LandKeepers News Archive
Oil Could Re-Ignite Land Fight
April 06 2010 | News ArticlesPipeline News | Abbotsford Times
Keith Baldrey, The Abbotsford Times
The B.C. Liberals have largely been spared the knockdown, emotional and visceral fights over land use that consumed this province for much of the 1990s.
That peace appears about to end.
A proposed oil pipeline running from Alberta to Kitimat threatens to re-ignite the kind of fiery debate that dominated political discourse for so long in B.C., one that pits industrial development against environmental protection.
Already, prominent First Nations leaders have made it clear this project is a complete no-go from their point of view. That puts the provincial government on a collision course with a community it has been trying hard to court as a major partner in its economic strategy since coming to office in 2001.
The project in question is the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway project. It would carry crude oil from the Alberta tar sands, up to 525,000 barrels a day, to be loaded into supertankers at Kitimat. Naturally, environmentalists and First Nations leaders are touting the nightmarish spectre of a major oil spill as reason enough to kill the project outright.
Prominent environmentalists such as David Suzuki have been joined by First Nations leaders and even non-traditional voices, such as singer Bruce Cockburn, Vancouver Canuck Willie Mitchell and various Olympic athletes.
The fact the project will deliver fossil fuels across B.C. at the very least has to be looked at with irony, given the B.C. premier’s stated priority of fighting climate change and emphasizing the need for renewable energy sources.
However, it is the opposition from the First Nations that is potentially the most problematic obstacle for the Campbell government. Taking on the environmental movement – which is somewhat disunited at the moment – and some singers and hockey players is one thing, but trying to battle a community that has become politically and legally formidable is quite another.
The Coastal First Nations are united in their opposition to this project. Frankly, it’s hard to see how it could ever proceed given this strong opposition.
Clashing with an important component of the B.C. First Nations leadership could derail the solidly improved relationship between the provincial government and the aboriginal community that has been building all these years.
Although the “new relationship” proposal appears to be dead in the water, First Nations bands are the key to the success of much of the government’s Green Energy Policy. A significant number of independent power projects have First Nations bands as outright business partners, and any setback in the overall relationship could have dire consequences for the energy policy.
The pipeline is still in its early days, and it’s a long way from being a done deal. Nevertheless, Premier Gordon Campbell rose to his feet recently and defended the project by arguing it should be allowed to proceed through the various processes. It’s a reasonable argument – what’s wrong with using the process that is in place? But it was denounced by the project’s many opponents.
It will be interesting to see if the premier’s support is still there if the project clears the various hurdles and is poised to become reality down the road. I have a feeling it may diminish completely. If it doesn’t, Campbell and the B.C. Liberals may find themselves in a replay of the War of the Woods in the 1990s, which consumed the government of Mike Harcourt and the NDP.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.
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