Trudeau won’t visit B.C. pipeline protest site
At Kamloops fundraiser, PM says he hopes situation will cool down
OTTAWA— Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he won’t visit the site of a Wet’suwet’en nation pipeline blockade when he is in British Columbia this week because he doesn’t want to further inflame tensions that have seen protests erupt in cities across the country.
Speaking to CBC’s radio station i n Kamloops, B.C., Wednesday morning, Trudeau said he is not happy that RCMP arrested 14 people at a protest camp Monday night, but that it is important to let people voice their concerns while maintaining respect for court orders and the rule of law.
“Obviously, it’s not an ideal situation,” said Trudeau, who was in the Interior city to host a Liberal fundraiser and answer questions at an evening town hall event.
“One of the things that is really important is to try and reduce the temperature a little bit, and sometimes engaging in that way” — by visiting the protest site — “is actually raising the political attention and the stakes,” he said.
For the second day in a row, Trudeau’s presence was met with protests — this time from demonstrators on both sides of the pipeline debate. The Canadian Press reported Wednesday that protesters in Kamloops wore yellow vests — an allusion to anti-carbon tax demonstrators in France — and waved signs that read “Carbon Tax Cash Grab” and “Trudeau for Treason.”
A nearby group of anti-pipeline protesters chanted and drummed and held a banner that read: “Canada needs climate action now.”
Tensions broke out this week when Mounties dismantled a barricade on a remote service road in northern B.C. that was set up to construction of a natural gas pipeline, in defiance of a court order. Issued in December, the order is meant to allow for construction of the 670-km Coastal GasLink pipeline, which would carry natural gas from the Rocky Mountains to an approved $40-billion export terminal in Kitimat run by the company LNG Canada. Trudeau’s government boasts the project as the “largest privatesector investment in Canadian history.”
The protest site, near the B.C. community of Houston, is supported by Wet’suwet’en hered- itary chiefs. The chiefs point out their community has never signed a treaty with the Canadian or B.C. governments to relinquish their traditional territory. They also say they have not given permission to Coastal GasLink, a subsidiary of TransCanada Corp., to enter their territory to build the pipeline.
Instead, the company says it has inked project agreements with 20 elected band councils on reserves along the pipeline route. This includes an agreement with the Wet’suwet’en First Nation band council, formerly known as the Broman Lake Indian Band, as well as with other bands that are part of the wider Wet’suwet’en community in the area.
But hereditary chiefs opposed to the pipeline have said these governments have limited jurisdiction, as creations of the Indian Act —19th century legislation that defines “Indian status” and on-reserve governing structures. The nation’s hereditary chief leadership have authority over the 22,000 square kilometres claimed as their traditional territory, they say.
At a press conference in Victoria, B.C. Premier John Horgan said he spoke with Trudeau Tuesday night about the pipeline opposition in Wet’suwet’en territory. He said the challenge in this situation is how to bring together the elected band councils and the hereditary chiefs model that is “emerging” in the Wet’suwet’en nation. Asked how companies and project investors should differentiate between different Indigenous authorities, Horgan said it’s up to the province and Ottawa — in conjunction with local First Nations — to figure that out.