‘No Olympics on Stolen Native Land, No Dirty Money for Dirty Oil’, RBC told by activists

Press Release: October 23, 2009

National day of action targets RBC’s environmental destruction for 2010 Vancouver-Whistler Olympics and the Alberta Tar Sands

WATERLOO—Activists from AW@L will be demonstrating at the Waterloo Royal Bank of Canada at the corner of King and University at noon today to protest the bank’s sponsorship of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and the Alberta Tar Sands development. Responding to a national call to action against corporate sponsors of the Olympics, AW@L is joining environmental organizations and activists across the country in condemning RBC for supporting this rampant environmental destruction.

Preparation for the 2010 Olympic Games has caused far-reaching social, economic, and environmental impacts, and spawned a nation wide resistance movement based out of Vancouver. Last week marked the first is a series of Days of Action declared against RBC and other corporate sponsors of the Olympics by the 2010 Corporate Campaign.

This week, as October 24—the International Day for Climate Action—approaches, it is pertinent to call attention to the environmental offenses committed by RBC in financing dirty oil and unsustainable development. RBC has been identified by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) as the biggest financier of the Tar Sands, and has also sponsored the Oil Sands Discovery Centre in Fort McMurray that serves as a propaganda tool for the industry.

RAN and other groups, including the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Olympics Resistance Network, and AW@L, have endorsed the call to action that prompted today’s demonstration. The 2010 Corporate Campaign seeks to pressure RBC to stop its funding of the Tar Sands and to “bring awareness of the social and environmental crimes the Royal Bank of Canada is committing as a primary sponsor of the 2010 Olympic circus,” says AW@L representative and local student Alex Hundert.

**AW@L's Olympic Torch and Tar Sands demo at RBC gets tied in with global day of action on climate change and the "Fill The Hill" and Powershift events in Ottawa by CTV reporter Michael Melling**

Olympic development in British Columbia has been inexcusably devastating to the environment. At last count, Whistler has had over 125,000 trees clear cut; the Sea-to-Sky Highway expansion has decimated the Eagle Ridge Bluffs, including some of the last intact arbutus habitat on the planet, and has destroyed the adjacent Larson Creek wetlands.

Taking place in neighbouring Alberta, the Tar Sands are the most environmentally destructive project on the planet, emitting more greenhouse gases than hundreds of countries and poisoning the watershed for the entire Athabasca region. Even the Government of Alberta has confirmed elevated levels of rare cancers in the downstream Indigenous community of Fort Chipewyan. Both projects, the 2010 Olympics and the Tar Sands, are taking place on, and destroying Indigenous lands, and both share RBC as a primary sponsor/financier.

Resistance to the impacts of the 2010 Olympics has been growing in Kitchener-Waterloo over the past year and a half. AW@L, as part of the Olympics Resistance Network—Ontario, is committed to raising awareness about these issues and challenging those complicit in Games-related environmental, social, and economic destruction. This action follows AW@L’s release of a statement directed to the City of Kitchener declaring opposition and promising resistance to the Olympic Torch Relay, which left Athens earlier this week to arrive in Canada, in Victoria, on October 30th. On that day is scheduled another day of action against RBC. The torch will be in KW from December 27-29.

The RBC sponsored Olympic Torch Relay is expected to be targeted for protest and disruption across Canada, much like the Relay for the 2008 Beijing Summer Games. AW@L spokesperson Alex Hundert made an explicit connection between the two relays: “People should expect to see as much resistance to this torch relay as they did for the last. The historical treatment of Indigenous people at the hands of Canadian colonialism has been no better than that experienced by the Tibetans at the hands of China—Canada should be ashamed of our atrocious record when it comes to relations with the First Nations of this land.” The group of activists will be displaying a large banner which reads: No Olympics on Stolen Native Land.

AW@L is one group of a larger environmental movement locally; on Saturday, the International Day for Climate Action, a non-partisan gathering of students and community members in Waterloo will be marching and rallying in downtown Waterloo, joining groups and individuals across the world to demand greater government action on climate change. Saturday’s rally coincides with Powershift, the country’s largest ever youth environmental conference, taking place in Ottawa this weekend.

Rooted in Kitchener-Waterloo and comprised of student activists and community organizers, AW@L is a community based direct action group that targets perpetuators of war and environmental destruction, and stands in solidarity with Indigenous activists who are fighting against colonialism, and all people who struggle against oppression in all its forms.

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Links for additional information:

* RBC and the Tar Sands: http://ran.org/fileadmin/materials/zero_emissions/rbcs_water_problem.pdf

* 2010 Corporate Campaign: http://2010campaign.wordpress.com/

* More Information on the Tar Sands: Oilsandstruth.org, Tarsandswatch.org

* More information on the Olympics: No2010.com, Olympicresistance.net
* AW@L's website: http://peaceculture.org