NunatuKavut Community Council (NCC) President Todd Russell issued the following statement on September 22, 2017:
“Today, NCC filed an application in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador in Happy Valley-Goose Bay to vary an injunction filed by Nalcor on October 16, 2016 which, in our view, overly restricts individuals from protesting the Muskrat Falls project and exercising their Charter rights.
In the application, we are requesting that the injunction be modified so that peaceful protests, such as information pickets, can occur near the Muskrat Falls project site. The varied injunction we seek will be subject to a number of conditions, mainly related to safety, including assembling in daylight hours, wearing visible clothing and allowing picketers to approach incoming vehicles.
NCC has consistently spoken out against the provisions of the existing injunction. We are filing this application based on the principle that we all have fundamental rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful assembly. The justice system has a critical role to play in recognizing and protecting these rights for the benefit of NCC members and all Indigenous peoples, especially given the arrest and imprisonment of five individuals to date under the terms of the current injunction, three of whom were Southern Inuit.
We sincerely hope that the justice system will respond favourably so that people can peacefully assemble and protest this project, as has been previously recognized by various courts including the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal. We need to have some measure of comfort that justice is indeed being done and is seen to be done fairly and justly for our people.
NCC seeks to ensure that Southern Inuit and other Indigenous peoples can exercise their Constitutional rights, just like any other Canadian.”