The leader of the BC Liberals says the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs can’t pick and choose what laws they want to follow and what laws they don’t.

Andrew Wilkinson was speaking on the NL Morning News about a court injunction issued because of hereditary chiefs blocking construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

“If they didn’t like the injunction on December 31st they had 30 days to appeal. They did nothing. So they have to accept the rule of law in this country. And for them to turn around and say ‘we’re going to rely on Delgamuukw’ is just making a mockery on the whole system. They ignore the injunction, but they want to rely on a 25-year-old judgement,” he says, referring to the Delgamuukw case in Supreme Court from 1997, which recognizes Indigenous ownership of traditional territory.

Meanwhile, Wilkinson says yesterday’s protests went too far – at the steps of the BC Legislature and places like CN Rail lines, main ports in Vancouver and Delta and the intersection near Vancouver General Hospital, where protesters were out for about 12 hours.

“That situation at Cambie and Broadway should’ve been allowed to carry on for maybe 20 or 30 minutes and then cleared out. Hundreds of thousands of people are going through that intersection everyday, and it’s just not right that the few protesters get to set up a fire in the middle of the road, hang around and have fun at everybody else’s expense.”

Wilkinson says some protesters had been on the steps at the BC Legislature for nearly a week before yesterday , which he says was within the lines.

“And then yesterday, hundreds of students joined them. And the students were generally pretty courteous, and were having kind of a fun day out, and it was a sunny day, and it was all fine. But amongst the students were some agitators, who were pushing people, spitting on people. Chasing commissionaires in their 70s who work part time at the Legislature, chasing them down the sidewalk, screaming in their faces and spitting on them.”