Mr. Prime Minister, the country needs you. The hell with process and protocol.

Trolling Africa, plumping for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, isn’t nearly as crucial as easing the ever-escalating tensions in Canada over demonstrations and blockades emanating from Indigenous opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline project in British Columbia, augmented by climate change activists and ardent environmentalists.

As per the formal itinerary, Justin Trudeau is expected to land in Ottawa after midnight on Saturday, via Germany, where he’s attending an international security conference.

The PM has been well aware of events here and should have cut his glad-handing mission overseas short, as confrontation edges towards crisis.

It’s simply not enough to claim, as Trudeau did earlier this week, that, while peaceful protest is a fundamental democratic right to be defended and protected, the law must also be respected.

Under the circumstances, these are clashing principles.

When Mohawk Warriors get involved — at Belleville, in solidarity — given their history of aggressive resistance and intimidation tactics against innocent civilians, the tipping point is already quivering.

If cooler heads don’t prevail, then knocking heads together might ensue. Somebody will get hurt, there could be blood, and then the country will take one giant step further towards combustible conflict, despite assurances all round of peaceable intentions.

The law, in fact, has spoken.

The B.C. Supreme Court late last week issued injunctions giving the RCMP the right to arrest people and dismantle camps aimed at blocking pipeline construction. The pipeline is a project that has — there’s no underestimating this — the support of elected band council leaders from 20 bands along its route. Those elected officials have signed agreements which guarantee cascading economic benefits including contract work for Indigenous businesses, a package estimated at $620 million.

But the project is fiercely opposed by hereditary chiefs who insist they are the legitimate representatives of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, which the pipeline would traverse, because the land has never been ceded or surrendered, thus it is Indigenous sovereign territory. The pipeline, they argue, will irrevocably alter the land over which they have guardianship, by extension threatening their social and cultural existence.

The B.C. judge who issued the injunction said that Indigenous customary laws are not viewed as an “effectual” part of Canadian law until they are recognized as such in treaties or court declarations.

Legally, it’s a Gordian knot and ultimately likely to be settled only by the highest court in the country, where the hereditary chiefs might have a strong case.

In the interim, it’s a mess, even more so because the core issue has become entangled with climate guerrillas, social-justice warriors, anti-capitalism zealots, and the long, grim historical record of Indigenous mistreatment by governments. Accusations of colonialism, racism and genocide pepper the debate.

I don’t doubt that most of us have a poor understanding of the moral authority which devolves to hereditary leaders and the wrangle for power with elected band leaders. But the most hostile elements within this don’t seek reconciliation; in my view, they demand retroactive capitulation — that the rest of us, non-Indigenous “invaders,” understand their rage by looking through the prism of their pain, not just historically, but very much still in the here and now, replete as it is with horrible living conditions and boil-water alerts.

Government ministers have been mostly circumspect in their comments — Premier Jason Kenny is a predictable exception — leery of provoking a more furious response, further ratcheting up the railway blockades, office sit-ins, Legislature obstructions and traffic-snarling demonstrations. B.C. Premier John Horgan on Thursday released a letter proposing a meeting with the hereditary chiefs, with the proviso that the blockade at New Hazelton be removed for a period of “calm and peaceful dialogue.” Federal Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller, the previous evening, offered to meet with three leaders of the Belleville protest.

Miller could not be have been more forelock-tugging: “My request, that I ask you kindly to consider, is to discontinue the protest and barricade of the train tracks, as soon as practicable. As you well know, this is a highly volatile situation and the safety of all involved is of the utmost importance to me.”

The Belleville blockaders had an Ontario court injunction to cease and desist read to them on Tuesday, but the OPP has taken no action. And governments, both federal and provincial, have maintained they have no authority to dictate law-enforcement operations. Which is lame.

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For ordinary folks, the inconvenience — no trains in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor, for instance — is minor and shouldn’t be overplayed. We afford similar grit-your-teeth tolerance to rotating strikes by teachers in Ontario, assuming the government will intervene should the situation become untenable. But that’s a far thing from mob rule, which is what is happening now, as the economic cost from cancelled passenger trains — mostly disruption of freight movement, wood, pulp, paper, propane, grain, food — reaches into the multi-millions of dollars, and affects trade.

CN Rail announced, late Thursday afternoon, it was shutting down its Eastern operations entirely, everything east of Toronto. A blockade in Manitoba had been cleared. There’s been alleged “progress” in B.C., but Ontario remains a shambles.

Via Rail has cancelled all its passenger trains across Canada.

Specifically, because the injunction hasn’t been put into effect.

Government officials walking on eggshells, because God forbid there should be another Oka. Or the interminable wrangle of Caledonia, where residents were issued “passports” to access their own homes. It’s a double standard for lawlessness in reverse.

Dialogue seems hardly the appropriate descriptor, not when core demands, at least among the more radical faction, include acknowledging the superior authority of hereditary chiefs, tearing up permits for the entirety of the pipeline project — this is only part of the infrastructure needed for the massive $40 billion LNG Canada project, encompassing a liquified natural gas export plant in Kitimat, B.C. — and immediate withdrawal of the RCMP from Wet’suwet’en territory.

As protesters settled in for another night of defiance, they had little to fear.

I don’t want them fearful, either, not for their physical well-being. The fact is, police officers, as do soldiers, may have the authority to use force when necessary, but they are also obligated to limit harm and de-escalate tensions in a crisis without resorting to what can’t be undone.

Which leaves us precisely where we are.

With a prime minister in absentia, bringing up the rear laggardly and euphemistically — Trudeau won’t even utter the word “blockade.”

And what could be a very long digging-in of wills.

Correction - Feb. 14, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version to reflect the exact wording used by Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller in his letter to three Indigenous leaders regarding the rail blockades near Belleville, Ont.

Rosie DiManno is a columnist based in Toronto covering sports and current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno

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