For Tia Dafnos, an associate professor at the University of New Brunswick, the records reinforce, at minimum, the optics that national security police resources are being used to protect corporations and their financial interests.
What makes a piece of infrastructure “critical” is not well defined, and that looseness gives national security units broad discretion to “pre-emptively keep an eye on people,” she says.
“That power of discretion is significant because there’s always a way to just end up justifying that surveillance,” she said.
All that work, all that expertise and equipment just to terrorize a small group of native people and especially women on behalf of corporate interests. Using officers decked out with military style weapons and combat gear.
Indigenous people know what the rcmp is … it’s the attack dog of the government to protect their friends. They’re not meant to protect people, they’re meant to maintain their rule of law.
We’ve always known that because that’s all we’ve ever seen them do.