Carney strides into Northern Gateway minefield

National Observer

2 days ago

Prime Minister Mark Carney set off alarm bells across British Columbia when he told a journalist at the Calgary Stampede that a new bitumen pipeline to BC's north coast is 'highly, highly likely.' Nowhere have those bells been ringing more strongly than in the dozens of First Nations communities who spent a decade fighting the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal.
'Our position hasn't changed,' Marilyn Slett, chief of the Heiltsuk Nation and president of the nine-member Coastal First Nations Great Bear Initiative, told Canada's National Observer. 'An oil pipeline and tankers is something that we cannot support.'
The proposal is perhaps the starkest example of a central tension stemming from Carney's signature legislation, Bill C-5 — that appropriate consultation with First Nations is incompatible with the time scales being put forth. That, in turn, sets up the question hanging over the whole country: What will Carney do if a project he strongly favours fails to win Indigenous support?
'Consent shouldn't be an option,' said Terry Teegee, chief of the BC Assembly of First Nations. Back in the Northern Gateway years (the pipeline was proposed in 2006 and cancelled in 2016), Teegee was chief of the eight-nation Carrier Sekani Tribal Group; the proposed pipeline route went straight through their territory in the centre of BC, and was opposed by all of them. 'Those First Nations haven't changed their mind either,' he said.
None of the Indigenous leaders contacted for this article have heard anything about a new pipeline directly from the federal government, and the subject did not come up during Carney's meeting with First Nations from around the country in Gatineau last week. But a government source recently confirmed to Canada's National Observer that a Northern Gateway-style pipeline to BC's north coast is indeed likely to make the list of 'major projects' to be streamlined under Bill C-5.
If history is any guide, it's hard to overstate the scale of opposition and public outrage such a decision would provoke in BC.
Nine years after it ended, the Northern Gateway saga has faded from many Canadians' minds; a global pandemic and two Trump administrations have eclipsed it in our collective memory. But few projects in Canadian history have generated such intense blowback. Its blatant disregard of First Nations rights and protection of an iconic Canadian landscape united two of the most powerful protest blocs in the country; protests convulsed BC for years on end, generated endless terrible headlines, and consumed an enormous amount of the Harper government's time, energy and political capital. The Conservatives lost every one of the nine West Coast ridings they won in 2011. It also contributed significantly to the distrust of government among First Nations that Carney is reigniting today.
Prime Minister Mark Carney set off alarm bells across British Columbia when he told a journalist at the Calgary Stampede that a new bitumen pipeline to BC's north coast is 'highly, highly likely.'
Rewriting history
Whether he realizes it or not, Carney is tiptoeing straight into the same political minefield Harper trudged through a decade ago. Many see his soft embrace of it as a concession to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, whose demands for such a pipeline have ramped up dramatically in recent months.
'The whole purpose of the exercise we're going through is to expand to new markets,' Smith told CBC on July 2, referring to Bill C-5. 'The best opportunity is in expanding to the West Coast.'
In Smith's telling, Northern Gateway was well-received by Indigenous communities and the only reason it failed was that Justin Trudeau decided to cancel the project. 'There could have been a pathway to 'yes,' and he chose the opposite approach,' she said in that interview. According to her, 'Northern Gateway actually showed a pathway where you could have Indigenous ownership. I think there were 35 Indigenous leaders who were very enthusiastic about it. So I would hope we could enter into some kind of process where we would have a similarly positive outcome.'
That's a dramatic rewriting of history. Enbridge did sign financial agreements with an undisclosed number of First Nations in return for their support of Northern Gateway, but the names of those nations were never publicly released. Meanwhile, more than 130 First Nations publicly opposed the project. Among them were the nine coastal First Nations represented by Chief Slett – it was their court challenge that led the federal court to overturn the project's approval. Justin Trudeau decided against appealing that decision, and formally cancelled the project instead.
Reviving it today runs a powerful risk of reigniting the same opposition, both in the courts and on the streets. Even if Carney and Smith find a number of First Nations to support it, the inevitable opposition of a far greater number of First Nations would be political kryptonite for a government whose relationship with First Nations is already under huge strain.
'It's not going to be the path that they envision,' Slett said.
Oil versus gas
Phil Germuth is the mayor of Kitimat, the same terminus where Northern Gateway was originally proposed. He was a city councillor and staunch opponent of Northern Gateway 10 years ago; today, he's delighted by all the LNG traffic coming through Douglas Channel.
Earlier this month, LNG Canada began its first shipment of liquefied natural gas out of Kitimat; several more LNG projects are coming online in the coming years.
Germuth remains extremely wary of transporting bitumen through the same waters.
'They're two completely different projects when it comes to the potential environmental impacts,' he told Canada's National Observer. 'If you're proposing Northern Gateway the way it originally was, I think there would just be so much opposition.'
By 2030, Slett expects to see 600 LNG tankers ply her territorial waters and those of her fellow coastal nations every year. She and others have made their peace with that — and think this sacrifice — not a small one, should be enough.
'British Columbia is doing their part in terms of national interest projects with these LNG projects,' she said.
Plus, oil is far more dangerous to transport than natural gas, Slett pointed out. 'There is no technology that exists that could sufficiently clean up any oil spill in these deep waters and along the narrow rocky coastlines,' she said. 'We're not going to bear the risk of an oil spill in our waters.'
While opposition to transporting bitumen along the north coast hasn't changed in the last 10 years, other things have. One of them is the creation of a huge new marine protected area known as the Great Bear Sea. This is one of the largest conservation projects of its kind on Earth, encompassing 10 million hectares off the north and central coast of British Columbia. Last year, the federal government gave $200 million to kickstart the initiative, which is led by 17 First Nations, including all the ones that defeated Northern Gateway in court 10 years ago.
When Trudeau decided not to appeal that loss, he passed Bill C-48 banning oil tanker traffic from the region. Federal Conservatives, multiple Alberta premiers, and Enbridge have all been calling for that ban to be repealed ever since, as a precondition for reviving Northern Gateway. If that happens, it would almost certainly be a sign that a new pipeline battle is coming next.
Transport Canada, under whose jurisdiction the tanker ban falls, did not reply to a request for comment on the future of C-48. Neither did the environment ministry.
The question, then, is whether Carney appreciates the situation's flammability. According to BC AFN Chief Teegee, the prime minister promised First Nations chiefs in Gatineau that no projects would be approved without Indigenous consent.
If he holds true to his word, he'll undoubtedly enrage Danielle Smith and the federal Conservatives. But now that Bill C-5 is law, they no longer have the power to kill the prime minister's signature legislation. The people who can are First Nations.