Feds’ policy panned in West

CALGARY Alberta and Saskatchewan blasted the federal government over energy policy at a First Nations event Monday, urging Indigenous communities to fight against what they called its “abysmal” policy.

In a speech to the National Coalition of Chiefs’ Energy and Natural Resources Summit on the Tsuu T’ina Nation reserve near Calgary, Saskatchewan Energy and Resources Minister Bronwyn Eyre reiterated her government’s call for a “new deal” between the province and the feds.

Following last month’s federal election that returned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government to power, Alberta and Saskatchewan have warned that western alienation is on the rise on the Prairies. No Liberal members of Parliament were elected in either oil-producing province.

Since the election, Saskatchewan has publicly called for a “new deal” with the feds, while Alberta has said it would hold a referendum on the issue of equalization payments.

“Energy is a national unity issue ... How condescending to think of First Nations attitudes toward energy as being all the same,” Eyre said in the speech that also blasted the federal ban on oil tankers on the northern part of the British Columbia coast.

“In so many ways, you hold the key,” she said to the First Nations chiefs, many of whom have struck joint ventures with companies and produce oil and gas from their reserves.

“I think the federal government will listen to you.”

The event was hosted for First Nations chiefs to discuss economic development through natural resources projects and included Indigenous groups from Manitoba to B.C.

“Sometimes our male politicians don’t have the gonads, so we have to entrust it to our female politicians,” said Dale Swampy, president of the National Coalition of Chiefs, of Eyre’s speech.

Swampy, who was the longtime CEO of the Samson Cree Nation in central Alberta, created the National Coalition of Chiefs after working in Indigenous consultation on the Northern Gateway pipeline.