Indigenous people give pipeline their blessing
And with Indigenous leaders on hand, Notley enjoys thoroughly gratifying day
For Premier Rachel Notley, who has struggled relentlessly to get the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion built, Friday morning was a dream come true.
Under bright sunny skies, she participated in a photo op where there were actual shovels being shoved in the ground as Indigenous people literally gave the pipeline project their blessing.
“Construction on Trans Mountain begins this summer,” said Notley at the event held on the Enoch Cree Nation west of Edmonton. “But it all starts with today’s ceremony, which is a critical step in the process of getting Trans Mountain built.”
And then Notley picked up a shovel along with Enoch Cree Nation Chief Billy Morin, newly appointed federal Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi, and the president of Kinder Morgan Canada, Ian Anderson.
They marched over to a conveniently placed slab of dirt, with photogenic heavy earth-moving equipment arrayed behind them, and proceeded to put their shovels in the ground and toss dirt in the air for the cameras.
Notley couldn’t have been happier. Here she was with representative of the key players in the project — Indigenous people, Kinder Morgan (which is selling the Trans Mountain project to the federal government), and the federal government (which will take possession of the project in a month or so).
And everybody was sounding positive and upbeat.
“Canada is a place where the environment and the economy go hand in hand and where projects that are in the national interest get built,” said Sohi.
“We are proud of the relationship we have built with Trans Mountain and to partner with them on this project,” said Morin, who figures the project will inject $6 million into the Enoch Cree economy. “This site will allow us to create opportunities for our people and community for many years to come.”
That’s all music to Notley’s ears after a year or so of listening to the jeers of opposition politicians in Alberta saying she has failed to get the pipeline built and the yells of protesters from First Nations in British Columbia trying to block the pipeline’s progress.
She no doubt was savouring the moment Friday as she symbolically lifted the first shovel of dirt to begin laying the pipeline.
Friday’s ceremony also included a blessing from an elder with the Enoch Cree Nation. That was the most profound and real moment in the whole event.
The rest was politics and optics.
There was no pipe laid Friday. There won’t be any pipe laid this year. Pipe won’t hit the ground until early in 2019. This is a year of preparatory work: surveying the right of way; hammering in stakes; digging up and moving rare flowers.
But shuffling around shrubbery doesn’t have the same oomph as a shovel hitting the ground.
That’s why Friday’s event had a dozen shovels. And that’s why you get the feeling the government will bring shovels to an endless summer and fall and winter of ceremonies to give the impression there is progress on a project that won’t have an actual earth-moving shovel in the ground until 2019.
It is important to note the Enoch Cree Nation will house a storage yard where Trans Mountain will begin stockpiling steel pipe for the project.
The Enoch Cree’s enthusiastic involvement is a reminder there are Indigenous people fully on board with the project. Chief Morin made a point of saying he and other First Nations in Alberta might even invest in the project. There are also Indigenous people in British Columbia thinking about buying an equity share.
Critics of Notley will no doubt focus on the puffery of Friday’s event and accuse the premier of shovelling something other than dirt. But Notley is hardly the first politician to put shovel in hand at a photo op.
And she is under intense political pressure to show Albertans that the Trans Mountain project is moving ahead. A sod-turning photo op with hard hats and sparkling new shovels might be a bit goofy, I suppose, but it makes for a better photo than somebody hammering in a surveyor’s stake.
Notley is also trying to keep the public focused on the upside of the Trans Mountain project, that for all the stops and starts, it has started again.
And if all goes according to the latest plan, she will be able to attend a real ground-breaking ceremony in the spring where pipe will actually be laid.
That might make for the photo op of Notley’s career — the perfect backdrop, perhaps, to call an election.