific promises he makes in there, but really it's a, it's sort of a larger idea that he is going to take this cause on and he's going to champion it. It is time for a renewed nation toation relationship with First Nations peoples. One that understands that the constitutionally guaranteed rights of First Nations in Canada are not an inconvenience, but a sacred obligation. He has struggled in a lot of ways to sort of show that he's living up to that. And, you know, there have been setbacks,

there have been disputes over compensation, human rights tribunal rulings, there was a Indigenous rights framework that was proposed and then pulled back. There have been a series of things where people have said, you are not living up to reconciliation. And the counter argument the Liberals make to that is, well, look at what we're doing in terms of funding for indigenous communities. Look at what we're doing for advancing the discussion around rights. Look at what we're doing to lift boil water advisories. But the problem they have is and a problem they have on a number of files is that because they have have sort of spoken of an ideal, they have then have a hard time living up to it.

ideal. They then have a hard time living up to it. It was interesting to hear the Prime Minister talk today and say that, you know, we're facing many of these major debates in the country. And a lot of time, these debates are being defined by voices at the margins, sort of at the very extreme ends of the conversation, which is maybe a fair comment. But then the question becomes, well, what are you doing to sort of hold up the middle of this conversation? What are you doing to show that you either are taking reconciliation clearly or that the government and the country is making progress on reconciliation? If he had a bit of a stronger hand to play here, if there was a feeling that in the country, in an indigenous communities and amongst, you know, sort of elite opinion makers, that reconciliation was moving forward and that it was making advances, he would be arguably in a much stronger position right now. But part of, I think, the issue right now, and the reason these protests have become sort of widespread, is there's just this general feeling that reconciliation hasn't panned out, or it's not moving fast enough

or the promises that were made in 2015 haven't really been realized and and that's kind of where he finds himself right now is trying to not just resolve this impasse but but really sort of show that his agenda is moving forward and that there's there's sort of a path for it going forward. Do you think it might be helpful for him to address these shortcomings more than he does? Yeah, I suspect so. I thought maybe his speech today would be much more of a, let's talk about what we've been doing on reconciliation for the last five years, and let's talk about where we're going next. Now, let's be fair, there is a tendency amongst people in my profession to wish that prime ministers would stand up and give speeches and solve things, and life is not the West Wing. Is it not the West Wing? Sadly, it's not, apparently.

If this prime minister wants to sort of move this forward, it does seem like he needs to fill up more of the space between the extremes to sort of say, here's where we're going, here's what we're doing, and to let there be a debate on that. Because if the debate is just about whether reconciliation is failing or not, or whether reconciliation is worth pursuing, that's a much harder debate to have and to win if you're Trudeau. Like it's, look, this government should be questioned pretty harshly about all sorts of things they've done on this file and whether they've done it right. But it's a funny, they're stuck in this funny world where, you know, last week, Mark Miller was in a community in Northern Ontario to celebrate the lifting of a 17-year boil water advisory. And

at the same time, this impasse was happening. You know, the lifting of the Boilwater Advisory doesn't absolve them of responsibility for everything else, but it's a much more nuanced story in terms of reconciliation, in terms of the country, in terms of the narrative that is bigger than Trudeau and will outlast Trudeau, of where this country is going, and that is sort of getting steamrolled at the moment. Okay. Aaron Wary, thank you so much.

Thanks for having me. All right. So federal politicians were back at it Tuesday night for an emergency debate on this subject. I just want to play you a few of those highlights before we go today. The Honourable Member for Winnipeg Centre. Human rights are not a partisan issue. Human rights are human rights. And every day I have to sit in this house and listen to my fundamental Indigenous human rights and the fundamental Indigenous human rights of indigenous

people across this country be up for debate. The Honourable Minister of Indigenous Services. We're a country built on the values of peace, order and good government. You hear it all the time. We need to make sure we remain focused on those ideals. One of the steps necessary to achieve peaceful progress in an unreconciled country is to continue that open dialogue at the very highest levels of government, based on a nation-to-nation, a government-to-government relationship. The Honourable Member for Halliburton, Coarta Lakes, Brock. It's been 13 days, Speaker. Just this weekend, the government decided to actually sit down and meet with First Nations leaders to open dialogue on this crisis.

sit down and meet with First Nations leaders to open dialogue on this crisis, a crisis that could have been diverted if this government's talk on reconciliation wasn't just rhetoric. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and talk to you tomorrow.