Indigenous leaders blast pipeline talks
Trans Mountain project could face hurdles
OTTA WA • Three First Nations are claiming Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi and other federal officials failed to properly consult with Indigenous communities on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, possibly adding fresh complications to an already prolonged regulatory and legal process.
“I felt like I wasn’t even being respected or even listened to,” said Coldwater Indian Band chief Lee Spahan, describing his interactions with the federal government in recent months.
“In the eyes of my council and myself, it was pretty much a waste of time,” he said.
Coldwater has been among the Indigenous communities most fiercely opposed to the Trans Mountain expansion project, saying the project threatens to spoil a crucial freshwater aquifer that it has relied upon for generations.
Spahan said he met in person with Sohi only once, and was afterward forced to consult with lower-level federal officials who did not possess the authority to provide definitive answers to his questions.
Federal officials, led by Sohi, were in consultations with 129 First Nations communities along the route of Trans Mountain from October 2018 to May 2019, after a Federal Court of Appeal decision quashed the project and called on Ottawa to repeat a portion of its discussions with First Nations.
The head of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation also told the National Post that discussions with federal officials did not amount to a “consent-based” process, while the leader of the Squamish Nation cast doubts on the meaningfulness of the consultations.
All three communities were parties to the federal court challenge that stalled the Trans Mountain project in August 2018. In the final court ruling, a lack of access to cabinet ministers and other high-level officials was cited as a main reason why the government failed to meet its “duty to consult.”
Their criticism brings into sharper focus a fear by supporters of the expansion project that some Indigenous communities will oppose the pipeline regardless of any appeasement efforts by Ottawa, and will use any legal and regulatory means to delay the pipeline.
The federal government re-approved Trans Mountain on June 18 after it announced it would purchase the pipeline last year, effectively nationalizing it. Years of regulatory and legal delays have delayed the project, first proposed in 2012.
The Indigenous claims come as the National Energy Board (NEB) prepares for a decision on whether it will reinstate the Trans Mountain project after July 9, when a comment period on the project is scheduled to end. Such a decision would effectively allow construction of the line to move ahead. The regulator would not say how long a reinstatement decision would take.
Leah George-Wilson, chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in B.C., said her community had numerous meetings with federal officials, but said the Liberal cabinet approved Trans Mountain without a complete understanding of how diluted bitumen would interact with water in the event of an oil spill. She argues the decision was therefore premature, causing the community to lose faith in what she refers to as “consent-based” consultations on the pipeline.
“We’re not saying that we didn’t have any consultation, we just didn’t feel that they were meaningful,” George-Wilson said.
Sohi, for his part, personally met with 65 community leaders as part of Ottawa’s broader consultation efforts.
A legal challenge against Trans Mountain would not immediately set back construction of the pipeline, as the proceedings would likely take years to carry out.