Police arrested protesters at the pipeline protest on Parliament Hill Monday.
Protesters wearing blue and green armbands hopped a police barricade on Parliament Hill Monday, risking arrest to show their opposition to a proposed cross-border oil pipeline.
More than 100 demonstrators emerged from a crowd of several hundred protesters and formed rows of five and six before slowly approaching and mounting the chest-high fence – covered in no-entry signs and yellow police tape – while others chanted "let them pass."
Maude Barlow, chairperson of activist group the Council of Canadians, spoke before the fence hopping began. She railed against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would funnel Alberta oil sands crude to refineries in the southern United States.
Barlow linked Keystone XL, the target of increasingly heated protests on both sides of the border, to other planned pipelines in Alberta.
"If you take a look at the proposed pipelines from the tar sands in Alberta, it looks like a corporate Snakes and Ladders board game," Barlow told the cheering crowd.
She then joined the first wave of demonstrators who hopped the police barrier in a choreographed act of "civil disobedience" organized by Greenpeace and Barlow's Council and the Indigenous Environmental Network. Network campaigner Clayton Thomas-Muller served as MC for the rally, which featured several aboriginal speakers.
Barlow was quickly escorted away by police officers lining the barrier.
Several more waves of protesters, some dressed in business attire, went over the fence and sat on the ground under the watchful eye of several dozen RCMP officers, who stooped down to collect names and addresses.
Police arrested demonstrators as the protest went on. Some were fined for trespassing, given a one-year ban from Parliament Hill, and released.
Natasha Decruz, a translator who lifted herself over the barrier, said she was risking arrest "because I'd like to formally withdraw my consent to the tar sands (development)."
Monday's protest came in the wake of a major, star-studded demonstration in Washington, D.C. late last month.
That Aug. 27 protest saw more than 1,200 American demonstrators, including actress Daryl Hannah, arrested during a sit-in in front of the White House that went on for two weeks.
Environmentalists say Keystone XL would further tie the U.S. to the oil sands, an energy-intensive extraction process that produces significantly more greenhouse gases than traditional oil wells, at a time when the country should be cutting fossil fuel use. Critics also say the pipeline would put surrounding areas and underground aquifers at risk of an oil spill.
The $7-billion project would span five states and end at refineries along the Gulf of Mexico.
Already approved by Canada, Keystone XL is currently being reviewed by the U.S. State Department. A final decision on the project is expected by the end of the year.