FIRST NATIONS GROUP WANTS END TO TANKER BAN.
Coalition plans UN complaint over moratorium
OTTAWA • A coalition of First Nations groups is imploring Ottawa to rein in an oil tanker ban on the northern B.C. coast, and plans to level a United Nations complaint against the government to protest the legislation.
The plea is a last-ditch effort to reverse Bill C-48 as it nears passage through the Senate. The National Chiefs Coalition met with a number of senators Tuesday morning in Ottawa to oppose the moratorium.
Calvin Helin, CEO of Eagle Spirit Energy Holding, heads the coalition, which has sketched out plans to build a roughly $18-billion oil pipeline from northern Alberta to around Prince Rupert, B.C.
Helin, a Lax Kw’alaams Band member, has long pitched the idea as Canada’s sole First Nations-led oil pipeline. Helin said C-48 is a matter of “enormous concern” for the roughly 200 First Nations communities represented by the coalition, and said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tanker ban explicitly targets the project, effectively stripping Indigenous people of their economic self-determination.
“Is this what reconciliation is supposed to represent in Canada?” he said.
His comments come amid intense angst in Alberta, which has failed for many years to build the necessary pipelines to carry away steadily increasing oilsands production.
The National Chiefs Coalition said on Tuesday it would file a complaint in “coming days” under the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) against the federal government.
The chiefs said the ban unfairly restricts oil exports by the First Nations group, while allowing multinational corporations to ship their products from the southern portion of the B.C. coast.
“All we’re trying to do is take advantage of the resources available to us,” said former chief Wallace Fox, chairman of the Indian Resource Council, a part of the coalition.
The Eagle Spirit pipeline appears to present a conundrum on Indigenous rights. A handful of First Nations communities — including the Yinka Dene Alliance, which opposed other pipeline projects in B.C. — have opposed the project in the past due to environmental worries. Meanwhile, a host of Indigenous communities along the pipeline route support Eagle Spirit, saying it will give them more financial independence.
Helin said he is close to a consensus among First Nations on Eagle Spirit. He said much of the First Nations opposition to the pipeline comes from Indigenous people, backed by activist organizations, who claim to speak for whole communities but do not.
“They’re just puppets and props for American environmental groups," he said.
The pipeline project, first floated in 2013, was proposed as an alternative to the other two major oil conduits planned to reach the B.C. coast — Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain, now owned by Ottawa.
Eagle Spirit had plans to ship a lighter, upgraded bitumen than the Northern Gateway project, Helin said Tuesday. “We can produce oil in the oilpatch with a smaller carbon footprint than almost any producer on the planet,” he said.
Eagle Spirit was widely viewed by industry as unlikely to move ahead even before the tanker moratorium, due to its high capital costs and First Nations opposition. The group has not yet announced firm private sector investors.
The tanker ban was first announced in 2016, at the same time Trudeau axed Northern Gateway and approved Trans Mountain. It bars any shipment of oil products off the northern B.C. coast, but does not apply to liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Many B.C. residents have expressed concerns over building new oil pipelines in the north of the province, saying a single spill could permanently spoil the region’s coast or waterways.