An ailing domestic oil market has contributed to the nascent movement which draws inspiration from France’s gilets jaunes

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Amid growing concerns over Canada’s ailing domestic oil market, protests have erupted in western parts of the country, where some demonstrators have donned yellow reflective vests inspired by France’s gilets jaunes.

Like their French counterparts, the protesters have organized on Facebook pages, and focused their fury on a federal carbon tax, but their grievances also include stalled pipeline projects, oil sector layoffs, and – for a small minority – the government’s liberal asylum policies.

Canada, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter, has been hit hard by a recent slump in oil prices, and a lack of pipelines to move its crude to markets.

Some companies have begun to lay workers off, prompting fears of potentially widespread job losses in the oil-rich province of Alberta, where at least 40,000 jobs were lost during the last oil market crash of 2014.

On Wednesday, a convoy of more than 1,000 heavy trucks in Alberta rolled through the town of Nisku, in a show of support for the beleaguered energy sector.

“We are in dire need. Many people that are in the industry have lost their homes, lost their families,” said Chad Miller, founder of Oilfield Dads, a group that helped organize a separate rally of more than 1,500 people in Grande Prairie, Alberta, at the weekend. “The kids feel the anxiety. There’s the roundtable discussions that you have with your wife over bills about what you can pay and what you can’t pay. It’s tough.”

While global crude oil prices rallied over the last year, the cost of Canadian crude has remained low because of oversupply. The Alberta government has said the gap in prices is costing the Canadian economy C$80m ($59m) each day in lost revenues.

This week, the federal government announced a C$1.6bn bailout for oil and gas companies, and the province’s premier, Rachel Notley, has launched a series of measures to contain the crisis, purchasing rail cars to move oil to markets and ordering a rare cut in oil production to rein in oversupply.

But for workers in the resource-rich province, the moves are too little, too late.

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Sunday’s protest was motivated by anger over federal energy policies – including the stalled Trans Mountain pipeline and the implementation of a federal carbon tax as part of government’s climate change strategy.

“A lot of people are frustrated about what’s going on in their country,” said Miller.

Some at the rally wore yellow vests: standard safety clothing for workers in the province’s tar sands fields – but also the symbol of the French protests which began as a revolt over an environmental fuel tax and morphed into an anti-establishment movement against low incomes and tax inequality.

Canadian protesters have also called for an end to their country’s carbon tax, but the country’s nascent Yellow Vest groups – a minority in the broader protests – have also embraced rightwing populist causes.

One Facebook group for protesters, Yellow Vests Canada, has amassed nearly 90,000 members since it was created two weeks ago. A description on its main page reads: “This group is to protest the CARBON TAX and the Treason of our country’s politicians who have the audacity to sell out OUR country’s sovereignty over to the Globalist UN and their Tyrannical policies.”

One of the group’s administrators, Josue St-Cyr, said most of its members are in western Canada. “We’re trying to make ourselves heard because obviously nobody’s listening to us,” said St-Cyr, a heavy-equipment operator in the oil sands fields.

Discussions on the group often target Canada’s approval this month of a new UN pact designed to promote cooperation to ensure safe migration between states.

The agreement is not legally binding, and will not change Canada’s migration policies, but it has become the focus for intense criticism from the country’s right.

“I’m not racist. I’m pro-immigration. But let’s do it the right way. Let’s not just open our borders to the UN to bring whoever they want,” said St-Cyr, who said asylum claimants entering Canada were a bigger issue for him than the carbon tax. “It’s up to Canadians to choose how many and who to bring in and make sure that they’re screened.”

Such ideas have been encouraged by mainstream politicians; in recent weeks, the Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer, has repeatedly voiced strong opposition to the pact, falsely warning it would prevent Canada from controlling its borders.

In an interview over the weekend, the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, criticised Scheer for “fearmongering”, saying the Conservative leader was “deliberately and knowingly spreading falsehoods for short-term political gain”.

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Outside of Alberta, yellow vest-inspired rallies have begun to appear throughout the country over the last week, but are significantly smaller than their French counterparts.

Nelson Wiseman, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto, said that the largest yellow vest protests so far have been in Alberta’s Conservative electoral strongholds, where there was pre-existing opposition to the current Liberal government.

A recent yellow vest rally in Toronto (population 2.7 million) drew roughly 60 people, and Wiseman was skeptical that the protest movement would take root across Canada.

“When you scratch the surface, it’s very shallow,” he said. “It’s a vehicle for people who are very conservative [and] anti-immigrant – and want to use anything they can against the current government.”

