Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May and NDP MP Kennedy Stewart were arrested while protesting the construction of the federally approved Trans Mountain pipeline expansion Friday.

The Green Party announced May’s arrest Friday afternoon on Twitter. Kennedy confirmed his arrest in a statement. Both have since been released.

BREAKING: @ElizabethMay has just been arrested for protesting the injustice of the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Add your name to stand with her: https://t.co/DVahr9HlKB#DefendTheWater #FirstNations #Solidarity pic.twitter.com/cGUDbbuJCj — Green Party Canada (@CanadianGreens) March 23, 2018

May and NDP MP Kennedy Stewart said they would join demonstrations in Burnaby, B.C. The two MPs said they planned to enter a court-imposed protest-free zone – located in Stewart’s riding – around certain Kinder Morgan properties in Metro Vancouver. Those who violate the injunction issued by the B.C. Supreme Court last week are at risk of being arrested.

“I am keeping my word,” May said in a press release. “I said I would stand in solidarity with the First Nations opposing Kinder Morgan and I am keeping my word.

“Non-violent civil disobedience is legitimate as a means of expression but it is a step I have not taken before. Even standing on the logging roads of Clayoquot Sound in 1993, I stepped aside when asked to do so. I can no longer step aside.”

“I feel it is my responsibility to do whatever I can to advocate for my community as its elected Member of Parliament, including exercising my constitutional rights,” Stewart said in a statement sent out to supporters.

A news release from protest organizers says nearly 100 people have already been taken into custody for violating the court order.

The injunction prohibits activists from getting within five metres of Kinder Morgan’s two terminal sites on Burnaby Mountain where work related to the pipeline expansion is underway.

The expansion project will triple the capacity of the pipeline to nearly 900,000 barrels from 300,000.

Before his arrest, Stewart said he was supporting his constituents in Burnaby South and he was aware he could be taken into custody.

“I feel I have no choice at this point but to do this to amplify the deep, deep opposition to this project that is felt by my constituents,” he said.

“It’s a combination of the disastrous potential of this project, but also betrayal around how it was approved that is moving many of my constituents to take the actions that they are.”

A lawyer for Trans Mountain, a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan Canada, told a judge at hearings on the injunction application that the protesters’ goal was to cause so much financial harm through delays that the company would be forced to abandon the $7.4-billion project, which has been approved by the National Energy Board and the federal government.

Pipeline opponents also had plans to gather at the offices of 44 MPs and deliver water samples taken from the B.C. coast.

They said the demonstrations would be a reminder of the British Columbia waterways threatened by the pipeline expansion, which would increase the number of oil-carrying vessels in the Georgia Strait from eight per month to as many as 37.

With files from Canadian Press