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The NunatuKavut Community Council has filed an application in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador to vary an injunction filed by Nalcor on Oct. 16, 2016 which “overly restricts individuals from protesting the Muskrat Falls project and exercising their Charter rights,” said NCC President Todd Russell.
Muskrat Falls is a multi-billion-dollar hydroelectric dam being built in Labrador on the lower Churchill River near Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Nalcor is a provincial Crown corporation. Protesters are concerned with the environmental risk to the river and the possible flow of methylmercury to the downstream Inuit community of Lake Melville and the impact on the food supply, specifically the fish.
Last October saw an intense protest at the site, with the people calling for the trees, plants and soil to be removed from the reservoir area before it is flooded. Harvard scientists have concluded through a study that methylmercury levels could rise as much as 380 per cent in Lake Melville if the reservoir was only partially cleared before flooding, reported the CBC at the time.
In the court application filed Sept. 22, NCC is requesting that the injunction be modified so that peaceful protests, such as information pickets, can occur near the Muskrat Falls project site.
“The varied injunction we seek will be subject to a number of conditions, mainly related to safety, including assembling in daylight hours, wearing visible clothing and allowing picketers to approach incoming vehicles.”
Russell said the filing is based on the principle that “we all have fundamental rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful assembly.
“The justice system has a critical role to play in recognizing and protecting these rights for the benefit of NCC members and all Indigenous peoples, especially given the arrest and imprisonment of five individuals to date under the terms of the current injunction, three of whom were Southern Inuit.”
NCC has consistently spoken out against the provisions of the existing injunction.
He said NCC needs to have some measure of comfort that justice is being done and seen to be done fairly and justly for our people.