The environmental group Greenpeace is excluding the unvaccinated from its activist training sessions in Toronto.
Greenpeace describes its upcoming “Basic Action Training” program as “a weekend-long, intensive training to learn and share non-violent direct action skills and tactics including strategy, blockades and visual arts.”
It adds that the training is “an opportunity to get together with a diverse group of people who want to tackle environmental and social injustice.”
Greenpeace’s sessions are scheduled for September 9-11. They will take place at an undisclosed Toronto location set to be a “scent-reduced environment striving to be scent free.”
The organization says it needs people with the “skills and courage” to gather and organize” amid claims of governments, financial institutions and corporations that are continuing “to uphold the systems that exploit this planet and its people.”
However, Greenpeace’s website states that those interested in the sessions will have to show proof of vaccination to attend, unless they have a valid medical exemption.
Greenpeace will also mandate masks for the indoor duration of its sessions, while stating that, “there will be opportunities during the weekend for people to spend time outdoors without masks if they can physically distance.”
“We will have filters running and plan to eat outside. We want to ensure that everyone is as comfortable as possible and those most vulnerable are protected as much as possible from COVID-19 infection,” added Greenpeace.
It should be noted that Greenpeace says its Covid protocols may be subjected to changes.
True North reached out to Greenpeace to ask if participants would have to be double vaccinated or boosted, given that federal health minister Jean Yves Duclos said that two doses “doesn’t work anymore.”
Greenpeace did not respond to True North’s questions in time for publication.
Ontario ended its vaccine passport program on March 1, and the federal government suspended its vaccine requirements for rail and air travel on June 20. Most of the western world has also stopped mandating that people take Covid shots in order to participate in discretionary activities.
In its application form for the sessions, Greenpeace offers seven different gender identity options and asks applicants their race.
Greenpeace also asks applicants if they are “willing and able to participate in actions that might risk arrest sometime in the next 6 months to a year for campaigns on financial institutions like Canada’s dirtiest fossil banks, solidarity actions, to prevent destructive fossil fuel projects, and take action on climate and biodiversity crisis.”
It should be noted that a 2011 RCMP criminal intelligence assessment obtained by The Canadian Press had taken note of Greenpeace’s radicalism.
The report said that “Greenpeace is opposed to the development of Canada’s Arctic region, as well as Canada’s offshore petroleum industry.”
“Criminal activity by Greenpeace activists typically consists of trespassing, mischief, and vandalism, and often requires a law enforcement response.”
Furthermore, the report alleged “Greenpeace actions unnecessarily risk the health and safety of the activists, the facility’s staff, and the first responders who are required to extricate the activists.”
Greenpeace denied that it was becoming more radical, telling The Canadian Press, “there is a difference between breaking the law and criminal activities.”
