What’s the update on BC right now?
There’s a lot going on in the western province, between extreme flooding, Wet'suwet'en land defenders getting arrested and press freedom being infringed upon.
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This week, we’re tackling this question: What’s the update on BC right now?
TL;DR: There’s a lot going on in the western province: extreme flooding had a devastating impact, closing of highways connecting the Lower Mainland to the rest of Canada and forcing thousands to flee. But consider the impact on people who use drugs and chronically ill people as well. The same week, 13 Indigenous land defenders and two journalists were arrested while protesting construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline, sparking widespread outrage about the Wet'suwet'en right to land and press freedom.
Let’s begin with a quick timeline, starting November 13. Meteorologists had already warned of heavy rainfall the day prior, caused by an “atmospheric river,” but no travel advisories or warnings were put into place by the provincial government.
Sure enough, BC received record amounts of rain. By the next day, deadly mudslides and flooding were closing every highway connecting the Lower Mainland to the rest of the country and stranding people in their cars, requiring a full rescue operation.
The amount of rain began overwhelming communities: first residents of Abbotsford (part of the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver) and then Merritt and Princeton (further into the interior) were forced to evacuate their towns as toxic floodwater overwhelmed the surrounding farmland. According to CBC, more than 17,700 people were still out of their homes as of November 22.
You likely knew a lot of that already. So here are some aspects of the situation you may not have read about yet:
A provincial state of emergency wasn’t declared until November 17 — a delay that has received a lot of criticism. BC has never used the national Alert Ready system, but that could soon change.
The extent of the flooding was likely fuelled by devastating wildfires from earlier on in the year and old-growth logging practices, which both (this is obviously very simplified) prevent the soil from absorbing as much water.
Ongoing disruptions to livestock and trucking will affect the production and distribution of food for a while to come, for those in BC and outside of the province.
People who use drugs are being heavily affected by the disaster. The Tyee’s Moira Wyton reports that “the lack of a regulated safe supply of street drugs puts all drug users at heightened risk of relapse or overdose if measures aren’t taken to provide emergency supplies and deliver medications, say drug user advocates and experts.”
Another heavy hitter from Wyton: the flooding also cut patients off from cancer treatment, dialysis and other urgent care that isn’t available equitably across the province.
The flooding is impacting (sometimes remote) Indigenous communities at the front lines of climate change, who can be particularly vulnerable to flooding, power outages and transit difficulties.
A lot of info, I know. But that’s not all of the important news that’s going on in BC right now.
Land defenders from the Wet’suwet’en First Nation have been trying to protect their unceded land for years from construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline — which is planned to transport liquified natural gas (learn more here) from northeast BC to the coastal town of Kitimat — that they never authorized. The years-long conflict once again came to a head late last week when the RCMP raided the area and arrested 29 people, including Wet’suwet’en and Haudenosaunee land defenders, two elders and a supporting chief from the Gidimt’en clan, according to Grist.
Among those arrested were also two journalists, photographer Amber Bracken and filmmaker Michael Toledano.
Jennifer Wickham, the producer of the film Toledano was making at the time and the Gidimt’en camp’s media coordinator, said in a statement that over a dozen people were in a small house “when police broke down the door with an ax and forced their way inside with guns drawn, attack dogs in tow, and assault rifles trained on the doors and windows.”
Bracken and Toledano’s arrests have been heavily covered by the media over the weekend, and represent yet another critical infringement of press freedom — freedom that is necessary to cover the injustice taking place in BC.
The latest update: the first court dates took place on Monday. As of Monday evening, both journalists were released pending trials in February 2022 after agreeing to abide by the injunction on the area. Several of the Indigenous land defenders arrested — with some exceptions — were also released on stringent conditions.
Some thoughts before you go: Let’s be careful that the attention on the press doesn’t eclipse the issue of Indigenous land rights and police violence that they were there to cover in the first place, as well as those who have yet to be released.
Finally, while you’re going to all this effort to learn what’s going on, you should probably learn how to pronounce Wet’suwet’en correctly:
Here’s someone to follow:
I’m more than a little bit obsessed with Amanda Mull, a staff writer at The Atlantic who frequently writes fascinating stories on capitalism and consumerism. A fan on Twitter recently said she had the “impressive ability to take those weird little conspiracies we have in our brains and turn them into amazing pieces” — and looking at her recent stories on the mystery of supplements, the psychology of packaging and the myth of root canals, they couldn’t be more right.
Here’s a story to check out:
Remember that Surfside, Florida condo development that collapsed this summer and tragically killed almost 100 people. For The Globe and Mail, Robyn Doolittle, Adrian Morrow and Uday Rana used hundreds of records to trace the dubious history of the Canadian developers behind the building — and many others. Not only is it an interesting story, but it’s a frustrating case study in how U.S. property records are much more accessible than the overly bureaucratic, shadowy Canadian system, making it hard for journalists here to expose wrongdoing.