By JOE WARMINGTON
Toronto Sun
Aug 31, 2007
NANTICOKE -- Calling it "nothing but anarchy" that could have ended with people hurt, OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino warned criminal charges in the Greenpeace protest could extend beyond the young people arrested yesterday.
"We realize full well the game plan was likely orchestrated at a much higher level than the children used here," he said last night. "We will investigate it thoroughly and charges will be laid if warranted."
Fantino also said the OPP studied ways to take the ship away from Greenpeace but found marine law and federal law ruled the day.
"If I had the power and authority in law I would have seized that ship as a result of its facilitating criminal activity," Fantino said. "Just think of all of the resources at great cost we have had to pull in from elsewhere in the province to deal with this nonsense."
Charged with two counts of criminal mischief each for boarding the coal delivery ship Algomarine are Dominique Du Sablon, 20, and Emily-Elizabeth Storey, 22, of Toronto, and Charlie Latimer, 25, of Vancouver.
But this does not mean the investigation is over, Fantino said, adding that the planners and thinkers should be ashamed of themselves. "You won't find the main players out there on the water," he said. "Using and enticing young people to break the law is mercenary, and it is despicable."
But on the ship a group of young people, including Toronto's own Shawn-Patrick Stensil, said their strong belief in trying to save the planet is what drives them and not someone else's convictions. Stensil said it's the same for all everybody -- a hodgepodge of "people and talents" from around the world.
But it was Canadians who boarded the ship on Lake Erie, painted on its hull and also ended up in handcuffs.
"They knew what might happen. They all have strong convictions about it," Stensil said. "This government promised it would get out of coal burning plants. We are challenging Ontario's political leaders to commit to clean, modern energy solutions that can be deployed today to shut down Nanticoke by 2012."
Protest, he said, is the only way to get action on something like this. On board Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise the crew waited patiently while the former sealing vessel sat anchored right in the middle of the only shipping lane -- thus preventing the delivery of coal to the plant.
"It is a stressful time," Stensil said.
Police boats surrounded the Arctic Sunrise and it was lost on no one that the Algomarine was a few kilometres away, waiting and anchored as Nanticoke power generating station employees were forced to scrape off coal to burn from a stockpile nearby.
"But make no mistake, we need that coal," one worker said. "This caused a lot of trouble because we were taking coal straight from the ship and putting it into the ovens."
They were eventually able to do that late last night. Authorities directed the Greenpeace vessel to leave and head to the Welland Canal and when the dust settled last night it finally did exactly that -- with Toronto in its sights for this weekend.
"The ship will be open for visits," Stensil said.
That irked Fantino as much as anything. "This was a media event," he said. "Media and fundraising."
In fact, when I told Fantino I was actually invited on the Arctic Sunrise yesterday he seemed kind miffed. "I know you have a job to do but I'll bet if the media were not around they would not be either."
He is right. This was a slick operation. A Zodiac came out and picked up media members from the Hoover Marina in Nanticoke and tours of the boat were offered.
The whole exercise was not sitting well with everybody on the patio at the Hoover Marina -- a regular happy hour spot for plant workers. "What kind of fuel are they are operating on?" commented one local who derives her living from the plant. "I suppose their ship runs with elastic bands."
"Yeah, they get their power by hamsters running down below the bridge," another added.
It's not hard to be cynical with this spectacle, and while I agree with Fantino, the crew on this ship seemed like a very nice bunch of people. You meet them and you can't help but like them. Courteous, polite and idealistic.
But Fantino says liking them is not the issue at hand. Being nice people does not change the fact that serious laws were broken and people were put at risk. "I learned a lot about the critical importance to our lifeline of having uninterrupted power in my previous job as the commissioner of emergency management and I can tell you there is serious potential for disaster when you mess with stuff like this. We can't afford to take a chance on something that important."
Fantino, who insists he is for peaceful protest, said this does not fall into that category.
"This was dangerous," he said. "It's using young people and putting them at risk. It terrorized the people on the coal ship, put our officers in harm's way and put the very foundation of the province's power supply at risk."
Any "sabotage" of the power supply, he said, is not acceptable.
"This was anarchy and it was masqueraded around environmental concerns," Fantino said. "It's not like their ship and their small craft are powered by natural air. We are all concerned about environment but we don't get in the way of other people doing their business who are law-abiding."
But Greenpeace argues tough action has to be taken against wrongs thrust upon society by big government.
"It takes guts," Stensil said. "The young people who boarded the ship were very nervous the night before."
Judging from Fantino's strong words, it's their bosses who may be nervous now