Clash pipe: Canada’s widening protests

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Egypt's longest serving leader, Hosni Mubarak died yesterday. Our Middle east editor tells the tale of his rise and fall and examines why some people look back fondly on the awkward autocrat's decades of rule. And there's a long running turf war going on in Sri Lanka between people and elephants. We look into why the wildlife department, charged with protecting the animals, has handed out guns to shoot them with. But first, For more than a century and a half, the land claims of Canada's indigenous people have shaped the country's politics. And over the past three weeks, their protests have stalled the nation's economy. The stated goal, to shut down Canada. Railways, roads and ports have been blockaded. The movement of food, heating, fuel and agricultural exports and commodities have been crippled. Most vocal among the demonstrators, the First Nations, a group of aboriginal people who believe they should have control of their ancestral lands. It's proved a tricky situation for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who's long presented himself as an ally of the indigenous population. But he needs to bring the protests to a swift end.

The protest initially is about a gas pipeline that's been in the works for five, six years. In a nation called the Wetsuitan on the west coast of Canada in British.

Columbia, John Ibison reports for the Economist.

In Canada, they claim that it was unceded territory and that the proponent of a gas pipeline has no right to build it without their permission. That has mushroomed into a much bigger protest right across the country and really ground Canada to a halt. We've seen ports blockaded on the west coast, rail lines right across the country, but the main one has been this Toronto to Montreal line. And that has stopped the movement of things like propane gas, which is used as heating fuel in remoter areas of Quebec and Ontario. Nearly half a million Canadians in those areas use propane to heat their homes. And it's set to run out by early March. There'll be no more propane unless it starts flowing. Now, the blockades, there was an injunction, the government ran out of patience. An injunction was granted and the blockades early on 24 February were starting to be moved. But it remains to be seen how quickly goods start flowing back across the country.

What do people make of this standoff and these blockades?

Well, non Indigenous Canadians, the one poll that we do have suggests that 61% are opposed to this method of making a point. I think a majority want the blockades brought down. Even among first nations around the actual gas development are very much in favour of it. I mean, I spoke to a guy who does logging and road building who, who is a member of the Wetsuweten community, and he's pointing out that this is going to provide jobs for communities where the life expectancy, education levels and incomes are all lower than among non native communities. And the majority of people in those communities are in favor. The project has been on the books for five or six years. There have been 15 banned elections during that time, and nobody who was opposed to the project has been elected. This logger that I talked to fears that if the project is halted, nobody will ever invest in the area again.

And so the comparatively small number of people who have become exercised about this are really, really quite upset. I mean, it seems as if this has struck a nerve that represents something bigger than just a pipeline.

Clearly, for environmental protesters, the idea of a $6 billion pipeline, even if this is a liquefied natural gas pipeline, not an oil pipeline, but they still oppose that. That has been a fairly common feeling among the environmental community. But I think the larger issue here for indigenous people is the idea that this is about aboriginal land and justice issues that have been pretty much ignored by successive governments over the last 25 years, most governments have come in and they said, well, we're going to try and fix, make sure there's clean water on these bands. We're going to try and improve the housing, we'll try and improve the education. They're pretty much incremental measures. It's essentially a resentment against the colonial system that was imposed on First nations. It saw the 80 or so larger tribes divided into 630 smaller administrative units called bands. Those still exist and they're all still governed by the Indian act, which was a Victorian era construct. And there's still a lot of resentment that people don't feel that their Indigenous rights and their Indigenous ownership of land is recognised.

And so how is that playing out in the Canadian government now and the degree to which Mr. Trudeau's government will have to deal with this?

So Justin Trudeau has tried to play a softly, softly approach. He was patient in the face of the blockades when his political opponents were urging him to be less patient. 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.

Patience may be in short supply and.

That makes it more valuable than ever. By the end of last week, he started to say, well, the blockades have to come down. But he was accused of dithering by the leader of the opposition. Andrew Scheer was saying that the country's being ruled by the mob.

Will we let our entire economy be held hostage by a small group trampling.

Over the legal system which has governed.

Our country for more than 150 years?

So Trudeau has reluctantly been forced to act, but I don't think that he's come out of this well. The accusation from the opposition that this was the weakest response to a crisis in Canadian history, I think has stuck in the minds of most Canadians, and hence his about turn eventually by saying that the blockades have to come down.

But where does that end up, do you think, in terms of Indigenous peoples getting the recognition that they want that the law kind of coming into alignment in a way that is equitable for everyone and indeed for the likes of this pipeline to continue?

Well, I think it depends how the ending of the blockade is handled. If it does turn to violence, and we have seen violence in these types of scenarios in the past, then all bets are off. But I think if both sides handle this calmly and we don't see a mushrooming across the country of new blockades, then the government does have the opportunity to say, look, longer term we are going to do something about this. We are going to. The liberal government was elected in 2015 on this agenda of indigenous reconciliation. If they're actually genuine about it and they bring in a route to self government for First Nations, a recognition of aboriginal title for some of these lands, which would give them, if not a veto on projects, it would certainly concentrate the minds of anybody who wanted to build something. They really would need to get the support of all sides. And I think crucially, what we're talking about at its crudest is a new arrangement that would trade land and power and money for the curtailment of protests, claims and court action. So I think from everybody's point of view, the best solution would be to come up with a true reconciliation package.

Thank you very much for your time, John. Thank you. Yesterday, Hosni Mubarak passed away. He was Egypt's longest serving president, an autocrat who was deposed during the tumult of the Arab Spring. But his time in power will be remembered by many for its relative stability.

Hosni Mubarak was not nearly as striking a figure as Gamal Abdel Nasser, and he didn't make any decisions as momentous as Amor Sadat's peace with Israel. Yet he ruled Egypt for longer than both his predecessors combined, nearly three decades defined by stability if not prosperity.

Roger McShane is our middle east editor.

He was a somewhat glitzy figure. He had jet black hair, well into his 80s, obviously died. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, but he wasn't plain. He lived in luxurious palaces. He had a fortune that was estimated at around 40 billion salted away abroad. His suits were tailored in London. The pinstripes had his initials in them. Yet he was somewhat awkward, especially on the international stage. I think you can put some of this awkwardness down to the fact that he was a military man through and through. He was a squadron leader in the early 60s when Egypt went to war with Yemen. It wasn't clear exactly what role he played in that war, but the war itself was disastrous for Egypt. It's often called Egypt's Vietnam, and it left it really ill prepared for the 1967 war against Israel, when the Egyptian air force was largely destroyed. And that's important because Mubarak's job after that was to rebuild the air force. And this is how he sort of gained the confidence of other military officers. And it really bore fruit during the October war of 1973 when Egypt seized back lost territory a lot of people started to really take notice of him. Then Mubarak's success really increased his stature. And in 1975, he was tapped by President Omar Sadat to be his vice president. Even during that time as vice president, I don't think many people saw him as an up and comer. He kept a very low profile. He wasn't given that much responsibility. It was only after Sadat was killed that I think it sort of dawned on people that this man was now going to become president of Egypt.

Today.

They dug into the sand there to begin work on a mausoleum for president Sadat. At the same time, president designate Hosni Mubarak was formally meeting with his ministers, A taut but composed man who, as the fighting in the south shows, faces awful problems.

After becoming president in 1981, he continued many of his predecessors policies. He maintained peace with Israel. He maintained close ties with America and sort of rekindled friendships with Arab states that were angry at Sadat over making peace with Israel.

Maintaining peace at home proved more difficult. At first, Mr. Mubarak wanted to bring more voices into Egypt's political conversation. But that wasn't without risk.

Mubarak faced a political threat, not just from liberals, but also from Islamists. I mean, Egypt is the home of the Muslim Brotherhood. And while he gave them some freedom, at least at the beginning of his time in office, he would later crackdown on the group. But he also faced a threat, a physical threat from jihadists. He survived multiple assassination attempts during his time in office. And by the end of his time in office, he had locked up tens of thousands of these suspected jihadists. But in fact, a lot of the people who were painted as extremists were actually just political opponents.

While he tussled with the country's politics, the economy was weakening.

In the 1990s, Egypt faced an economic crisis. And Mubarak's answer to this was to sign up to sort of your standard IMF stabilization plan that called for cutting budgets, slashing subsidies, privatizing public enterprises. And it seemed to work, actually. GDP grew. International financial institutions lauded Mubarak. But at home, the benefits didn't trickle down. The military played an increasing role in both the economy and the government, and both suffered. And you know, by the end, he and his cohort were soon seen as these old uninspiring figures out of touch with a country teeming with young people. So you had a public that was becoming increasingly disillusioned, and it ultimately culminated in the end of 2010, early 2011, in the Arab Spring uprising. These enormous protests that were focused on getting Mubarak out of power.

Freedom, they chanted. And down with Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president for the last 30 years.

Mubarak misread the people during this period. I mean, by that time he had so isolated himself that I don't think he. He appreciated the gravity of the situation. And therefore he tried to hang on for nearly three weeks and asked. Hundreds of thousands of people sort of gathered in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. He would occasionally come on the TV and sort of promise these fiddly little reforms. Even the day before he stepped down, he said something like, I'm addressing all of you from the heart. A father's dialogue to his sons and daughters. And the people of Egypt by that time did not want to be the sons and daughters of Mubarak. And 24 hours later, he was gone.

We will build a new Egypt, a.

Modern Egypt, and an Egypt of justice.

After he was toppled, there was this great appetite to hold him accountable for the enormous corruption that happened during his time in office, for his crackdowns, and for his violent response at times to the revolution. And you saw this sort of start to happen during Egypt's year and a half of democracy. He was put on trial for corruption and conspiracy to murder. And at one point he was actually convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But an appeals court overturned that verdict. And once the military took charge again in 2013, you saw that they were going to protect Mubarak. He spent much of his post presidency at the Mahdi Military Hospital in southern Cairo, ostensibly under house arrest, but in a nice room overlooking the Nile River. He was spared any time in prison, and he was ultimately released from the hospital three years ago and moved back into one of his mansions in a more affluent part of Cairo. Egypt's current leaders had largely kept Mubarak out of the public eye, but I think a lot of Egyptians had started to look back on. On his presidency somewhat fondly. And many of them were saddened when he died yesterday at the age of 91. I think the reason Egyptians today look back fondly on Mubarak's presidency is because they've been through this packed decade of sort of tumultuous politics, starting with the Revolution in 2011.

I'm 42 years, so I never feel such happiness now.

Then the coup in 2013, tons of protests, lots of crackdowns. And really what they want is just to be able to go to work, come home, be with their family. And I think when they look back on the three decade presidency of Mubarak. That's what they remember.

Visiting Sri Lanka in 1960, British journalists were surprised by the close relationship between humans and elephants.

These elephants we found near Candia, used mainly for farm work like tractors. But every August, about a hundred of them put on their Sunday best great mantles of crimson and gold and take part in the big Buddhist pageant at.

Kandy, known as the Perahara.

Although they're endangered, elephants are still widespread across Sri Lanka. But their interaction with humans is increasingly defined by violence. Last year, elephants killed at least 100 people and humans have killed more than three times that many elephants. Now the government department in charge of protecting the at risk species has given people guns to defend against them.

So the two species are at war over shared land in Sri Lanka.

Sarah Donilon reports for The Economist.

About 44% of land in Sri Lanka is shared between people and elephants. And the problem is that farmers grow crops, but then hungry elephants raid them. And so Sri Lankans have retaliated by killing the elephants with firecrackers or secret poisonings and even devices called jaw exploders, which are explosives hidden in fruits that elephants eat. But when people try to confront the elephants head on, often drunkenly, it rarely ends well. And elephants trample humans. This has turned into a crisis for the government, especially the conservation department. And in desperation, they have announced that they're going to recruit a civil defense force of about 2,500 people and arm them with guns.

And how did the problem actually get to this stage?

Yeah, ironically, part of the issue is that Sri Lanka has historically taken pretty good care of its Asian elephants. So if you compare the numbers from across Asia, from 1960 to 2015, elephants in Sri Lanka lost about 15% of their range, which is not great. But then if you look at Malaysia, in even less time, from 1975 to 2015, elephants living on human land lost almost 70% of their range. But in the last few years especially, there's been a dramatic increase in violence. There are a couple reasons for this. On a practical level, it's been been the result of aggressive development that has fragmented and encroached on elephants land. But there's also a sort of psychological problem here that there's been militarization of the issue. And elephants are viewed not just as pests to farmers, but as sort of arch rivals.

The government thinks the only solution here is, well, is arming people to kill them. Is that going to work?

Well, unsurprisingly, it's been hugely controversial in Sri Lanka. And conservationists insist that it's not only immoral, but that, no, it won't work. The government claims that the guns are just to give villagers so that they can patrol around and fire warning shots rather than actually kill the elephants, because killing elephants in Sri Lanka is illegal. But arming angry farmers with guns likely means that they're going to shoot more at the elephants. But beyond that sort of values point, conservationists also say that the plan is kind of strategically misguided. The design of the firearms distributed makes them more likely to injure elephants than to kill them. And so that will just make the animals angrier and exacerbate the problem.

So what would work then? If the substantial problem here is that the land is already shared and that these things are protected by law, then what is the way to solve this problem?

Conservationists told me that there are a couple of principles that a more successful plan should follow in the future. The first is that the response has to be multi stakeholder. One of the initiatives that's been really successful is something called Project Orange Elephant, where volunteers plant citrus fruits. And those have two benefits. They're repellent to elephants and they also help to diversify the farmers crops. The other principle that conservationists say is really important is to plan for coexistence between humans and elephants, not for a scenario where elephants are separate totally from humans, because that's never been possible in Sri Lanka. One successful coexistence model in some villages has been to fence off harvests rather than trying to fence in the elephants somewhere. And then after the cultivation of the harvest is done, the villagers have pulled down the fences and let the elephants feed on the scraps.

So it's a matter of expanding, in part, some programs that are already in place, but one that is already in place is this one where people are armed. I mean, what happens with them?

Yeah, it's a bit up in the air. I think that the blowback was unexpected from the government. It's really been quite dramatic. And towards the end of last month, the wildlife Minister met with some of the conservationists and pledged to at least stop issuing new weapons, though he said it was impossible to sort of confiscate the around 400 that are already out there in the hands of villagers. So instead his department is going to request that people bring those back. So we'll see if they do. But the government has probably created more problems than it solved in announcing this really aggressive measure.

Sarah, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here tomorrow.