Six people directly intervened Tuesday morning in the Enbridge pipeline joint Environmental Assessment and Energy Board hearings in Vancouver, putting climate change on the agenda.

The group managed to make its way past police undetected and into the secured 4th floor of Vancouver’s Sheraton Wall Center. Once inside, they revealed shirts bearing messages like “Stop The Pipelines” and used police tape to cordon off the hearing area as a “climate crime scene.”

"Climate change is killing thousands of people every year, primarily in developing countries and indigenous communities that are the least responsible for creating this problem," Sean Devlin, one of the activists arrested and charged with assault by trespass, said after the action.

"Despite this fact, the Joint Review Panel has instructed those participating in the hearings not to talk about climate change. This is a shockingly irresponsible move considering Canada’s tar sands contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. New fossil fuel pipelines are an irresponsible step in the wrong direction,” he said.

The impacts of climate change have been drawing increased global attention since Hurricane Sandy swept the East Coast, unprecedented deadly typhoons wiped out the Philippines, and unimaginable temperature records of 50+ degrees were set in Australia.

Yet it is in this context that the JRP has designated climate change and the carbon emissions of Canada’s tar sands “outside of the panel’s mandate,” a move that officially discourages these issues from being raised during oral statements to the panel.

“Enbridge and the federal government are using their position of authority within this process to coerce members of the public into silence on these issues," said Fiona De Balasi Brown, another activist who was arrested on Tuesday.

"The majority of First Nations and settler communities in the province oppose fossil fuel pipelines," she said. "We respect those who are voicing their opposition to the pipelines inside the hearings, but the hearing process is meaningless, especially since Harper has changed the law, giving his cabinet final say on pipeline projects."

Tuesday marks the second day of the Joint Review Panel hearings in Vancouver, and the second day that the members of the public have crossed police lines to make their opposition voices heard. On Monday, more than 1,000 protesters peacefully forced their way past police onto the Sheraton property, beating drums so loud they echoed inside the hearings.

Public outrage was further fueled by the decision to exclude the public from the Vancouver hearings, a move the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association criticized as “potentially unlawful."