Nine protesters were convicted of contempt of court Monday for defying the court injunction meant to prevent them from interfering with work at Trans Mountain’s properties in Burnaby.
Bill Burgess, Charles Coleman, Simin Eghbali-Tabrizi, Johanna Hauser, Errol Povah, Kat Roivas, Gareth Rowbotham, Clayton Thomas-Muller and Nathan Vilner had all pleaded not-guilty in B.C. Supreme Court. They will be sentenced June 28.
Crown prosecutors are seeking $3,000 fines or 150 hours of community service for each of them.
Three more protesters have pleaded not guilty and are still waiting to stand trial.
These trials follow a series of court hearings where other protesters, including MPs Elizabeth May and Kennedy Stewart, pleaded guilty to contempt of court for defying the injunction by standing within 5-metres of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain tank farm.
Protesters staged a mock “board meeting” outside B.C. Supreme Court on Monday to “vote on what they should do with their portion of the soon-to-be Canadian, taxpayer-owned pipeline and tanker project,” according to a press release from Protect the Inlet.
“The new shareholders passed a motion to extract their portion of pipe, and voted to stop tar sands tankers, return the land the pipeline crosses to the respective [First] Nations, invest in the retraining of oil and gas workers for renewables and begin construction of clean drinking water infrastructure to reserves and remote communities.”
