Grand Chief Ron Tremblay of the Wolastoq Grand Council called together his allies in Fredericton, New Brunswick to support their Indigenous Sisters & Brothers at Standing Rock, North Dakota. Indigenous leaders at Standing Rock called for a Day of Action on Tuesday, November 15th to demand that the U.S. Government and banks reject the Dakoka Access Pipeline. (These banks and their contact info is listed at the DefundDAPL website.)
A large crowd gathered at Fredericton City Hall on Tuesday, November 15th and marched through the city, stopping at the TD Bank, Scotiabank, and HSBC locations in downtown Fredericton. “These banks have invested hundreds of millions in the Dakota Access Pipeline and we must show our disapproval and urge them to withdraw their investments,” says Ron Tremblay.
Many allies from the Council of Canadians – Fredericton chapter took part in the march.
The rallies held today in Canada follow large crowds that marched in Montreal on November 7th to call on TD Canada Trust, Scotiabank and RBC Royal Bank to stop their investment in the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The calls for a stop to these investments are growing louder and louder around the world. An article by Bill McKibben outlines the strategy to stop the funding for the Dakota Access.
Here is a quick background on the Dakota Access Pipeline and the huge financing by the banks that are necessary for this project to proceed:
FACT: The route of the Dakota Access Pipeline was rejected by the City of Bismarck because of risks to their municipal water sources, so it was moved several miles away to now go through the ancestral land of the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota and threaten their tribe’s drinking water supply, the Missouri River.
FACT: The pipeline is proposed to go under the Missouri River, the drinking water supply to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and millions of other people.
FACT: The pipeline is 30 inches in diameter which would make the size of a leak or rupture extremely large.
FACT: The Dakota Access Pipeline is estimated to cost over $3.8 billion pipeline and is being built by Energy Transfer Partners. The planned fracked shale oil pipeline would carry about 500,000 barrels of crude per day over 1,100 miles from North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield to Illinois.
FACT: 17 banks have collectively provided $2.5 billion for direct project-level loans to Dakota Access LLC. This includes 3 Canadian banks (RBC, TD and Scotiabank) and International banks like Deutsche Bank, Citibank, HSBC and ING.
FACT: An investigation by Food and Water Watch has revealed that TD subsidiary TD Securities is one of the seventeen banks that have provided project-level loans to Dakota Access LLC. It has the seventh largest commitment (+$360 million) out of these seventeen banks.
TD Securities – $365,000,000
Royal Bank of Canada – $340,558,456
Bank of Nova Scotia – $100,000,000
FACT: “Banks have also committed substantial resources to the Energy Transfer Family of companies so it can build out more oil and gas infrastructure:
– Energy Transfer Partners has a revolving credit line of $3.75 billion toward expanding its oil and gas infrastructure holdings, with commitments from just 26 banks.
– Sunoco Logistics has a credit line with $2.5 billion in commitments from just 24 banks.
– Energy Transfer Equity has a credit line with another $1.5 billion in commitments from most of the same big international banks.
All told, that’s $10.25 billion in loans and credit facilities from 38 banks directly supporting the companies building the pipeline.”
