ENVIRONMENT: Calgary Police Tighten Security for Global Oil Summit

By Paul Weinberg Reprint | | Print |

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Jun 11 2000 (IPS) - Police are indulging in another example of “overkill” in their efforts to guard the meeting of the Jun. 11 to 15 World Petroleum Congress in downtown Calgary, says Jim Butler, a University of Calgary professor, who is writing a book on civil disobedience.

A nine-block section of the downtown of this western Canadian city has been cordoned off to keep members of the End of Oil Action Coalition, including labour, environmental and human rights groups, away from the 2,500 delegates from more than 87 countries expected at the conference.

Objects deemed as potential projectiles by police are being cleared away, including mailboxes, garbage cans and large decorative models of cows, designed by artists and stationed on sidewalks and in malls.

Meanwhile, teams of police officers with riot gear are on standby, with truncheons, pepper spray, tear gas, bean-bag guns, shields, padded armour and plastic handcuffs for mass arrests.

In addition, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have beefed up security around the ski hills in nearby Banff in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

“I personally might do some theatrical things [in Calgary] but as a group, we are not going,” says Ted Woelke, a researcher with the Banff Environmental Action Research Society, which has formally not supported the protests aimed at the WPC.

A city whose wealth has been built on the rich oil and gas wells in the province of Alberta, east of the Rocky Mountains, some local executives in the industry are not taking kindly to the protest plans. “What I’d really like to do is arrest them all [on opening day] and drive them all to Vancouver in transport vans,” one of them was quoted in the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Inspector Murray Stooke, with the Calgary Police, says his force doesn’t want to be unprepared as were their counterparts in Seattle, during the protests targeting a conference of the World Trade Organisation. “In Seattle, the police thought it would be a moderate-sized protest and they staffed for that … there is no excuse for us to be caught by surprise.”

Both newspapers in Calgary may be fuelling anxiety about planned protests. The Herald, subject of a nasty and lengthy labour dispute, describes the demonstrators as “bent on disrupting” the WPC event; while the Sun suggests that the protestors are “groups of noisy malcontents” and urges they “should pay policing costs.”

However, one former Edmonton city councillor taking part in the protest says it is the oil industry that needs policing. “The trouble-makers in Calgary are the oil executives. The trouble they’re causing around the world is documented.”

The organisers of the demonstrations say they are not looking for violent confrontation. “I really want to educate people about our planet and how it is being destroyed,” says one participant, Leigh Sifton.

There are local expectations that any acts of civil disobedience by demonstrators will occur on Monday.

WPC conference organiser and Canadian oil company executive, Jim Gray says the gathering is mostly focused on industry technical issues and building international relationships among companies and governments around the world.

But David Hocking, a spokesperson for the Vancouver-based David Suzuki Foundation, which supports the protest, says that the Earth cannot handle all of the pollution being generated by the oil industry around the world.

The foundation unveiled a billboard near the Calgary International Airport that “welcomes” delegates with a picture of a gun-like gasoline pump and the slogan “Pollution is killing us.”

Critics like Hocking say that the big petroleum companies have neglected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and have only paid lip service to finding alternative energy sources, such as solar power.

During the WPC conference downtown Calgary will be off-limits to the homeless ¡ unless they have good reason to be there, says Calgary Police Inspector Al Redford.

“If the homeless have appointments in the area with a business or with CUPS (a local social services agency ¡ Calgary Urban Projects Society) they will be allowed in, but they won’t be allowed in for casual reasons.”

Inspector Redford says the same policy regarding authorised entry is also being applied to workers and business owners. He adds that panhandling will not be permitted in the restricted area because it is not considered a legitimate business.