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Oil and Gas

Who will protect the land from reckless development?

Canadian political leaders remain in thrall to gaudy casino economies, like prisoners suffering from an economic Stockholm syndrome.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/03/17/who_will_protect_the_land_from_reckless_development.html

LOLA LANDEKIC FOR THE TORONTO STAR

By: Ian Gill Published on Sun Mar 17 2013

A shorter version of this essay appeared on the Opinion page of the Star on March 17.

 

Several years ago, sitting in my office in Vancouver where I was heading up Ecotrust Canada — a west coast conservation and community development organization — I received a call from Alberta from a senior communications executive at Shell Canada.

 

Shell, at the time, was at the early stages of a coal bed methane exploration program in Northern British Columbia, specifically in Tahltan country, in and around Iskut. The natives, it seems, were restless. Shell had provincial permits to develop lands in a region called the Klappan, adjacent to the Spatsizi wilderness area, and had been trying to get trucks and drill rigs in place to pursue its legal authority to assay the abundant gas reserves there. It had sunk three test wells, but that’s as far as it got.

 

A rump of recalcitrant and disobedient natives had blockaded the one easy road in, and signs that said “Get the Shell out!” and their like were showing up on the news.

 

Ecotrust had a hard-earned reputation for working well with First Nations to help them map their resources — or what was left of them — and map their social, environmental and economic futures in a rapidly evolving socio-political and legal environment that was finally waking up to the importance of Indigenous rights and title.

 

The Shell guy claimed the company had the support of most Tahltan people, but there was a noisy minority that was skewing local opinion and endangering the community’s chances of reaping manifold economic benefits from Shell’s willingness to invest heavily in the industrialization of the region.

 

Would Ecotrust, he asked, be willing to undertake a land-use mapping project for the Tahltan? With good maps and good information, the reasoning apparently went, all Tahltan people would come to see Shell’s plans to use some of their territory for gas extraction as being in the community’s best interest (along with Shell’s, obviously).

 

Who would pay for this exercise, I asked? Well, Shell, came the reply. And under whose authority was Shell proposing to undertake this exercise? Well, Shell would sponsor the work with the agreement of the Tahltan, or at least that part of the community that was already onside. Would all Tahltan be equally represented in the land-use study? Would all viewpoints be on the table? If the mapping inquiry were to entertain all possible outcomes, would one outcome — admittedly out there in left field — contemplate that there be no industrial development at all?

 

In other words, if an honest examination of the Tahltan’s options were to uncover widespread opposition to Shell’s use of their land, no matter how many permits the company had on paper, would Shell honour that finding and surrender its “rights” to exploit Tahltan resources for private gain? Was Shell, at least in theory, prepared to walk away if the Tahltan withheld their permission?

 

I asked these questions not to be provocative, but to get clarity about whether the company really was prepared to negotiate, or if their starting assumption was that Shell would develop the gas resources to some extent, the limit of which might or might not be determined by local opinion, or, more likely, by enforcing court orders against the protesters. Oh, and just to be clear, Ecotrust would not work for Shell. Were we to do any analysis, the community would be our client, which was our only surety that the community supported the process. If they accepted Shell’s money to underwrite the analysis, that was their business — but it would not influence how we did ours.

 

The man from Shell was a smart and fair-minded guy, as I recall, but he was a realist, too. He told me there was no way he could sell his executive on an exercise that in any way entertained the notion that the company would abandon its leases. Shell intended to develop its tenures, which had been issued under provincial government authority. The issue at hand was whether or not a land-use mapping exercise would facilitate the community agreeing to Shell’s plan, which at best would be modified by local input, perhaps even allowing for an increase in local benefits. In Shell’s corporate mind, there was never any doubt that it would one day drill not just three test wells in Tahltan country, but two or three thousand gas gushers in one of the most pristine corners of what is left of British Columbia.

 

I politely demurred.

 

A few months later, I was invited to attend a meeting of First Nations leaders and their supporters from across northern B.C., who rallied in favour of protecting what had then come to be known as the Sacred Headwaters. One afternoon, at the site of the continuing blockade, a large map of Tahltan territory was displayed by the elders. Which part of the territory is important to the Tahltan, someone asked? An elder took a marker and drew a line around the outside edges of the map. All of it, he said, and no one disagreed. Where did the elders think Shell should operate? On none of it, they said, and no one disagreed. That was in the summer of 2006.

 

One week before Christmas, 2012, the B.C. government announced a permanent ban on oil and gas development in the Sacred Headwaters. “As part of a tripartite agreement, Shell Canada is immediately withdrawing plans to explore for natural gas in the Klappan by relinquishing its tenures,” the province said in a statement. “In addition, the Province of British Columbia will not issue future petroleum and natural-gas tenures in the area.”

 

“Today is a huge milestone,” said Annita McPhee, chair of the Tahltan Central Council, which governs the Tahltan First Nation. “I am just beyond words about how deeply moved I am about Shell giving up its tenures in the Klappan.”

 

Karen Tam Woo, a campaigner with ForestEthics Advocacy, one of the environmental groups that spearheaded the international campaign to protect the Sacred Headwaters, was jubilant. “Days like today are few and far between,” she said. “It’s a big deal when small communities can stand up to one of the biggest corporations in the world and win.”

 

Shell, which reportedly spent $30 million and a decade going nowhere in the Klappan, was rewarded with $20 million in development credits in the province’s northeast and, after removing its test wells and remediating the area, will leave the Klappan for good.

 

Enbridge should be so lucky. It is reportedly spending $250 million promoting a project that will no doubt win National Energy Board approval in the coming months, although almost certainly to no avail. The informed consensus is that its Northern Gateway pipeline is dead because too many First Nations communities oppose it. Perhaps out of fear of setting a precedent, the company persists — as does the government — in a doomed approvals process that no one seems to know how to call time on.

 

First Nations and community groups who are opposed to the pipeline are forced to spend their own countless hours and millions of dollars locked in successive rounds of futile hearings, while drawing the ire of Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, who characterizes anyone opposed to industrial development as a “radical.” In early February, a key coastal First Nations intervenor finally gave up, its paltry funds simply no match for Enbridge’s quarter billion, and the inexhaustible resources of government.

 

When Enbridge, like Shell before it, abandons its project, it will no doubt seek to be compensated for its failed efforts. First Nations and environmentalists won’t be compensated, but will otherwise feel rewarded with another “victory” against industry. But there will be plenty of new battles to lose, as Canada continues to encourage investments in an old industrial paradigm that has long-since run its course. Maybe we’ll ship tarsands products east, not west! Maybe Keystone will take them south! — and if we can’t find investors here at home, we can always sell off nationally crucial energy assets to countries like China, who will be happy to extract resources in a foreign country when it can exploit that country’s weak environmental laws.

 

That irony alone should give serious pause to Canadians. Certainly, it adds more fuel to Idle No More, given that First Nations are at the front lines of just about every attempt — large or small — to develop Canada’s natural resources in this, our climate change century.

 

§

 

Coming back to Canada after almost three years abroad, it is hard not to conclude that this is a lousy way to run a country. The reflexive response from many people is to demonize the Conservatives, and blame Stephen Harper for everything. Mere hours after arriving back in Vancouver last fall, I found myself in the middle of what has become a constant, unofficial (and admittedly unscientific) disapprovals hearing. At the grocery store: a mother and teenage daughter buttonholing me to tell me they will lie down naked in front of bulldozers if construction of Northern Gateway is ever attempted (well, I actually think the teenager was humouring her mother, as I doubt she’d really lie down in the buff in front of a bunch of pipeline workers).

 

Over dinner, people who have never evinced even the slightest interest in aboriginal issues now siding with First Nations’ opposition to Bills C38 and C45. In the news: the Premier of B.C. and the Opposition leader in rare, pre-election agreement that Northern Gateway ill-serves British Columbia. On a trip to Toronto: decidedly unradical, un-environmental Canadians telling me that they are ashamed of the country’s addiction to oil and its treatment of aboriginal people and, unprompted, making a causal link between the two.

 

I’m asked about Australia, where I lived and worked most recently, and the news from there isn’t really any better. Canada is not alone in suffering from a split personality when it comes to managing the demands of a growing and greedy society in an era of fiscal austerity and rapidly accelerating environmental stress — let alone dealing fairly with its Indigenous people. Australia, precariously ruled by a government that is the antithesis of the Harper Conservatives, is in precisely the same bind. Sure, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has brought in a carbon tax and, with the Greens holding the balance of power in the Senate, has been forced to accommodate a plethora of demands that not even the wettest Chrétien or Martin Liberals would have tolerated in their most progressive years.

 

But Australia, like Canada, remains in a kind of dead man’s dance between government and industry and Indigenous people, largely because both national governments are unable or unwilling to honestly confront the depth of the deceit upon which both countries have based their economies. Both nations have begun to reach the limits of government authority based on a lie — the continued denial of the rights and title of aboriginal peoples. They are beginning to experience the stirring of what might come to be — almost as a mirror to the ecological disruptions that threaten our physical existence — a succession of century-defining social and political disruptions that could put our national governments on an endangered species list all of their own making.

 

What we are beginning to witness, and it goes well beyond Idle No More, is a withdrawal of permission.

 

Idle No More hints at a profound rupture that goes well beyond the established set of grievances that we seem content to stamp on First Nations like a birthmark. Canada’s entire national narrative has begun to fracture, and if Stephen Harper is deaf to the change in tone, he is not alone. Harper, no different from Liberal prime ministers who preceded him, interprets his party’s majority in the House of Commons as his authority to govern the whole country, and fair enough. In our system, that authority is granted every few years in an election. Permission, by contrast, needs to be won every day — and increasingly, governments and their industry partners don’t have it, or are finding it a lot harder to get it.

 

As an aboriginal woman told me in Australia, “You can’t buy a social licence.”

 

Or, put another way, people are getting tired of the unequal terms of trade — especially when, for Indigenous people, the promised benefits of industrialization of their territories almost never materialize in ways that improve their well-being. In fabulously wealthy economies like ours, basic services like clean water, access to decent health care, good schools, habitable housing — these should be a birthright of every citizen, not something offered up as a signing bonus for joining Team Tar Sands, or its equivalent.

 

Under our current economic and political regimes — no matter which party is nominally in power, with however large or small a majority — Australians and Canadians share one thing, which is that we are everywhere conflicted. We say we want to create viable and diverse economies and societies for the benefit of our children and theirs. We say we want to protect the environment, to “care for our country” as one Australian government program trumpets, yet we hand most of it over to miners and drillers and tell our farmers they should all go and get fracked.

 

How does it come to pass that one of the great life-giving waterways of a dry country, Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin, is compartmentalized to the point that the river system itself is now assigned “environmental flows,” as if Nature is just another stakeholder in the division of assets of, well, Nature? How is it that in Canada, whose water assets are vastly more valuable in the long run than its oils and gases, almost all our waterways are now open for development and potential ruin by modern day hunters — of hydrocarbons?

 

In both countries, we say we want Indigenous people to prosper, yet a mantra of “closing the gap” between the life experiences of aboriginal and non-aboriginal people has become a one-way street to extinguishment of Indigenous rights, with policy-makers unable to offer anything more in return than trickle-down benefits or outright interventions in the lives of Indigenous people who are asked (or forced) to surrender their lands to the greater good. This, when all that many Indigenous people have is their land, and what remains of their culture.

 

All the while, our political leaders and the public at large remain in thrall to gaudy casino economies, like prisoners suffering from a sort of economic Stockholm syndrome. Everyone knows it can’t last, but while it does, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and aboriginal people mostly get jail terms.

 

So, might this not be the time to dramatically rethink the very nature of this large, uncontrolled experiment that we call the modern industrial economy? “If this is economic success, why does it hurt so badly?” wrote a columnist in The Sydney Morning Herald, bemoaning how utterly unaffordable and unsustainable the Australian way of life is becoming. Put another way: if it hurts so much, why do we keep doing what we do, and call it economic success? Or, as the American humorist Will Rogers once famously said: “If you’re in a hole, stop digging.” Or, as John Maynard Keynes once wrote, “When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.”

 

So what’s a government to do well? Perhaps it should start by not doing ill, like forcing developments on people and places that don’t want them. Native and environmental objections to oilsands and fracking and pipelines and coal exports and LNG plants might be dismissed as rampant or radical NIMBY-ism, but government and industry are misreading the mood.

 

Yes, people are objecting to specific developments as they always have and will, but I believe there is a deeper strain of disquiet in Canada at the lack of a national narrative that people feel either attached to, or at least willing to tolerate for the greater good. At the moment, the default fora for discussions about the nation’s future are environmental assessment panels, the courts, campfires at blockades, or rallies like those stirred up by Idle No More. Yes, there are occasional political meetings like those between the Assembly of First Nations and Stephen Harper, but they are too narrowly framed, and are surely doomed anyway given that the Prime Minister says he is unwilling to revisit Bills C38 and C45, which gave rise to Idle No More in the first place.

 

Outside the confines of Ottawa and Canberra, the daily discourse gets angrier. In both Canada and Australia, the confusion between authority and permission is perhaps best exemplified by the fracking industry’s having riled some of the most conservative (ie least radical) constituents in either country — their farmers. Rural people are now waking up to the sight of drilling rigs invading, often without prior warning and without their permission, a landscape that they’ve nurtured for generations. Some of them, seeing their territory defiled, are beginning to identify with the plight of aboriginal people for the first time. Some of them have pledged to defend their land, at gunpoint if need be, from what they consider to be tantamount to trespass.

 

Writ large, and uncorrected, what is to stop the trajectories of two of the world’s most prosperous, egalitarian, diverse, generous and lucky countries from descending into the kind of anger, dissonance and unrest that, elsewhere in the world, is only kept at bay by the military? Who says the arc of history, to cite a phrase beloved of politicians, is actually a rainbow? What if the arc bends not to more pots of gold, but to calamity, discontent, and insurrection? What is to stop Idle No More becoming not just viral, but violently so. Imagine Canada or Australia as dangerous, militarized petro-states. Too far-fetched? Really? That day might be closer than you think.

 

§

 

In the far northwest of Australia is a region called the Kimberley. Like Canadians’ love affair with a north that few have ever seen, many more Australians have heard about the Kimberley than have been there, but almost everyone agrees its natural and cultural heritage is beyond compare. What is less well known is just how perilous the Kimberley’s future is. Woodside Petroleum Ltd.’s massive gas plant planned for a remote place on the coast called James Price Point is the thin edge of a very thick wedge that, within a generation, could utterly transform the Kimberley into something akin to Alberta’s tarsands. Whether or not the Woodside proposal gets up — and commercially that looks questionable — it has unwittingly served to galvanize people into demanding a new approach to development in Northern Australia. Woodside is Australia’s Enbridge, and James Price Point is its Northern Gateway.

 

In the Kimberley, the Western Australian government invited local aboriginal people to vote on whether or not James Price Point should proceed. It did so after the Premier, Colin Barnett, warned that if the tiny, divided, and impoverished Indigenous community didn’t vote for the project, he would expropriate their land anyway. They voted, barely, in favour of the project. Under clear duress, they gave the most tentative of permissions, in return for the promise of $1.5 billion in “benefits” that, if history is any guide, will be a mirage, hovering unrealized in the distance in a tantalizing sort of socio-economic heat haze.

 

Such was the state government’s anxiety about its tenuous permission to proceed that last year, when Woodside sent a convoy of heavy equipment to the site to begin clearing the way for the development, the government sent more than 140 armed police up from Perth to escort the machinery down one of the remotest dirt roads in the country, past a couple of dozen peaceful protesters. Many Australians were shocked at the overkill. Is that, now, how the west gets won? With deceitful acquisitions, a denial of rights, an ultimatum, and guns and jackboots to back up the deal? Why not throw in a little booze and smallpox for good measure?

 

During extensive travels in the Kimberley, I discovered a palpable sense there that, having been happily out of sight and out of mind for a couple of centuries, people worry that the region is poised to be rapidly beset by a chain reaction of developments that would utterly change its culture and character — not to mention its ecology — for the worse. There is little confidence that industrial development will confer any lasting wealth on the region’s 40,000 residents, half of whom are aboriginal people who, in Australia as globally, have lost the most and gained the least from the pervasive spread of consumerism. Why would the next development surge be any different there? And why would Northern Gateway really be any different here?

 

In Canada and Australia, our resource booms have allowed us to avoid the hard conversation we need to have. Politicians of all ideological stripes offer little but a Hobson’s choice to add more pavement to a path we’ve already been down. They apparently have little appetite for an honest re-evaluation of the kind of societies we are trying to build and want to live in. We shouldn’t need earthquakes, floods, fires, droughts, disease and the growing spectre of climate change to remind us that our tenure on Earth is wholly at Nature’s discretion, but still we are dragged into a development model that portends more and more catastrophes for all of us, and especially for our nations’ most vulnerable citizens.

 

So in Canada, what if, instead, we decide not to ransack every last corner of our vast country in search of commodities that we can sell abroad or to ourselves, but we experiment in developing an economy that honours local culture and history, celebrates place, protects the environment, increases the resilience of local people, and provides them with the means to invest in a future of their own design? Why not attempt, while we still have the option, to pursue a natural model of development, to pursue what the late Jane Jacobs once so aptly called “reliable prosperity?”

 

In that regard, Indigenous people arguably offer not more despair, but hope. If we are to prepare ourselves for the inevitable shocks that the 21st Century still has in store, it might behoove us to seek lessons in resilience from people who have survived every imaginable assault, and are just now coming back into a position of prominence and eminence in a country that might yet come to see aboriginal people as powerful and visionary citizens with a capacity for forgiveness and an appetite for regeneration and renewal, whose unwillingness to assimilate may turn out to be their best defence against the boom that the rest of us seem powerless or unwilling to resist.

 

Inasmuch as the underlying theme of the Idle No More movement in Canada is the protection of lands and waters and natural resources that Indigenous people see as essential to their well-being, and given that many non-native people are rallying alongside First Nations for the same reasons, why not call upon aboriginal people to lead the development of a new narrative for Canada? Why not — a couple of centuries too late but, you know, better late than never — why not charge those whose land this originally was with articulating a vision for Canada as the truly fair country it could be? Who better to create the narrative for a better, fairer and less destructive economy than our country’s natural storytellers and storykeepers, the original and best stewards of our land?

 

Why not give to aboriginal people the task of creating a framework that enables them to negotiate an enduring political settlement that promises them, and non-aboriginal Canadians, more than today’s endless, dishonest incrementalism? What might that look like, and what might the consequences be? What might transformative change actually look like? How ambitious might we dare to be? How provocative?

 

Certainly, an authentic new narrative is not going to materialize if we wait for government to give it to us. A study by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in the UK looked at the impediments against transformative innovation in the public sector, noting that many public organizations are trapped “in an eternal present” that is inimical to the kind of pattern-altering innovation in the public realm demanded by today’s challenges. “Public organizations with short time-horizons — governments with very small majorities, ministers and officials with short job tenures, and organizational cultures focused on tomorrow’s news coverage — are highly resistant to innovation . . . It’s no wonder that the world’s public sectors are failing to innovate fast enough to cope with enormous challenges like an aging population or climate change.”

 

My colleague Ric Young notes that “in an era of austerity the public discourse is focused on painful trade-offs and difficult belt-tightening. We think of austerity in economic terms. But our economic constraints are also coupled with an austerity of imagination, an austerity of hope for the future.” Young, founder of Canada’s Social Projects Studio and arguably the country’s leading architect of social change strategies, recalls that at the World Economic Forum in Davos last year a central topic of conversation was the widespread failure of leadership to rise to the critical challenges of our time.

 

“Throughout the world, trust in leadership has been in steep decline for many years,” Young says. “One of the delegates who had conducted extensive public opinion research globally characterized the general attitude as ‘disgust for corporations and disdain for governments.’ A belief in the possibility of authentic, transformative societal value creation is undermined by a sense of overarching self-interest in the private sector and a sense of under-reaching paralysis in the public sector.”

 

Yet if we are to get out of our current financial and cultural austerity traps, nothing less than transformative social value creation will do. “Social innovation is — or should be — about nothing less than big change,” says Young, who visited the Kimberley with me in 2010 and saw for himself what Indigenous people there are confronting, just as he logged countless hours with me in BC’s coastal First Nations communities in the decade before I went to Australia. Young says the dynamics of transformation “are weird. They are not reducible to simple cause and effect explanations. They do not unfold in a linear, predictable or manageable fashion . . . Transformations — big flips — can happen in social systems, just as they do in natural systems. Ignoring that fact is like ignoring that at a certain point — a non-linear point — water can become vapour.”

 

There are numerous examples of where seemingly intractable social problems have “flipped” into a transformed state that would have been unimaginable in all but the mind of a dreamer. A generation ago, who ever thought that smokers would be unable to puff away in a bank queue or at the doctor’s office or in the smoking section of an aircraft, but instead, would be forced to huddle outside office buildings and be barred from smoking in a pub? What has happened to smoking is what Young describes as a “proof of possibility.” Someone imagined the possibility of smoking being transformed from a socially acceptable and ubiquitous practice to such pariah status that cigarette companies now are being forced to advertise that the main consequence of using their product is that it poisons you. That’s big change.

 

So what, in wealthy countries like Australia and Canada, what might tip the scales towards transformative, positive outcomes for Indigenous peoples, and thereby us all? What possibility could we imagine, what intervention might succeed where current ones have failed? It is a fundamental question, because as Young has observed over the years, clients so often come to him framing their social issues as problems, and in Australia and Canada, for decades now, Indigenous issues have been framed as nothing but problems. “No one ever talks about possibility,” Young says. “It is time to shock people with a sense of the possible.”

 

Surely it is possible to imagine a natural model of development in which we no longer chase a commodity “fix” — think of a heroin addict, with accompanying highs and desperate lows — but where we actually design an economy based on distinctive opportunities that arise gradually from the intimate interaction of people and place. An economy that produces an infinite diversity of products and services that grow out of both social and natural capital, in a kind of “get rich slow” approach to economic prosperity that is more reliable, more diverse and resilient, and is more equitably shared. It is possible to imagine that such an economy might be co-created with Indigenous people and that, in fact, an Indigenous approach to economic development might become not just a niche play, but eventually mainstream.

 

Why not? Fifty, maybe 100 years from now, certainly 200 years from now, the world will be casting around for new (old) ideas about how to live through the growing shocks to our increasingly fragile and futile economy, and our ever more unstable political system. The solutions that future generations will seek will be cultural, not political; they will be natural, not technological (although technology will sometimes help). They will seek lessons in long-term resilience, not quarterly performance. They will look, as the author Paul Hawken has written, to “people who have a fundamental relationship to the land.” But why wait?

 

What would it look like to take a very big leap, right now, that puts Indigenous people in the driver’s seat in developing a new cultural, environmental and economic vision for Canada, and actually delivering on that vision? This is what the father of resilience theory, C.S. “Buzz” Holling, would call a “safe-fail” experiment. We could fail at this and no-one would be catastrophically worse off because they already are; but if we succeed, we will have taken an important first step toward reliable prosperity — and we will have a distinctive market advantage over regions in the world still fighting the same old battles over who gets to issue a social licence, and at what cost.

 

Make no mistake: the jurisdictions that figure out a natural model of development that supports and is supported by its Indigenous peoples will be the clear and only winners in the 21st century; the industries that embrace the kind of transformative changes this will demand will succeed, and those that don’t will die. The hardest hurdle to overcome will be creating a pathway for industry and government to feel comfortable with uncertainty, which they abhor, because a critical test will be that this not be an industry-driven or government-led command and control solution, although their constructive participation will be key. For Indigenous people, a critical indicator of success will be the extent to which they can — to put it bluntly — get the government out of their lives, and only let industry in on their own terms.

 

As a country, we need firstly to map our vulnerabilities and opportunities through the eyes of Indigenous people themselves — not some dreamy, sepia-toned depiction of the past, but a marriage of Indigenous knowledge with the sort of modern economic planning and scenario building that is second nature in mainstream development. People have a right to know what the future holds for their energy, food, water, land and marine systems under various development scenarios, and today’s planning tools offer a path to information democracy that was unthinkable even a generation ago.

 

Perhaps it is time to establish a kind of Indigenous sovereign wealth fund into which industry and government contribute capital that is then reinvested in Indigenous impact partnerships based on their success, not government’s failure. Not only might this “flip” the system by creating a reliably prosperous economy for Indigenous people — this approach has the added potential of drastically reducing our collective dependency on industrial booms as this country’s principal source of wealth.

 

Who could lead this work? Well, who better than A-in-chut, Shawn Atleo? Currently the National Chief of the AFN, Atleo is a gifted orator, a natural storyteller and a widely admired and uncorrupted consensus builder, someone who is perhaps uniquely able to honour the past and imagine a future that all Canadians could relate to. He has shown an ability to negotiate and hold his own at the highest levels nationally and abroad, without ever losing sight of his Nuu-chah-nulth west coast roots. At some point, especially given the corrosive and divisive nature of AFN politicking, Atleo will need a broader canvas upon which to work. Why not the whole country?

 

It is his kind of integrative leadership — his ability to both set the conditions and forge a vision of the future — that is both absent today, and essential if we are to fulfill some of the conditions that for big change to occur: a certain defiance of the inevitable, an attempt at pattern-shifting problem solving, room for bottom-up as well as top-down leadership, and room for engagement of all sectors of society — all underpinned with a moral vision that it is no longer acceptable for a rich society to become and remain so at the expense of so many fellow human beings.

 

Sure Canada has apologized to its aboriginal people, in effect admitting to our serial abuses of authority since before Confederation, and ever since, not least through our flagrant dishonour of treaties that were signed in apparent good faith and then ignored. We’ve even struck a Truth and Reconciliation Commission charged to examine parts of this sorry past. Interestingly, Australia has likewise had a reconciliation process and an apology, but travelling through the Kimberley with Patrick Dodson, one of Australia’s most eminent and revered aboriginal leaders, Ric Young and I listened to a sustained refrain from Dodson that the hard work still is still before us — figuring out how to forge a future together.

 

To a degree, Idle No More is calling the dominant society’s bluff, because while we are willing to apologize for what our economic and social systems have done to aboriginal people in the past, we haven’t yet demonstrated a willingness to build a future based on their beliefs, not ours — or at the very least, shared beliefs, not just ours. Instead, we apologize for a system’s ill effects, and then invite aboriginal people to take cheap equity in the same system that caused them such harm in the first place.

 

In many ways, the most urgent issue confronting our country is to develop a critical competency that we sorely lack — this business of future-making. Clearly, it cannot be led by politicians and CEOs because they are no longer trusted. If we want to live in a fair country, then we need to be intentional about what that’s going to take, and who is going to get us there. Our aboriginal people will only escape the past, and we with them, if they rediscover what it means to make a future. If it is a matter of trust, then I trust them a lot more than I trust myself. What lies before us all, if we are serious, is a lot of what Young predicts will be “sheer stubborn muddling through” at first, because we need to approach this task in exactly the opposite way that Shell wanted to reach its foregone conclusion in the Klappan those many years ago. We need to start without a sheaf of predetermined outcomes or a list of performance indicators, but to embark on the true dialogue this country desperately needs to have.

 

There will be strong resistance from many quarters, which may or may not be surmountable, but there are visionary and courageous people in this country, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, and innovative ones too. A fair Canada will probably be a lot less environmental and a lot less industrial than the current one, so maybe no one will be happy. But with dire warnings that hundreds of billions of dollars worth of resource developments are in the offing, and with no real vision for how to accommodate Indigenous interests and genuine environmental concerns, what are the prospects that this can end well without a thorough transformation of Canada’s national narrative?

 

More than 100 years ago, Joseph Conrad wrote in Heart of Darkness that, “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” It wasn’t pretty then, and it isn’t pretty now — and it won’t be in another hundred years, either. Apocalypse then, apocalypse still. We’ve had a century of military-industrial development, and we know exactly where it’s gotten us. Only big change, only strange change, can bring about the kind of transformation that our society, indeed all societies, so desperately need.

 

CODA: I began this piece with a personal story, about navigating power imbalances and competing agendas between industry, aided and abetted by governments, and local people who wished to be left in peace. While formulating this analysis, I was daily tuned to all sorts of coverage of Keystone, Northern Gateway and the many other proposals that oscillate between the business pages and page 1. Throughout, I have been trying to understand not just the motivations of people and organizations, but their mood. Let me end on another, highly personal note.

 

One day, I received a document attached to an email from my wife, who is still in Australia completing a contract. The document was labelled “Presentation,” and the cover email asked, “Did you see this?” It turns out the document was a typed account of an oral presentation to the NEB’s contentious hearings about Northern Gateway that had just wrapped up in Victoria. I read the account and was highly moved by it

 

An unidentified woman had addressed the panel and in her own way, had gone right to the heart of the difference between authority and permission. “When I was 18, I was raped,” she said. She was a young babysitter raped by an older man, an authority figure in her neighbourhood who had begged off ill from a couples’ night out to prey on her right there in his house. In her presentation, she equated this with industry and government’s failure to understand what First Nations people mean when they say no.

 

We’ve all heard the environmental rhetoric about “raping” old-growth forests or the oceans, and I must say it has always struck me as unhelpfully inflammatory. Now, here was a woman telling the NEB panel that she saw no difference between what happened to her more than half a century earlier, what has been happening to aboriginal people for generations, and what is happening right now to the planet.

 

Nothing in the statement identified the woman, but then some news reports picked up her testimony. “Speakers compare Northern Gateway project to rape, drug addiction,” said one headline. One story quoted from the statement, and that story named the woman who had made it: Jean Jordan, my wife’s mother, my children’s grandmother, breaking a silence of her entire adult life because of her passionate belief that we have a moral obligation to change the course of this country before it’s too late. She is exactly the kind of quiet, courageous Canadian — a retired teacher, a law-abiding, taxpaying citizen who does the cryptic crossword and cooks the turkey that I carve each holiday season, a woman just like millions of others — who is starting to exert her own authority. Who is idle, and silent, no more.

 

Ian Gill, who served as president of Ecotrust in Canada, the U.S. and most recently in Australia, is a former newspaper and CBC Television journalist, and the author of All That We Say Is Ours: Guujaaw and the Reawakening of the Haida Nation. He is an Australian and Canadian citizen. He lives in Vancouver. gillfile@gmail.com . Twitter: @gillwave

 

 

 

Several years ago, sitting in my office in Vancouver where I was heading up Ecotrust Canada — a west coast conservation and community development organization — I received a call from Alberta from a senior communications executive at Shell Canada.

Shell, at the time, was at the early stages of a coal bed methane exploration program in Northern British Columbia, specifically in Tahltan country, in and around Iskut. The natives, it seems, were restless. Shell had provincial permits to develop lands in a region called the Klappan, adjacent to the Spatsizi wilderness area, and had been trying to get trucks and drill rigs in place to pursue its legal authority to assay the abundant gas reserves there. It had sunk three test wells, but that’s as far as it got.

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BC First Nations send warnings over gas pipelines

B.C. First Nations send warnings over gas pipelines
4 proposed pipelines but natives say there's been no consultation so far
The Canadian Press Posted: Jan 28, 2013 8:53 PM PT Last Updated: Jan 28, 2013 9:32 PM 

Some B.C. First Nations say they have yet to be consulted about natural gas pipelines planned for their territories, and that's a problem. (Al Grillo/Associated Press)

First Nation leaders in central B.C. are raising red flags over plans for natural gas pipelines across their territories, warning the projects won't go ahead unless they are consulted and approve. At least four pipelines are being proposed to move natural gas from northeast B.C. to ports on the coast when the product would be turned into liquefied natural gas for export overseas.

In a statement released by the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council, several chiefs say the projects won't go ahead without the consent of their people and only after there are assessments of how the projects would affect their environment and native title rights.

Chief Terry Teegee says the projects are at risk because there are no agreements in place for First Nations to assess them, and Chief Reg Louis says while his people are willing to do business, it can't be at the expense of the environment and future generations.

Louis says the federal government has stripped environmental protections to make it easier for the projects to go ahead, while Teegee says Ottawa and the provincial government need to meet with the chiefs to discuss these projects.

The Carrier Sekani statement appears to put the group at odds with the coastal Haisla Nation, which has signed an agreement that would allow construction of a liquefied natural gas plant near Kitimat as part of the plan to export LNG overseas.

© The Canadian Press, 2013

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/01/28/bc-first-nation-gas-pipeline-objections.html

First Nation leaders in central B.C. are raising red flags over plans for natural gas pipelines across their territories, warning the projects won't go ahead unless they are consulted and approve. At least four pipelines are being proposed to move natural gas from northeast B.C. to ports on the coast when the product would be turned into liquefied natural gas for export overseas.

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CSTC Concerned about Gas Pipelines

News Release
January 28, 2013

PDF Version

Dakelh Territory, Prince George, British Columbia.  Canada. The Chiefs of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council and their members are concerned about the growing pressures from the various gas pipelines that are being proposed through unceded lands of CSTC member First Nations.  To date there are three new proposals including two from TransCanada, and one from Spectra. 

Tribal Chief Terry Teegee stated, “We are raising the alarm that these projects are at risk.  While there has been some initial discussions with CSTC and our member First Nations there are no agreements in place for our First Nations to review or understand the cumulative impacts from these proposed projects.”

“We are not against development, however we need to develop strong partnerships and need to be involved even before the assessment processes begin.” said Chief Fred Sam of the Nak’azdli First Nation.  “We need a government-to-government agreement to discuss the impacts from these potential projects.”

Dolly Abraham, Chief of Takla Lake First Nation and Vice-Tribal Chief of the CSTC warned, “We will not be divided.  We are unified in our approach in wanting to protect our lands and water. We must be provided the capacity resources to understand the impacts of these natural gas pipelines.”  She added, “Some of these companies have started field studies.  You are trespassing on our lands. We have no agreements in place, and we have not been consulted.”

Chief Martin Louie of the Nadleh Whut’en First Nation said, “These major projects cannot be built without our free, prior and informed consent.” He also noted, “We will lead our own assessments and studies to understand how all of these projects impact our lands and waters.”

“Our waterways and lands are what we are. Companies need to talk with us, and have agreements in place before they start any work.  Otherwise they may face setbacks.” Said Chief Ralph Pierre of the Tl’azt’en Nation. He added, “The Crown must also be at the table to provide resources to our First Nations in order to understand the revenue sharing opportunities. It goes without saying that the governments of BC and Canada are already concocting a plan for these gas projects in the north.”

Chief Reg Louis of the Stellat’en First Nation said, “The Crown needs to be proactive in meeting with our people.  The government has stripped the environmental protections and assessments through Bill C45, only to make it easier for these projects to get approved.” He further stated, “Our people are stewards of our lands and resources. While we are willing to do business, it cannot be at the expense of our environment and future generations.”

Tribal Chief Teegee concluded, “The BC and federal governments need to meet with our Chiefs.  The upcoming election in BC cannot be used as a venue to make promises to gas and LNG companies on issues impacting the CSTC territory.”  Chief Teegee said, “Gas pipeline companies are placing our communities under duress, and we’re also concerned about the short and long term impacts to our environment, and our Aboriginal rights and title.”

Some of the current natural gas pipeline proposals include:
• TransCanada – Coastal GasLink Project, runs near existing png pipeline ($4B)
• TransCanada – Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project, runs north of Takla Lake ($5B)
• Apache/Chevron – Pacific Trails Pipeline, similar route as Coastal GasLink Project ($1.5B)
• Spectra Energy – runs north of Takla Lake, similar route as Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project ($8B)

All of these gas pipelines require the proper studies, managed by CSTC First Nations, especially cumulative impacts to aboriginal rights, title, wildlife and socio-economic benefits.  There is also a growing concern about the hydro-fracking techniques used to extract the gas from the earth. In 2013 the CSTC will work with industry, government and its First Nations to understand the impacts from these gas pipeline projects.

– 30 –

Media contacts: Tribal Chief Terry Teegee:  Office (250) 562-6279.  Cell: (250) 640-3256
Vice Tribal Chief Dolly Abraham: (250) 961-0579
Chief Martin Louie, Nadleh Whut’en First Nation: Cell: (250) 570-7759

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Opposition to Enbridge Grows as First Nations and Mayor of Vancouver Stand Together

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson proclaims “Save the Fraser Declaration Day” recognizing need to protect rivers and coast from tar sands threat

Vancouver, BC (Coast Salish Territories) –  Opposition to the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and tanker project continued to gain momentum today as the Tahltan Central Council, the Tahltan Band Council and the BC Metis Federation signed the Save the Fraser Declaration, an indigenous law declaration banning tar sands pipelines and tankers from crossing British Columbia, signed by over 130 First Nations.

At the same time, Mayor Gregor Robertson proclaimed “Save the Fraser Declaration Day” in the City of Vancouver, recognizing the solidarity between the City and First Nations who depend on an oil-free coast and Fraser River for the health of their communities.

“Our opposition has grown in strength as more Indigenous Nations sign on in support of the Save the Fraser Declaration,” said Chief Martin Louie of the Nadleh Whu’ten First Nation. “Our traditional governance and laws have guided our nations for thousands of years. Our rights are protected under Section 35 of the Constitution. We will not allow the Government to impose the Enbridge pipeline and tankers on us, and we are glad to know that the City of Vancouver is standing with us against this threat, because we all depend on keeping these waters free from oil spills.”

Mayor Gregor Robertson presented the Proclamation to the Yinka Dene Alliance – the group of six First Nations who led the creation of the Save the Fraser Declaration in December 2010. The City’s Proclamation states that oil pipelines and tankers pose unacceptable risks to Vancouver’s economy and environment, and that citizens and First Nations will benefit from working together to protect communities from oil spills.

“We’ve always said that we are not just fighting to protect our own First Nations communities from oil pipelines and tankers, but rather that we are fighting to protect every woman, man and child in B.C., no matter where they live,” said Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik’uz First Nation. “The Enbridge project puts our food sources and water at risk from the threat of oil spills that can never be cleaned up. We will not allow that to happen and we are glad to know that cities and towns in BC are standing with us against this threat. Together, we will stop these pipelines and tankers.”

Over the past three years, over 130 First Nations have joined together to oppose tar sands pipelines and tankers in BC, as many municipalities and the Union of BC Municipalities – representing all of BC’s cities and towns – have declared their strong opposition to these projects.

The Yinka Dene Alliance is made up of Nadleh Whut’en, Nak’azdli, Takla Lake, Saik’uz, Wet’suwet’en and T’lazt’en First Nations.

Contact Information:

Geraldine Thomas-Flurer
Yinka Dene Alliance
250-570-1482

Chief Jackie Thomas
Saik’uz First Nation
Yinka Dene Alliance
250-567-8048
Snachailya’

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Protesters rally against pipelines

Protesters rally against pipelines
About 3,500 voice their objections over Enbridge, Kinder Morgan proposals

By Jonathan Fowlie, Vancouver Sun
October 23, 2012
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Protesters+rally+against+pipelines/7431399/story.html

About 3,500 demonstrators took to the lawn of the B.C. legislature Monday to vehemently oppose two major oil pipelines proposed for the province.
“What are you willing to do to stop them? Are you willing to lay down in front of the bulldozers?” yelled Art Sterritt, executive director of the Coastal First Nations.
“Yes,” called back the crowd. “Who's going to change the 26 Conservative MPs in British Columbia if the federal government tries to jam this thing through?” he continued.
“We will,” came the response. Organized by a coalition of groups, the Defend our Coast demonstration heard from nearly two dozen speakers. All urged Premier Christy Clark and Prime Minister Stephen Harper not to allow either the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline that would carry bitumen from Alberta to Kitimat, or the planned twinning of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline that already carries Alberta oil to Burnaby.
Clark has laid out five conditions that need to be met before any heavy oil pipeline can proceed in B.C., which include: completion of the formal environmental review processes; world-leading marine and land oil spill response and prevention; and British Columbia receiving a fair share of the fiscal and economic benefits.
New Democratic Party leader Adrian Dix has spoken against Enbridge, and said that if he wins the next election, his government will withdraw from the current environmental assessment of the Northern Gateway project and set up a “made-in-B.C.” review instead.
Dix has so far taken no formal position on Kinder Morgan, which has not yet submitted a finalized proposal for the twinning.
Harper said over the summer in Vancouver that while he believes it's “vital” for B.C. and the country to get oil to the west coast, the final decision on the Enbridge project will be determined by science, not politics.
“The government obviously wants to see British Columbia's export trade continue to grow and diversify, that's important,” he said at the time. “But projects have to be evaluated on their own merits.”
Not good enough, those in Victoria said Monday.
“Our government is not standing behind us – the people that are here – that are saying 'no more,' ” said Chief Ruben George of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation.
“Let's hold our government accountable. Let's send a message to them that we have to make a difference.
“We're going to stand together and yes, we are going to win.”
Demonstrators erected a 235-metre black banner – the length of the Aframax tankers that are transporting Kinder Morgan crude oil through Burrard Inlet and Georgia Strait – around the lawn of the legislature and stretched it across neighbouring Belleville Street.
Since legislature guidelines say “objects, such as signs, posters or banners, may not be attached to the grounds, buildings, trees or other property,” demonstrators considered the erection of the banner an act of civil disobedience and said they were willing to be arrested.
“We're showing the gravity of the situation,” said demonstrator Leif Early of Duncan.
“There is no way a pipeline is worth the risk, both for our coast and our ecosystem, as well as the global issue. Putting a pipeline through just makes us even more addicted (to) the dirtiest oil in the world.”
Said Leah Norwood of Qualicum Beach: “How can we call ourselves beautiful British Columbia if we've got this disgusting pipeline running through our forest and destroying our coast?” “If I get arrested, then so be it. It's for a good cause.”
But Const. Mike Russell of the Victoria Police Department said: “We've been happy to facilitate what's been a very peaceful protest today,” adding there were no incidents or arrests.
He said police were willing to allow the giant banner – even across a street – for the duration of the event.
“(There's) nothing I can think of in the Criminal Code that would say it's illegal to put a stake in a lawn,” he said.
“We know it's not going to be there forever and a lot of people are really happy to hear that people are standing up and having their voices heard.”
Dave Coles, national president of the Communications, Energy and Paper-workers Union of Canada, called the pipelines “job killers” that are bad for the environment, don't respect First Nations rights and are destroying Canada's economy.
“Our union represents refinery workers across this country, our union represents workers in the tarsands and our union is diametrically opposed to building the pipelines.”
Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, said the pipelines will only lead to the expansion of the Alberta oilsands. “Pipelines are the bloodlines of the tarsands. If we allow these pipeline to go ahead, it's going to mean that the industry is setting energy policy in Canada,” she said.
“These pipelines mean that you'll need to keep them full and that means a massive expansion of the tarsands and that means that we will never be able to get the alternative energy future we need.”
jfowlie@vancouversun.com

 

About 3,500 demonstrators took to the lawn of the B.C. legislature Monday to vehemently oppose two major oil pipelines proposed for the province.

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CSTC Joins Thousands Against Enbridge

News Release
October 23, 2012

CSTC Joins Thousands Against Enbridge

PDF Version

Dakelh Territory, Prince George, British Columbia. Canada. Yesterday the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council (CSTC) joined thousands of people on the steps of the BC legislature to voice their opposition to oil pipelines and tankers resulting from projects like the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines.  First Nations stood united with unions, environmental groups, celebrities and concerned Canadians that want to protect First Nations lands and the environment from oil tankers and pipelines.

Tribal Chief Terry Teegee said, “It was a great day to see over 3,000 people fight for our lands and right to protect it from Enbridge.”  He added, “This is only the beginning of the battle for our future generations.  Enbridge spells disaster for Carrier Sekani peoples.  It's time that the Northern Gateway project just die, and go away.”  The National Energy Board is concluding its review of the Enbridge proposal to build twin pipelines that would transect unceded  Carrier Sekani territory. 

“We are united as indigenous peoples, as an unconquered people that have rights and title to our lands.  The government of BC and Canada will never get our consent to build oil pipelines through our lands”, said Chief Martin Louie of the Nadleh Whut'en First Nation, a member of the CSTC.  In 2005 the CSTC completed a study on the proposed Enbridge pipelines, and found that it was not worth the risk to Carrier Sekani lands and waterways.  Chief Louie said, “Enbridge and the Harper government are colluding to destroy the environment and First Nations people.  It's a dangerous game that Harper is playing with First Nations.  We will not be bullied.  We will fight on the land to protect our environment from the threat Enbridge brings.”

“This week there will be more protests in Prince George.  Carrier Sekani people will be there to voice our concerns to local MLAs and MPs.  Our land and rights are worth defending, and we will continue to oppose the Enbridge pipeline”, said Tribal Chief Teegee.  On Wednesday, October 24 there will be rallies at the Prince George Civic Centre at 5:00 PM. 

– 30 –
 

For further information contact:
Tribal Chief Terry Teegee, RPF: 250-562-6279; Cell 250-640-3256

For more information regarding the rallies visit: www.defendourcoast.ca

Dakelh Territory, Prince George, British Columbia. Canada. Yesterday the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council (CSTC) joined thousands of people on the steps of the BC legislature to voice their opposition to oil pipelines and tankers resulting from projects like the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines.  First Nations stood united with unions, environmental groups, celebrities and concerned Canadians that want to protect First Nations lands and the environment from oil tankers and pipelines.

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Nechako sturgeon forgotten in battle over northern gateway

Nechako sturgeon forgotten in battle over northern gateway

Province appears to have abandoned fight to save the endangered fish

By Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun

October 12, 2012 3:02 AM

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Nechako+sturgeon+forgotten+battle+over+northern+gateway/7379831/story.html

Nothing exemplifies the apparent confusion of our reigning provincial government regarding the Northern Gateway pipeline project more than the paralytic seizures its own environmental policies induce.

Take the case of the endangered white sturgeon in the tributaries, lakes and main stem of the Nechako River watershed, which enters the Fraser at Prince George, about 800 kilometres north of Vancouver.

Back in 2008, when Barry Penner was environment minister, he championed a $1.5-million grant to support conservation efforts for the much diminished Nechako white sturgeon population.

A comprehensive recovery plan for the endangered Nechako stocks – a genetically distinct sub-species of the Fraser River population – has been in the works for seven years. It was to be ready by 2009. But it still hasn't been implemented, Canadian Press reported last month.

The white sturgeon, the largest freshwater species in the province, is one of nature's wonders. It can live more than a century and reach enormous sizes.

A 500-kilogram specimen caught and released by British sports angler Michael Snell on the lower Fraser last summer generated newspaper headlines around the world. Another, landed from the Fraser about a century ago, topped 816 kilograms in weight and six metres in length. But they've been severely abused throughout their range in Canada and the U.S.

In the 1890s, the American white sturgeon population collapsed after being commercially harvested for a few years in one of history's more disgusting greed fests. British Columbians were little better. We, too, indulged in a 35-year orgy of overfishing starting in 1880.

Then dams on the upper Columbia River ravaged sturgeon habitat in the U.S. and B.C.

The last hope for North America's largest fish was the Fraser, where the fishery was closed in 1994 and the river, although polluted and modified, remains relatively wild and free flowing.

“The Nechako white sturgeon population is the most endangered sturgeon population in B.C., and they need our help,” Penner said in 2008.

He had an unassailable point. The Nechako had been subjected to massive changes from a dam providing power to an aluminum smelter at Kitimat. Government fish biologists estimated fewer than 400 adults survived of the Nechako's historic population of 8,000.

Now, sensitive sturgeon habitat could be threatened again. The proposed pipeline would cross sturgeon rivers carrying more than half a million barrels of gooey, toxic diluted bitumen from Alberta's oilsands to a tanker terminal to be built at Kitimat.

One provincial government news release in 2008 noted that most of the surviving fish in the Nechako are now already more than 40 years old, the age at which females reach sexual maturity and begin to spawn, However, it warned that while white sturgeon spawn only every five to ten years, the natural death rate for such a population is about eight per cent per year.

Since Penner and the government's enthusiastic endorsement of recovery strategies, the white sturgeon population is now estimated at a scant 335. The simple arithmetic of decline is sufficiently ominous that alarm bells should be ringing.

So where's the province when it comes to arguing the case for the beleaguered Nechako sturgeon at the public hearings into the environmental impacts of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which entered their final phase this week in Prince George?

Nowhere, argues the NDP's feisty young environment critic Rob Fleming.

While government was only too happy to take credit for sturgeon protection, issuing media releases by the sheaf, posing for dozens of photo ops and shovelling out tax dollars for the worthy cause, when it's actually come time to stand up for the imperilled species, it's vanished from the scene.

“Having spent all this money and done all this work, why have the Liberals failed to present this evidence to the joint review panel? By not presenting the evidence they help the pipeline project,” Fleming says.

He has a good point. Political theatre is not leadership. Promises are useless if they don't translate into action. And the endangered sturgeon population now requires a serious advocate in our government, which has a moral and ethical duty to protect the fish on our behalf.

shume@islandnet.com

Nothing exemplifies the apparent confusion of our reigning provincial government regarding the Northern Gateway pipeline project more than the paralytic seizures its own environmental policies induce. Take the case of the endangered white sturgeon in the tributaries, lakes and main stem of the Nechako River watershed, which enters the Fraser at Prince George, about 800 kilometres north of Vancouver.

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Enbridge Pipeline Will Mean Higher Fuel Costs For Canadians Says Robyn Allan

Enbridge Pipeline Will Mean Higher Fuel Costs For Canadians Says Robyn Allan

By 250 News

Wednesday, October 03, 2012 04:02 AM


Prince George- A BC Economist and former head of ICBC, Robyn Allan says Enbridge presented their case to the Canadian people saying the pipeline was an opportunity to get higher oil prices in Asia. This, Enbridge said, would contribute to the economic benefits in Canada.

What they failed to tell you Allan says is that these price increases apply to every barrel produced and sold in Canada every year for 30 years and these price increases will be passed onto consumers and businesses.

That was just one of the messages she delivered to a gathering at  UNBC last night.

Allan also says, the employment figures that Enbridge uses suggest that 3,000 people will be employed, when in fact just over 1,000 people will be employed.
Petro China she added has said they would love to build the pipeline with Chinese workers and invest in it as well.

Speaking about the proposed Kitimat refinery, she says it simply does not make sense. It is the wrong place for a refinery. “Think about it, first you need a condensate pipeline running from Kitimat to Edmonton to break down the Bitumen so it can be sent down another pipeline back to Kitimat for smelting. The whole idea does not make economic sense” she says.

The meeting was attended  by more than 200 people including Carrier Sekani Tribal Chief, Terry Teegee.  He says the pipeline would have to cross about 300 kilometres of his Band's traditional territory “We would not support a pipeline crossing under any circumstances.”

Tomorrow we begin a three part series into the findings of Robyn Allan and her appearance before the review panel.

Allan is in Mackenzie at 8:00pm. tonight.

Prince George- A BC Economist and former head of ICBC, Robyn Allan says Enbridge presented their case to the Canadian people saying the pipeline was an opportunity to get higher oil prices in Asia. This, Enbridge said, would contribute to the economic benefits in Canada.

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CSTC Supports Lawsuit to Protect Species at Risk

CSTC Supports Lawsuit to Protect Species at Risk

(PDF Version)

Dakelh Territory, Prince George, British Columbia. Canada. The Carrier Sekani Tribal Council (CSTC) is supporting the recent legal action taken by environmental groups against the federal government's failure to implement the Species at Risk Act (SARA).  The lawsuit challenges the delays in creating recovery strategies for SARA listed species, including the Nechako white sturgeon, which is critically endangered according to the BC Conservation Centre. 

Tribal Chief Terry Teegee stated, “Our people have been aware of the decline in Nechako white sturgeon for decades.  The CSTC is actively involved in fisheries monitoring and protection.” Teegee added, “The CSTC supports any action taken to protect endangered species.”  The lawsuit covers 188 species recover plans that have been delayed by the federal government, four of which will be directly impacted by the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project.

“The federal government has been negligent on implementing its own laws to protect species at risk from industrial development, at the same time it has slashed the processes needed to assess environmental impacts from such projects like the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.”  Stated Tribal Chief Teegee.

The recovery initiative for three of the four species impacted by the Enbridge pipeline project are at least three years overdue.  “First Nations must be part of developing these recovery initiatives, as well as be involved in the monitoring and enforcement within their own territories.” Said Tribal Chief Teegee.  He added, “We have a sacred responsibility to ensure that the environment is protected for current and future generation.”

The CSTC is also an active member of the Nechako White Sturgeon Recovery Initiative (NWSRI) that is a collaborative effort among government, First Nations, conservationists and industry to understand the decline of Nechako White sturgeon; there are less than 300 left. 

– 30 –
For further information contact:
Tribal Chief Terry Teegee, RPF: 250-562-6279; Cell 250-640-3256

Link to Notice of Application – Nechako White Sturgeon.  http://www.ecojustice.ca/files/notice-of-application-sturgeon-filed-20120925/at_download/file

Youtube Video about Nechako White Sturgeon Recovery Initiative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhrEJUEi-ow&feature=player_embedded#!

Read our latest Fisheries Report. Lho Dustl'us. Vol. 7, Issue 1. March 2012.
http://darac.sg-host.com/wp-content/uploads/fisheries/2012MarchLhoDustlus.pdf

Dakelh Territory, Prince George, British Columbia. Canada. The Carrier Sekani Tribal Council (CSTC) is supporting the recent legal action taken by environmental groups against the federal government's failure to implement the Species at Risk Act (SARA).  The lawsuit challenges the delays in creating recovery strategies for SARA listed species, including the Nechako white sturgeon, which is critically endangered according to the BC Conservation Centre.

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Final Hearings for Enbridge Northern Gateway Project

News Release      

For immediate release
2 October 2012

Final Hearings for Enbridge Northern Gateway Project
Move to Prince George

CALGARY ― The Joint Review Panel (the Panel) conducting the review of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Project will continue with the final hearings in Prince George, British Columbia starting on 9 October 2012 at 1:00 p.m. (Pacific Time).

The issues that will be subject to questioning in Prince George will be:
•        the environmental and socio-economic effects of the proposed pipelines;
•        potential impacts on landowners and land use of the pipelines;
•        routing, design and construction of the pipelines and marine terminal; and
•        operations, safety, accident prevention and emergency preparedness and response related to the pipelines.

The Prince George hearing is scheduled to run from 9 to 19 October and from 29 October to 9 November. Sitting hours, with the exception of the first day, will be Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (Pacific Time) for the 9 to 19 October dates. Please see the Panel’s website at www.gatewaypanel.review.gc.ca for more information on all hearing times and on the joint review process. The hearing will be broadcast live (in English and French) over the Panel’s website.

Final hearings for questioning will also be held in Prince Rupert, British Columbia (scheduled for 22 to 30 November and 10 to18 December). The Panel previously held hearings in Edmonton, Alberta. For the list of issues subject to questioning at each location, please see Appendix A of Procedural Direction #8 on the Panel’s website. The hearing schedule will be reviewed as questioning proceeds and may be modified from time-to-time, as required. 

The Panel anticipates Final Argument to take place from March to April 2013. Further details will be communicated in the future.

Media Procedure for the Final Hearings
Members of the media are welcome to attend the hearings. Filming, recording and photographing will be allowed within pre-established fixed locations in the hearing room while the hearings are underway. Media reporting or interviews will not be allowed in the hearing room. The Panel may modify the media procedure for the hearings at any time.

The proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Project involves the construction of two 1 170-kilometre pipelines running from Bruderheim, Alberta to Kitimat, British Columbia and the construction and operation of the Kitimat Marine Terminal.

About the Joint Review Panel

The Joint Review Panel for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project is an independent body, mandated by the Minister of the Environment and the National Energy Board. The Panel will assess the environmental effects of the proposed project and review the application under both the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 and the National Energy Board Act.

The Joint Review Panel (the Panel) conducting the review of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Project will continue with the final hearings in Prince George, British Columbia starting on 9 October 2012 at 1:00 p.m. (Pacific Time).

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B.C. could withhold electricity from proposed pipelines, Premier suggests

B.C. could withhold electricity from proposed pipelines, Premier suggests

Carrie Tait, Nathan VanderKlippe, Justine Hunter
Calgary, Victoria — The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Oct. 02 2012, 4:42 PM EDT

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/bc-could-withhold-electricity-from-proposed-pipelines-premier-suggests/article4582945/

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark has issued a veiled threat to withhold electricity needed to operate controversial oil sands pipelines if the projects do not meet her demands.

Ms. Clark, when asked Tuesday what steps her province could take to block projects like Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway, went beyond pointing to the 60 regulatory permits B.C. could deny.
 

“British Columbia’s power would be required to power up the pipeline, from B.C. Hydro – a Crown corporation,” she said while speaking to students from University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. “There are a whole number of different things the British Columbia government could do.”

B.C. Hydro did not return a call seeking comment.

Ms. Clark is trying to convince Alberta her five demands – three environmental, one tied to First Nations rights, and another linked to economic compensation – must be met if pipelines carrying heavy oil are to snake through B.C.

“You know what, though? To me, all the speculation about how British Columbia would stop it is kind of silly,” she later told reporters. “Because if British Columbia doesn’t give its consent to this, there is no way the federal government or anyone else in the country is going to be able to force it through. It just won’t happen.”
Bruce March, Imperial Oil Ltd.’s chief executive, saluted Ms. Clark’s strategy.

“I think Premier Clark did something really good to set out those five conditions,” he said at a separate conference Tuesday. “Now people have to figure out whether they can be met, should be met, or how they can be met.”

Alison Redford, Alberta’s Premier, has sharply rejected any suggestions that her province would share bitumen royalties or tax revenue with its neighbour. The premiers met Monday for a short minute meeting they both described as “frosty.”

“A 15 minute conversation isn’t going to be enough,”  Mr. March said.  “I think there’s a role for both provinces, the leadership of both provinces, to play and there’s a role for our industry to play, too.”

Ms. Clark also said Tuesday  B.C. is unprepared for marine oil spills even though crude is already being shipped out of a port near Vancouver.
Marine safety is one of the Liberal leader's five concerns. She called B.C.’s current response plans “embarrassing” and will not give her blessing to proposed oil sands pipelines unless spill prevention and response blueprints are beefed up. The current system, she says, is inadequate and dangers would be exacerbated if the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat, B.C., were built.

“We have a lot of oil moving up and down our coasts, a lot of it moving out of Vancouver harbour. We are not ready for any spill right now,” she said. “I think adding to the mix by starting to move heavy oil in large amounts out of the Douglas Channel without being ready, I think it would be lunacy.”

About 48,000 barrels of oil per day are already leave B.C.’s west coast via Kinder Morgan Inc.’s Trans Mountain network. Oil from Alberta’s bitumen deposits have been shipped through the line, some destined for China where energy companies fetch a higher price for their products. Kinder Morgan wants to expand that project in order to move more oil out of northern Alberta.

The federal government, which is strongly in favour of shipping oil to markets in Asia, has “expressed real interest” in helping B.C. develop top-notch spill plans, Ms. Clark said.

She also wants more money for the province in exchange for granting the projects permission. However, she does not know how much cash it would take to satisfy her.

“I can’t tell you that because we haven’t even started a conversation about it,” Ms. Clark said. “This project can’t go ahead unless there’s a conversation. Since July I’ve been saying: ‘Let’s have a conversation about it.”

Adrian Dix, B.C. NDP leader, said Ms. Clark is hurting B.C.'s reputation by threatening to cut off an industry's access to electricity.

“The Premier can turn off your power, if he or she likes it, but it is wrong,” he said in an interview. The NDP leader is opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline but said the law should be followed rather than threatening to smother a project in red tape.

“They are engaging in a desperate attempt to court public opinion, but a better approach would be to make the decision here in B.C.”

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark has issued a veiled threat to withhold electricity needed to operate controversial oil sands pipelines if the projects do not meet her demands.

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No benefits from Enbridge pipeline for First Nations

Nadleh Whut'en First Nation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 7, 2012

No benefits from Enbridge pipeline for First Nations

Nadleh Whut'en Territory – Fraser Lake, BC, Canada – The Nadleh Whut'en First Nation stands steadfast in its opposition to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project.  As the flawed Joint Review Panel enters into final hearings, Enbridge is proclaiming their project is in the 'national interest' and the Christy Clark government is attempting to 'say no to Enbridge' to save her sinking party.  The Nadleh Whut'en is reminding the Crown, British Columbians and Canadians that the Nadleh Whut'en people have never given up our inherent and aboriginal rights to our beautiful lands and resources.

Chief Martin Louie stated, “As Aboriginal people in this land now known as Canada and the province of BC, we have never ceded our lands or rights by agreement or by force.  We have legally protected rights under Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution, and in domestic and international law.”  Furthermore, Chief Louie added, “The international community is closely watching the Harper government's endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as are we.” In 2010, Canada formally endorsed the UN Declaration, which sets a framework for justice and reconciliation between states and indigenous peoples.  If the Joint Review Panel or the Crown approve the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, Nadleh Whut'en will view this as a direct violation of our right to say 'no' to a project that is not in our interest, nor the interest of British Columbians and Canadians.

“The Nadleh Whut'en people will continue to stand firm in our position, with other First Nations and concerned Canadians, in the protection of our rights and title from threats like those posed by Enbridge”, said Chief Louie.  He added, “We don't see any benefits from the Enbridge project.  Economists can banter all they want about so-called benefits.  Caruthers and Harper can proclaim 'in the national interest' or 'nation building' all they want.  Canada, BC and Enbridge will NEVER get our consent to build the Northern Gateway pipeline through Nadleh Whut'en territory.”

Chief Martin Louie stated, “WHEN the Enbridge pipeline breaks, or when a tanker crashes on the coast, whether it is in 5 or 50 years, those impacted lands and waterways will be destroyed. This is not acceptable to our people or other Canadians.  We are fighting for all Canadians and indigenous peoples.  Enbridge needs to pack it up and drop the project.”  Chief Louie said, “We will fight Enbridge and the government on ensuring that our lands and waters remain beautiful for present and future generations.  The Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline will never benefit our people, First Nations and Canadians.”

– 30 –

For more info contact:
Chief Martin Louie at 4dakelh@nadleh.ca or 1-250-570-7759

www.nadleh.ca

Nadleh Whut'en Territory – Fraser Lake, BC, Canada – The Nadleh Whut'en First Nation stands steadfast in its opposition to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project.  As the flawed Joint Review Panel enters into final hearings, Enbridge is proclaiming their project is in the 'national interest' and the Christy Clark government is attempting to 'say no to Enbridge' to save her sinking party.  The Nadleh Whut'en is reminding the Crown, British Columbians and Canadians that the Nadleh Whut'en people have never given up our inherent and aboriginal rights to our beautiful lands and resources.

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