Feds restart Indigenous pipeline talks
First Nations cautious, wary about new 22-week consultation process
OTTAWA — Indigenous communities are open to a new consultation on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, but many are greeting its launch with some caution.
The Liberals said Wednesday that they won’t appeal the August decision from the Federal Court of Appeal that tore up cabinet approval for the pipeline’s expansion.
Instead, Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi said the government is hiring former Supreme Court of Canada justice Frank Iacobucci to oversee a new round of consultations with affected Indigenous communities using the road map for those consultations the court laid out in its decision.
Meanwhile, the B.C. government wants to take part in the National Energy Board’s reconsideration of the expansion. Environment Minister George Heyman said Wednesday that the government has registered as an intervener in the next set of hearings.
The former B.C. Liberal government was an intervener in the first hearings. A spokesman for the energy board said in an email that as long as the province registers its intent to take part, it will be accepted again as an intervener.
Heyman said the government is concerned that the 22-week time frame for the reconsideration isn’t long enough to accommodate a thorough review that allows Indigenous groups to fully participate.
“But we will be intervening and making those points as well as other points with respect to the need to protect B.C.’s environment, coast and economy,” he said.
Iacobucci’s first order of business will be to oversee the process to design the consultations in concert with First Nations and Metis leaders. Consultations themselves won’t start until that design phase is completed, and there is no timeline for that.
The Squamish First Nation, which has thus far opposed the construction of the pipeline, welcomed the decision not to appeal in a statement, but appeared wary about the new consultation process.
“Our nation expects an honourable consultation process that upholds our nation’s Indigenous rights,” said Khelsilem, a band councillor and spokesman for Squamish. “The Trudeau government tried to ram this project through our territory with a predetermined outcome and this was not acceptable to Squamish Nation or the courts.”
Khelsilem added artificial timelines wouldn’t be acceptable.
In the appeal, Squamish leaders told the court they didn’t feel they had enough information to decide how risky the pipeline was to their territory, which includes Burrard Inlet, the narrow waterway through which as many as 35 oil tankers would travel each month carrying diluted bitumen away from the pipeline’s marine terminal in Burnaby.
Chief Michael LeBourdais of the Whispering Pines Clinton Indian Band near Kamloops said the new consultation is “extraordinarily ambitious.”
Whispering Pines supports the pipeline and was the first to sign a benefits agreement on the pipeline with Kinder Morgan Canada, which owned the pipeline until Aug. 31 when the federal government bought it for $4.5 billion.