Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Repression of Protest and Dissent in Canada: The Wet’suwet’en Land Defense Movement & #ShutDownCanada

Abstract

The Wet’suwet’en land defense movement and the allied #ShutDownCanada protests remain some of the most highly publicized anti-pipeline protest events of the last decade. This protest movement offers an insight into how Canada protects and reproduces its accumulation by resource extraction strategy. Situating this research within an observed global phenomenon of growing intolerance to protest and dissent in democratic contexts, I illuminate the ways through which opposition against extractive projects is repressed by the Canadian settler colonial state in the contemporary era of neoliberalism. Drawing on the political economy framework of “authoritarian neoliberalism,” I elucidate the legal, discursive, and coercive means through which extractive projects are insulated from public opposition. These means are repressing the democratic right to protest in Canada and indicate that Canada is no exception to a broader global deterioration of democracy under a political-economic system that is antagonistic to social solidarity and collective action. Moreover, these repressive strategies exacerbate the violent and dispossessive nature of Canada’s settler colonial extractive capitalism