B.C. protesters rally for and against pipeline project
BURNABY — Protesters around Vancouver held duelling rallies on Saturday, some welcoming Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project and others decrying it.
First Nation leaders marched with thousands of anti-pipeline activists in Burnaby on Saturday morning. Hours later, several hundred pro-pipeliners — including a busload of Albertans — gathered at Jack Poole Plaza in downtown Vancouver to speak in favour of the project.
The Indigenous leaders beat drums and sang out against the project, saying they wouldn’t step aside for construction.
Rueben George, of the Tsleil Waututh First Nation, told protesters that it will take more rallies and protests to stop the project, which is set to increase the flow of oil products to 890,000 barrels from 300,000 barrels per day. Kinder Morgan projects the pipeline extension will increase tanker traffic off Vancouver Island to 34 tankers a month from five.
“It’s going to take gatherings such as this ... [to] make sure the environment is not laid to waste and taken away from future generations. This is what we stand for today,” George said, speaking through a megaphone to the crowd gathered outside Burnaby’s Lake City Way Skytrain station.
The Tsleil-Waututh are among six First Nations that filed a court challenge to the project last fall, along with the City of Burnaby and City of Vancouver.
The First Nation organized the protest alongside the Musqueam and Squamish First Nations, George said.
Protesters marched toward a traditional “watch house” they were building at Burnaby Mountain to oversee work by Kinder Morgan.
George explained that Coast Salish First Nations would traditionally build a watch house, or “Kwekwecnewtxw,” to watch for enemies.
He said the environmental threat posed by the pipeline expansion constitutes such an enemy.
Squamish First Nation elder Robert Nahanee said expanding the pipeline would only add more pollution to the coast where he grew up.
“My family was food gatherers. We gathered clams, crabs, oysters fish — everything. That’s how I grew up. Now we can’t even do that,” Nahanee said. “We need to stand up and hear our voices. My voice is: O, Canada, you’re on native land.”
At the sparser pro-pipeline rally, people spoke about fighting the “greenies” and crowd members shouted out phrases, including “mitigate risk.”
Stewart Muir, who spoke in favour of the $7.4-billion project as executive director for the Resource Works Society, said it doesn’t have to be a decision between the environment and economy.
“Canada can have both,” Muir said. “We can have the environment protected and respected, and we can have the economic benefits that will allow Canada to be in future what it has been in the past.”
Bernard Hancock, who works on a service rig and grew up in North Vancouver, said Canadians need jobs to support their families and save for retirement.
“The oil patch provides good paying work. It’s the only thing that ever paid me,” Hancock said.
Jonathan Wilkinson, parliamentary secretary for the minister of environment and climate change, issued a statement Saturday saying he has come to support the project. He said the federal government is protecting the coast with its $1.5-billion Oceans Protection Plan and has consulted 118 potentially affected Indigenous groups on the project.
“The fact is, the Kinder Morgan pipeline already exists — it has been delivering oil to the port of Vancouver safely for over 60 years, and carrying diluted bitumen for three decades. This project would simply add capacity to the existing pipeline, and we’ve set 157 binding conditions to ensure it can be constructed and operated safely,” Wilkinson said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave the project the green light last year. He has said Alberta needs to export its oil outside of the U.S. to get better prices and that “a modern pipeline can be very carefully monitored and can be done safely.”
On Friday, a B.C. Supreme Court judge granted Kinder Morgan an interim injunction aimed at preventing anti-pipeline activists from protesting construction at two terminals in Burnaby.
The injunction restricts protesters from coming within 50 metres of the facilities until Wednesday, when a hearing on the matter will continue.