Manitoba
Bill 57, Protection of
Critical Infrastructure Act Preparation for All-Out Criminalization of People Fighting for Their Rights -
Barbara Biley - 
March 23, 2021. Protest
against Bill 57 outside Manitoba legislature.
 On March 15, the
Manitoba government of Premier Brian Pallister announced that it is
"distributing new legislation that would prevent interference with
critical infrastructure while respecting the right to freedom of
assembly and expression." The expression "distributing new legislation"
hides the fact that Bill 57, the Protection of Critical
Infrastructure Act,
passed first reading at the Manitoba
Legislature in November 2020 and was only made public four-and-a-half
months later. Eighteen other bills that passed first reading at the
same time were also published months later. Federally, bills are
printed within hours after passing first reading.
This in
itself shows how the neo-liberal government executives have destroyed
parliaments and legislatures as places to debate legislation and other
issues that affect the people. Now debate on Bill 57 has been delayed
until the fall after the NDP used a procedural rule of the Manitoba
Legislature which allows the official opposition to delay a number of
bills to the next session.
Bill 57 prepares the
ground for all-out criminalization of the people fighting for their
rights. The bill states that the owner or operator of what is
considered critical infrastructure may bring an application to the
court for an order establishing a critical infrastructure protection
zone if the owner believes there is interference with the construction
or operation of the infrastructure. Once the court makes the order,
individuals or corporations that disobey the order are subjected to
fines and individuals are also subject to imprisonment. The
bill defines "critical infrastructure" as just about everything under
the sun, from pipelines and railways to hospitals, personal care homes
and "facilities required for the delivery of government services to the
public or for the effective functioning of the Legislature." It says:
"Infrastructure is critical infrastructure if the use or presence of
the infrastructure makes a significant contribution to the health,
safety, security or economic well-being of Manitobans." 
October
26, 2020. Alberta health care workers walk out in defence of their
rights and picket Royal Alexandria Hospital in Edmonton.
Justice
Minister Cameron Friesen justified the legislation in a March 15
communiqué: "We must also ensure Manitobans have access to
uncompromised supplies and services, and can pursue their livelihoods
unencumbered." However, the legislation does not protect the services
that are provided or should be provided via the infrastructure. That is
not the aim of the bill. The fact is that people may die in the
hospitals because workers do not have the conditions to provide the
needed care, legislatures may pass bills and regulations that
jeopardize workers' and peoples' health and safety, and rail workers
may die on the job because of overall unsafe conditions. The purpose of
the bill is to step up the anti-social offensive against the people and
make the people's resistance illegal.  The bill can
be invoked with a claim of "interference" with critical infrastructure,
for instance by workers, youth and Indigenous peoples protesting
against the violation of their rights and demanding justice in the
vicinity of the infrastructure or on the land where the infrastructure
is located. The bill denies the causes for which people are holding
their actions. It is another mechanism to impose the dictate of the
narrow private interests which own and operate the infrastructure or
the government executives that run it on behalf of narrow private
interests, under the hoax of protecting infrastructure that makes a
significant contribution to the well-being of Manitobans.
The
fact that the bill includes the land on which the infrastructure
operates as part of the infrastructure itself clearly shows that a main
target of the legislation is the Indigenous peoples who, with their
supporters, are defending their lands and hereditary and treaty rights.
Clearly, the bill was triggered by the determination to crush protests
such as the nationwide protests, including rail blockades, in support
of the Wet'suwet'en land defenders who blocked construction of a gas
pipeline through the BC First Nation's hereditary territory, affirming
their right to say No! 
February 10, 2020. Winnipeg action opposes RCMP invasion of
Wet'suwet'en territory.
The hereditary and treaty
rights of Indigenous land defenders and their supporters are denied
through the bill, while the "right" of global private interests to
operate as they please, without the consent of the people and in
violation of their rights, is enshrined in the law. The Kenney
government passed similar legislation in 2020. This is called
politicizing private interests and criminalizing public interests.
The fact that this bill extends the concept of critical
infrastructure to include health care institutions and government
shows that the intent is to criminalize the fight of the people for
their rights in all aspects of life. This must not pass! The
entire bill is an intolerable attack on peoples' right to express their
conscience and determine the direction of economic and political
affairs to make them serve the needs and interests of the people and
not those of the rich. It shows the inability of
the government of Manitoba to provide any convincing argument for its
pay-the-rich agenda and anti-social offensive. To resort to suppression
and criminalization underscores how impotent it actually is.
Manitobans have a proud
history of fighting for rights and no self-respecting Manitoban will
submit to such things. The government is showing how weak it is.
Manitobans consider that speaking out against what the government is
doing is a must, as organizations representing the interests of
farmers, Indigenous people and university faculty are already doing.
Manitoba
Organization of Faculty Associations The
Manitoba Organization of Faculty Associations writes in a March
statement that Bill
57 is plagiarized from an American Corporate Lobby Group called the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). They state "ALEC works
behind the
scenes to provide fill-in-the-blanks legislation to Republican
legislators to promote their corporate, right-wing agenda: making
government as small and taxes as low as possible, bringing in
anti-union right-to-work acts, voter suppression laws and even
stand-your-ground NRA pro-gun legislation.... "Bill
57, the Protection of
Critical Infrastructure Act finds
its original source in Oklahoma House Bills 1123 and 2128. These were
aimed at curbing mass protest by Indigenous communities in the wake of
the Standing Rock pipeline protest in North Dakota. The Pallister
government has introduced this legislation as their own without
attributing the real source: the ALEC model bill crafted out of the
Oklahoma legislation. [...]" National Farmers
Union in Manitoba
Upholds
Critical Democratic Rights The
National Farmers Union (NFU) in Manitoba issued a statement on March 9
which opposes Bill 57, the Protection of Critical
Infrastructure Act "on the grounds of both substance and
process." It says amongst other things: "Bill 57
was introduced after Alberta passed its Critical
Infrastructure Defence Act in 2020 and there is little doubt
that it will follow its lead in terms of its content as well. The
Alberta law empowers the government to impose punitive fines or
imprison protesters for trespass or interference with big business. The
Alberta law allows the government to expand what it means by 'critical
infrastructure' by simply passing a Cabinet order. Alberta's law
protects the interests of large corporations that are wealthy and
powerful, and seeks to intimidate or punish citizens and communities
who have few means other than peaceful protest to bring attention to
their issues and demand a hearing. "There are many
examples in Manitoba's history where the kind of protest Bill 57 seeks
to prevent has led to important advances. From the Metis under Riel in
1870, the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, to the Black Lives Matter
protests in 2020, Manitoba has been shaped by citizens standing up for
their rights. Bill 57 would silence democratic voices and see
Manitoba's future defined by the interests of corporations instead.
"The NFU is dedicated to the protection of the lands and
waters that sustain Canadian quality of life and stands in solidarity
with those engaged in this work. The NFU's historic successes advancing
farmers' interests are based on the right to peaceful protest. This
bill would infringe on our right to continue to do so. Non-violent
peaceful protest has been an important means of influence for farmers
in Canada, and it is a right of farmers to be able to express their
opinions in this way. Our democratic rights are critical to our
relationship with governments. This government's complete disregard for
transparency regarding Bill 57 is discouraging and unacceptable in a
democracy. For all these reasons, the NFU calls on the Manitoba
Government to withdraw Bill 57." Manitoba
Indigenous Organizations Speak Out Indigenous
organizations in Manitoba have been speaking out against Bill 57.
Addressing local media on March 16, the day after the legislation was
presented, Grand Chief Jerry Daniels of the Southern Chiefs
Organization said, "We have to challenge it at every aspect. ... The
province and the federal government have been stacking the deck against
First Nations for a long, long time." Referring to
the penalties in the bill, he said, "It's an intimidation tactic." He
said the legislation is "a strategy, obviously, to silence the voices
and the views of First Nations people who have been excluded for a very
long time from infrastructure strategy and investments in terms of our
partnership on a government-to-government basis ..." At
a mass rally at the legislature on March 23, Lisa Currier, Coordinator
with Idle No More Northern Manitoba, one of the organizers of the rally
said, "[Bill] 57 would silence our voices and just make us conveniently
protest over there in the corner far away from where the heart of the
issue is." She made the point that the bill violates Indigenous rights
including those recognized in the Constitution with regard to
Indigenous title to the land. "Section 2.3 of Bill 57 says that any
lands that critical infrastructure sits on becomes part of the critical
infrastructure and that sounds like land ownership to me."
This article was published in
Volume 51 Number 5 - May 9, 2021
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2021/Articles/M510054.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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