Canada’s “green scare” ? exposing and combating the crackdown on environmental and Indigenous organizations

The world’s leading destroyer of intact forests. The most belligerent party in international climate negotiations. An unparalleled muzzler of government scientists. None of these are descriptions many associated with Canada—until recently.

As the Conservative government has tried to single-mindedly transform Canada into a resource extraction state, it has introduced sweeping measures to clear any obstacles—political, regulatory, scientific—from its path.

No one has proved a more stubborn opponent to the government’s ideology than environmentalists and the Indigenous rights movement—the latter bursting into mainstream consciousness in the winter of 2012 and 2013 as the Idle No More movement.

Martin’s series of articles will track the government and corporate crackdown on these growing movements, trace its history and origins, and explore emerging strategies to overcome it.

Martin Lukacs is an investigative journalist and an environmental writer for The Guardian. He has broken stories about government spying on First Nations, oil company cover-ups, the world’s biggest geo-engineering experiment, and Canada’s secret tar sands lobbying in Europe. He lives in Montreal.