B. C. politicians need to take a side
Clark and Dix will have to decide what’s better: aligning with Ottawa and Alberta, or the unified first nations’ front
As the cynical and entirely predictable astroturfing of the Northern Gateway pipeline debate ramps up, the bellicose rhetoric deflects attention from the grizzly bear in the room.
That would be first nations’ opposition to the project and the federal government’s decision to firmly align itself with the Alberta- generated neoconservative spin that began demonizing the opposition as being the puppets of sinister foreign masters before hearings in the regulatory process had even begun.
More than a thousand kilometres of twinned pipelines would carry bitumen bound for Asia from Alberta’s oilsands to Kitimat on the coast and natural gas condensates back to Alberta.
The route crosses the traditional territories of more than 50 first nations communities.
But B. C. isn’t Alberta, where treaties with first nations govern access and resource extractions.
Except for the Treaty 8 territories in the northeast, the Nisga’a of the Nass Valley, a few first nations on Vancouver Island and a few small bands in southern B. C., virtually all of the proposed pipelines’ right- ofway crosses unceded territory, much of it subject to land claims and treaty negotiations.
The first nations now weighing in with opposition to the Northern Gateway project are among the heavyweights – the Yinka Dene Nations, the Gitk’san, the Haisla, the Haida – who have already amassed an arsenal of favourable Supreme Court of Canada decisions.
Seven first nations have served notice that the current process fails to adequately meet the duty to consult and accommodate aboriginal rights and title set out in those court rulings, so it’s no surprise that the soundtrack for the Wet’suwet’en website opposing the pipeline is a traditional war song.
Furthermore, the B. C. Assembly of First Nations, the First Nations Summit and the Union of B. C. Indian Chiefs have declared unanimous support for the opponents.
This indicates a near- universal first nations front has already coalesced and brings a great deal of moral and legal authority that cannot be easily brushed aside.
If recent rhetoric from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver signals a strategic decision in Ottawa to use the Northern Gateway project to force a showdown over aboriginal rights, get ready for all- out war — and B. C. will be the battleground.
Given the long history — the first resource blockade took place in northern B. C. in 1872 if you don’t count the war fought in the Fraser Canyon in 1858 — and the persistence of the demand for justice, my money would be on the first nations, not the neocon spinmeisters.
For starters, try to ride roughshod over first nations’ rights and you can expect a massive escalation of uncertainty in the province’s resource sector that will make the “shut the province down” summer of 1990 look like a Sunday school picnic.
It was the grit and determination of first nations who endured the RCMP setting dogs on protesting mothers with baby strollers, the mass arrests of elders who had tottered to the blockades on crutches and canes and the humiliation of federal officers who showed up with weapons and were pelted with marshmallows that eventually forced a recalcitrant provincial government to the treaty table after more than a century of evasion of its moral duty.
If Ottawa thinks U. S.- style wedge politics will cause non- aboriginal British Columbians to automatically rally behind a plan to put first nations in their place, it’s seriously deluded in its understanding of what makes this place tick.
First nations’ protests on Meares Island inspired anti- logging blockades at Clayoquot Sound. Support from the non- aboriginal community resulted in the largest mass trial in B. C. history. Non- aboriginal British Columbians supported the Haida and the Nisga’a.
It’s already been argued that Alberta and Ottawa get all the long- term benefits from the proposed Northern Gateway project — many billions in royalties, taxes, manufacturing and production jobs — while B. C. gets short- term construction benefits, a bit of coastal infrastructure and all the long- term environmental risks, some of them potentially catastrophic, including an Exxon Valdez- like oil spill.
One of the risks that hasn’t been much discussed is the potential for massive economic disruption in B. C.’ s resource and transportation sector if the Conservative government decides to try to steamroller first nations’ opposition in order to secure markets in China for Alberta’s bitumen.
B. C.’ s main political leaders, Christy Clark and Adrian Dix, have studiously avoided taking sides in this issue. Understandable, perhaps, but with an election coming, they are going to have to declare their positions.
That will mean hard decisions based on the realpolitik of whether the interests of Ottawa and Alberta align with their own, what the real risks of the project are in the face of unified first nations’ opposition and whether they have the stomach to revisit 1990 and the summer of the blockade.