Mi’kmaq activists say Nova Scotia premier is ignoring treaty rights
Mcneil’s Toronto speech interrupted
Premier Stephen Mcneil found himself open for direct criticism while delivering his Open for Business speech in Toronto on Wednesday morning.
“Corporations are coming into Nova Scotia not respecting treaty rights,” Dorene Bernard, an activist from the Sipekne’katik Band in Indian Brook, said emphatically to the premier, interrupting his 16-minute breakfast address to the Canadian Club of Toronto.
“It’s the destruction of the water, of Mother Earth,” said Bernard, who moved up to the right of the podium along with Patsy Stephens of Millbrook.
“We are in a position to stop that from happening.”
The streamed video of the speech showed a slightly flustered Mcneil responding to Bernard.
“We are very proud of the relationship that we have with the Mi’kmaq Nation in Nova Scotia,” the premier said. “I am very proud as the premier of our province to stand up in our communities and say that we are all treaty people. Someone signed those treaties on behalf of me.”
Mcneil continued: “We’ve driven economic development opportunities to provide an opportunity for your sons and daughters to be able to ensure that our province is sustainable. We’ve absolutely supported and worked alongside your chiefs. As we grow as a province, all Nova Scotians need to see themselves reflected in the important decisions we make, including our First Nations.”
Bernard has long battled against the Alton Gas project that would draw nearly 10,000 cubic metres of water daily from the Shubenacadie River estuary at Fort Ellis and propel it through a 12- kilometre underground pipeline to the Brentwood Road cavern site. There, the water will be pumped nearly 1,000 metres underground to flush out salt to create two caverns that will each be about the size of an average office building and capable of stor- ing up to six billion cubic feet of natural gas.
The brine created by the salt dissolution will then be pumped back to the estuary for release into the river system, a gradual discharge of 1.3 million cubic metres of salt over the two- to three-year period. The brining process has not yet begun but Bernard and others argue that it will destroy marine life in the Shubenacadie River system that has historically sustained the Sipekne’katik Band.
Bernard, who also bemoans the April decision by the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board to authorize BP Canada to drill a deepwater exploration well about 300 kilometres south of Halifax, doesn’t agree with the premier that the Mi’kmaq have been part of the province’s development decisions.
“You have not consulted the treaty rights holders,” Bernard said of Mcneil in a telephone interview as she awaited a flight back to Nova Scotia. “There has been no free, prior and informed consent about Alton Gas or BP.”
Bernard denounced the premier’s invitation to corporations to a Nova Scotia that is wide open for business.
“It’s about protecting all our land, our water, our resources and our identity,” she said. “This is who we are.”