RGPI Calls for Worldwide Sanctions by UN Security Sanctions Committee

The Robert Gopher Policy Institute monitoring the situation of Canada's aggrieved First Nations over Omnibus Bill C-45 calls for and pressures the United Nations Sanctions Committee to enact measures to vote on diplomatic and possible economic sanctions against the government of Canada with regard to embargoes of its petroleum products and extractive industry.  The RGPI believes the boon of Canadian Oil Sands, as a reason for the underlying rationale of Omnibus Bill C-45.  The legislative package it represents will strip environmental protections and redefine aboriginal fisheries, which presents problems for subsistence cultures in Canada.  This is priming the land for vast and untold ecological devastation at a time the planet begs for an answer to climate change.

CONFLICT OIL DESIGNATION

RGPI Director Melinda Gopher, ran for the U.S. Congress from the eco-friendly community of Missoula, Montana in the 2010 Democratic primary.  The area is a hotbed of environmental activism, and Gopher has supported community protests of the megaloads that support the Canadian tar sands industry.  

"We need the international community to stand with the First Nations of Canada, and ask that worldwide, the imposition first of diplomatic sanctions and expelling Canadian diplomats, in response to the human rights abuses that Bill C-45 represents.  This now has to move to the next stage which is the forced mediation of the Canadian conflict between Harper's government, and First Nations."

Brock Conway, a Lakota/Blackfeet, and one of several organizers of the Los Angeles Solidarity Rally last week, also met with Canadian consul Nadia Scipio Del Campo, states there is a need for stepped up UN involvement and intervention, as the world attempts to apply the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People to a major industrialized nation.  "This is the first time in human history that the world will apply an international human rights law on a major economic power.  First Nations need the world to impose the designation of Canadian oil, as conflict oil.  Native communities are wiped out with one damaging legislative proposal, their ecological viability destroyed along with their sovereignty.  This is the reasoning behind the movement that the entire planet now stands with indigenous people."

"The Canadian oil industrial complex is standing up thumbing its nose at the world, to exterminate a race of people, to get at the underlying land and tar sands, conflict oil designation is needed for the purpose of imposing world-wide economic sanctions, should this conflict devolve.  Economic, ecological and political extermination will ensue should Governor General Johnston sign Bill C-45 into law."  states Melinda Gopher.

The world must act quickly to forge a settlement of the Canadian conflict, one that reflects treaty relations wherein First Nations were guaranteed even revenue sharing on par with the government of Canada.  " I am told by my Canadian relations, that this agreement is written in treaties and agreements with the British Crown.  Harper's bill breaks the social contract and nation to nation relationship that is the law of the land in Canada."  Gopher concludes.