Settler infrastructure must be defended: Jenna Inch, ‘Securitizing “Critical Infrastructure” in So-Called Canada: Petro-Colonialism, Land Defence, and Alberta’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act’, On Politics, 17, 1, 2024, pp. 1-19 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler infrastructure must be defended: Jenna Inch, ‘Securitizing “Critical Infrastructure” in So-Called Canada: Petro-Colonialism, Land Defence, and Alberta’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act’, On Politics, 17, 1, 2024, pp. 1-19

09Aug24

Abstract: In June 2020, Alberta’s United Conservative government under Jason Kenney passed the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act (CIDA). This provincial act codifies penalties for trespassing or obstructing various forms of “critical infrastructure,” including infrastructure attributed to Alberta’s fossil fuel economy. However, unbeknownst to many, CIDA was passed in direct response to Wet’suwet’en land defenders blockading pipeline infrastructure on their lands in the central interior of British Columbia and the cross-country solidarity blockades which followed. This paper analyzes the securitization of pipeline infrastructure throughout Canada’s contemporary history, showcasing how fossil fuel infrastructure has been discursively lodged as “critical” for Canada’s socio-economic well being since Stephen Harper’s reign as Prime Minister. As a consequence, Indigenous land defenders have been narrativized as extremist threats by actors within Canadian settler-state governance, including actors within the Alberta provincial government during the passing of CIDA, in an effort to maintain fossil fuel hegemony and uphold the present petro-colonial order. In doing so, the settler-state has inhibited Indigenous communities from protecting their own “critical infrastructures” – the lands, waters, and non-human others – without legal penalty, threatening the survival of Indigenous nations and the planet at large whilst compromising future exercises of peaceful civil disobedience in Alberta.

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