January 13, 2000

What follows is an excellent article on the postponement of the Daishowa appeal which was to have been heard this week.

Daishowa's appeal of the Daishowa v. Friends of the Lubicon court decision will now be heard on May 4th and 5th, 2000. Lubicon supporters -- and anyone who is concerned about the use of the Canadian courts to shut down peaceful opposition to corporate policies -- are invited to attend. More information will be forthcoming closer to those dates.

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Wednesday, 12 January, 2000
Grande Prairie Daily Herald-Tribune

Daishowa boycott appeal postponed

DEB GUERETTE Herald-Tribune staff

An appeal hearing sought by Daishowa to prevent a Lubicon Lake First Nation support group from directing boycott campaigns against its customers was postponed Tuesday.

The eastern Canada-based paper-product company and the Toronto based Friends of the Lubicon were to meet in court Jan. 11 and 12.

The FOL lawyer was ill and unable to attend the hearing, Daishowa corporate communications director Tom Cochrane said Tuesday.

Daishowa is appealing an April 1998 Ontario court decision that ruled FOL was within its rights to target boycott action against companies Daishowa does business with.

The consumer action has cost it close to $20 million in lost sales, Cochrane has said.

"We want to protect our customers and our right and ability to do business," Cochrane said from his Toronto office Tuesday.

While company lawyers are set to argue the judge erred in ruling FOL can conduct boycott action against its customers, a new Ottawa-area Lubicon support group joined an Amitie Lubicons-Quebec organized protest outside a Daishowa sales office in Montreal.

La Presse reported Monday about 40 people demonstrated in front of the Daishowa office to bring public attention to the appeal process. The new Ottawa-area group calls itself Outaouais Lubicon Solidarity.

"The demonstrators are committed to undertaking a boycott of the products fabricated by Daishowa's clients if the appeal is not dropped between now and April 1," La Presse reported.

"We are not going to drop the appeal," Cochrane said.

FOL launched the boycott campaign in the early 1990s to secure agreement from northern Alberta's Daishowa-Marubeni International to not log or buy wood from traditional Lubicon territory until its land rights and an environmental and wildlife management agreement is reached.

In the late 1980s the Alberta government granted the Japanese-owned pulp company a forest management agreement that blankets claimed Lubicon territory.

Daishowa successfully sought an injunction against FOL boycott activity during lawsuit proceedings against the support group that lasted over six years.

After the April 1998 ruling that the consumer boycott was a "model of how such activities should be conducted in a democratic society," the Lubicon support group again sought public and written commitment from DMI not to log or buy wood from claimed Lubicon territory.

Boycott activity was not revived after DMI finally made the public commitment in June 1998, says FOL spokesman Kevin Thomas.

Why Daishowa wants "an injunction against a boycott that no longer exists," leaves FOL concerned about the company's intentions, Thomas said.

"There is no boycott and there won't be as long as they keep their promise," Thomas said from Toronto.

Since DMI committed to stay out of unceded Lubicon territory, it has awarded a multi-year logging contract to a new northern tribal council. The area the Kee Tas Kee Now Tribal Council is to harvest in overlaps claimed Lubicon territory, Thomas said.

"(DMI) is placing other aboriginal people between itself and the Lubicon. "There is no doubt they are laying the groundwork for some kind of deal, - pitting one group of poor people against another group of poor people," he said.

FOL sources say Kee Tas Kee Now received $150,000 in government funding to form its aboriginal firm and logging proposal to DMI, Thomas said.

Kee Tas Kee Now Tribal Council grand chief Eddie Tallman could not be reached for comment. Tallman has yet to respond to written questions submit to him by the Herald-Tribune in November.

Outaouais Lubicon Solidarity founder Mary Foster says supporters are concerned DMI has let "a logging contract that includes Lubicon land." "We hope Daishowa will think a bit more about it," she said from the Ottawa/Hull, Quebec region the group takes it name from.

Industry activity and lack of federal government leadership in settling the claim "is really frustrating," she said.

"It is making a lot of Canadians angry. Why can't the federal government move forward (with a Lubicon settlement) more quickly," she said.

A new date for the appeal hearing is expected to be set by the end of the week.

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