Resistance and Opposition: Analyzing the Defeat of Bill 57 in the Manitoba Legislature as an Act of Indigenous Counter-Securitization Discourse

Abstract Securitization scholars in Canada have investigated how settler-colonial governments discursively construct extractive infrastructure and policing on Indigenous lands as “critical” for Canada’s economic security. Less literature exists about how Indigenous activists through provincial institutions counter colonial securitization discourse and legislation. This article interrogates discourse in the Manitoba Legislature pertaining to three “critical infrastructure” bills presented by the PC government during the fall 2020 and winter 2021 sessions: Protection of Critical Infrastructure Act (Bill 57), Animal Diseases Amendment Act (Bill 62), and The Petty Trespassers Amendment and Occupiers’ Liability Amendment Act (Bill 63). The study combines an analysis of the bills’ debates, drawn from Hansard, with an interview with then-official opposition house leader, Nahanni Fontaine, to explore the interactions between securitization and counter-securitization discourse(s) and defeat of Bill 57. The study hypothesizes that Indigenous MLAs’ counter-securitization discourse reconstructed the bills as attacks on Indigenous ontological, environmental, and physical security.