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B.C.’s NDP started the recent provincial election campaign with a 22-point lead in the polls, and ended 4% behind the Liberals. It was a surprise ending, and not every NDP activist is willing to accept defeat.

On election night, NDP strategist (and Vancouver alderman) Geoff Meggs said that if the Liberal government allowed oilsands pipelines to be built to the west coast, there could be massive acts of civil disobedience.

He invoked the Idle No More campaign of illegal road and railway blockades, and said the “War in the Woods” could return to B.C.

The War in the Woods refers to the crime wave committed by environmental extremists in the 1990s — many pouring in from outside the province — to stop logging on Vancouver Island. Some were protesters engaged in peaceful civil disobedience. But many went further, engaging in criminal acts and even violence.

Logging roads were sabotaged, putting truck drivers at risk of injury or death. A bridge was burned down. Hundreds of people were arrested for trespass and mischief. And eco-terrorists invented a new weapon: Tree-spiking.

If environmentalists couldn’t stop loggers from cutting down trees, perhaps they could do things that might have the effect of harming or even killing loggers. They would sneak into a forest and hammer an iron spike into a tree. That spike wouldn’t be noticed as the tree was harvested.

But when that log was taken to the sawmill, the iron spike would hit the power saw, shredding it, causing metal shrapnel to explode like a hand grenade. Anyone standing nearby in the sawmill would be injured or even killed, and of course the saw itself would be destroyed.

It was a perfect reflection of the morality of the eco-extremists; they put the life of a tree ahead of the lives of human beings.

When sawmills tried to detect these weapons by installing metal detectors, the eco-terrorists moved one step ahead, too.

They switched to concrete spikes, which are invisible to metal detectors. This tactic continues to this day in British Columbia.

And anti-pipeline terrorism has come to the province, with homemade bombs blowing up natural gas installations.

That’s the War in the Woods Meggs was talking about. Add in Idle No More, and you’re talking about a low-level civil war.

Was Meggs just being dramatic, speaking out of election night emotion?

Meggs wasn’t proposing this course of action. He was predicting it. He’s plugged in to the environmental movement. It’s what he thinks could happen.

That same night, other sore losers were happy to go on the record confirming their intentions to use force.

The Dogwood Initiative is one of more than 200 lobby groups that registered to campaign in the election, which allowed them to spend up to 0,000 to promote the NDP.

Dogwood’s key objective was to stop oil pipelines to the coast — especially the proposed Enbridge pipeline to the port of Kitimat. Which is why they backed the NDP, which called for a moratorium on new pipeline construction.

That extremist NDP platform, announced mid-way in the campaign, is widely believed to have been a turning point. It was when ordinary British Columbians started to worry about job losses under the NDP. It’s what put the Liberals back in office.

But instead of accepting the democratic will of the people, here’s what Dogwood’s campaigns director, Eric Swanson, wrote in a press release:

“We are hopeful the next government will stand up for B.C. and say no to Enbridge, in line with the wishes of the B.C. public. If they don’t, citizens will rise up once again to force the government to take action.”

It takes great chutzpah, on the very night of the election, to claim that British Columbians want the opposite of what they just voted for.

But it moves from audacity to menace to warn that if the democratic government does not obey Swanson’s demands, radicals will “rise up once again to force” them?

Force? Rise up? Again — as in, like last time?

We know what environmental extremists are going to do. What will we do in response?

This column was written for Sun News May 19 2013.

Ezra Levant