by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jun 6, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Toxification
By Kavitha Chekuru / Al Jazeera
The sun pierces through thin slices of halibut that lie drying across cylindrical pieces of wood as Christopher Stuart continues to delicately cut more of the freshly harvested fish for the sun to bake.
Stuart, a member of Canada’s Gitga’at First Nation, is performing the task for the first time at the tribe’s annual spring harvest on Princess Royal Island, just off the coast of British Columbia. But it’s not his first time at the seasonal camp called Kiel. He has come every year since he can remember to gather with other Gitga’at to harvest halibut and seaweed.
Helen Clifton, an elder of the Gitga’at, watches him from inside a small house on the rocky shore, as she begins her 70th year at the spring harvest.
“The tide is moving on this coast, up and down,” she says. “The tide does not stand still.”
It’s an apt description for so many situations the Gitga’at and other First Nations, Canada’s indigenous communities, find themselves in, as they work to preserve their traditions while living alongside Canada’s quest to exploit the natural resources of the land that was once theirs. While the tide helps bring in the seaweed they harvest, it could just as easily be the same tide that takes away that food if the waters become Canada’s highway to global energy markets.
Calgary-based energy firm Enbridge has proposed building a pipeline from Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta to carry crude to the port of Kitimat. From there, the crude would be loaded onto tankers bound for Asia, traversing the forested coast of British Columbia.
First Nations and many other communities in British Columbia and Alberta find themselves in the middle of supply and demand – between Canada’s expanding oil industry, home to the world’s third-largest oil reserves; and the rapidly growing economies in East Asia, particularly China. Enbridge’s proposed pipeline, the $5.5bn Northern Gateway, would be the bridge. But the project would cut through the Great Bear Rainforest, a treasured nature preserve and one of the largest intact coastal rainforests in the world. This, in addition to safety concerns from environmental groups and First Nations, have been at the heart of much of the opposition to the project.
Environmental worries
Trees overwhelm the hilly islands that thread through the waterways here, a stunning confluence of mountain and sea, whales and wolves. The forest had been at risk from logging until 2006 when the provincial government, industry, environmentalists and First Nations came to an agreement to preserve large parts of the forest – a rare alliance between opposing sides.
“It’s a model for the scale of conservation that’s required to maintain ecosystem health, while at the same time supporting communities with revenue and jobs that don’t damage the ecosystem we depend on,” says Caitlyn Vernon, a campaigner with the Sierra Club of British Columbia. “Over a decade of work developing this model would be put in jeopardy by an oil spill.”
Vernon and other conservation groups say that if oil makes its way into the waters of the forest, it would cause a ripple effect through the intricately connected marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Even if there is no spill, environmentalists say increased tanker traffic could still cause damage by possibly introducing new bacteria from other waters.
The Gitga’at say they know the risks of a spill all too well. In 2006, a ferry boat travelling near their main village of Hartley Bay ran aground and sank. The ship sits at the bottom of the water just south of the bay to this day and still leaks diesel fuel into the waters in which the Gitga’at fish.
“All the promises were made and nothing happened,” says Clifton. “And today it’s still bubbling and burping.”
Enbridge acknowledges the risks of its project, but insists it has taken both the pipeline and tanker routes into serious consideration and can protect both the land and marine ecosystems.
“We’re planning on putting in place a number of risk mitigation factors. On the marine side, that includes that all tankers coming into port will be vetted by third-party experts,” Todd Nogier, an Enbridge spokesman, told Al Jazeera. “All will be boarded by British Columbia pilots who understand the area and how it behaves.” Nogier says there will also be state-of-the-art technology used for the pipeline and navigational aides installed along the tanker route to increase safer tanker traffic.
“It’s a smart way to enable Canada to move forward in an industry that is very important to the country and do something that’s an important priority for the country. And that’s finding a new market for this energy resource.”
But Enbridge faces a number of hurdles in marketing the proposal to British Columbia. One of the main selling points has been economic benefits. The firm says thousands of jobs would be created through Northern Gateway and that the project would contribute $270bn to Canada’s GDP over 30 years. But the majority of jobs would be short-term employment in the pipeline’s construction. Only a few hundred long-term jobs are expected, primarily at the marine terminal in Kitimat. Critics of Northern Gateway say far more jobs in fishing and tourism are at stake if there is a pipeline breach or oil spill.
First Nations concerns
While there has been vocal opposition from many First Nations, Enbridge says it has support from a number of bands in Alberta and British Columbia. The company is also offering communities that would be affected a 10 per cent stake in the project, in addition to a large percentage of the local jobs. It’s still a hard sell to some First Nations, such as the Haisla, who live by the port of Kitimat.
“I think that there’s definitely an area where our people need to take advantage,” says Gerald Amos, a Haisla elder. “We’re no different than other people where we require a way to sustain ourselves in today’s reality. However, there are limits to that.”
“This water was described as the dinner plate of the Haisla people,” Amos continues. “The richness here has been pretty much constant over my lifetime, but we’re now seeing a decline that I’m afraid will lead to extinction for some stocks.” Some species have already seen sharp drops, like the eulachon and salmon, particularly after restrictions on indigenous fisheries and industrial pollution over the past century. With fish as their main source of sustenance and income, the loss of key species has had a pronounced effect on their culture.
“When I’ve got some of my grandchildren out here with me, I’m always tempted to point out the places that were important for our harvesting. And they’ve got Haisla names,” says Amos, as he gestures to the vast waters surrounding his boat and village. “Once we have a generation that doesn’t understand what that is, what else is left? That’s why I’m pretty certain that an oil spill would take away whatever culture we have left.”
Read more from Al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/06/201263729350592.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 6, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling
By Justine Hunter / The Globe and Mail
The federal review of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline has hit another setback this week after a coastal first nation community withdrew from the process, saying the Harper government has predetermined the outcome.
The hearings were temporarily derailed when the panel was greeted by protests in the remote native community of Bella Bella on Sunday. The panel ended up holding abridged hearings in Bella Bella.
On Thursday, the Nuxalk First Nation of Bella Coola cancelled its status as an intervener, vowing to find other ways to oppose the project.
“Our intention was to be part of the process, but just seeing how they treated our neighbouring community, it was disheartening,” Nuxalk hereditary Chief Charlie Nelson said. It was last week’s announcement from the federal government that the process will be fast-tracked, however, that persuaded the band’s leadership to withdraw.
Mr. Nelson said it is clear the federal government intends to approve the project, adding that the new time limits only serve to further compromise the independence of the panel.
The proposed pipeline would cross northern B.C. to move Alberta’s oil-sands crude to reach markets in Asia and California. Much of the land is still open to aboriginal land claims.
Sparked by environmental concerns about both the pipeline and the increase in tanker traffic off the coast, strong opposition to the project has come particularly from first nations communities in B.C. that are now threatening legal action if the project wins federal regulatory approval.
Although there are still 46 first nations with intervenor standing, the cancellation will provide further ammunition for legal action against the project, said Ed John, grand chief of the First Nations Summit.
“It lays the groundwork for a court challenge, when the government does not consult with first nations,” he said.
Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has said Ottawa will fulfill its constitutional duty to consult with first nations affected by the pipeline but, Mr. John said, the review does not meet that obligation. “The panel cannot discharge the government’s responsibility,” he said.
Mr. Oliver also said the project will be decided based on the national interest, a point that rankled Mr. John. “If that energy strategy built on the tar sands and the pipeline and that tanker traffic is in the national interest, surely to God the resolution of the land question in B.C. should be in the national interest as well,” he said.
Mr. John met with Mr. Oliver in January and urged him to tour the pipeline route and meet with people who live in those northern communities.
“Rather than making the decision from their lofty perch in Ottawa,” he said in an interview, “they ought to come out and look for themselves – they need to make an informed decision.”
The mayor of Smithers, Taylor Bachrach, said he would love to have the opportunity to play host to the key federal ministers who will be making the final decision. “We’ll take them out Steelhead fishing, maybe help them understand why people up in our neck of the woods are so concerned about the project,” he said.
Mr. Bachrach is registered to make a submission to the hearing when it moves to Smithers later this month. He is speaking not as mayor, however, but as a resident. “I want to tell them that the natural resource industries are important to this part of the world but it’s not oil country. There are some things we are not willing to sacrifice.”
The joint panel of the National Energy Board and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency is expected to wrap up hearings in the spring of 2013, but that timeline is now in doubt after Ottawa promised to streamline the major project review process. It will be retroactive but it is not yet clear how it will be applied to these hearings.
From The Globe and Mail:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 15, 2012 | ACTION, Indigenous Autonomy, Lobbying, Mining & Drilling
By Shawn McCarthy / The Globe and Mail
Ottawa is headed for a legal showdown with British Columbia first nations if it insists on proceeding with the Northern Gateway pipeline, the leader of the Yinka Dene Alliance warns.
Chief Jackie Thomas, of the Saik’uz First Nation, was part of a delegation in Ottawa Tuesday meeting with opposition members of Parliament to build support for their anti-pipeline stand. She said her group will pursue a legal challenge if Ottawa approves the pipeline over their objections.
Along with other first-nation communities, the Dene alliance has taken a firm stand against Enbridge Inc.’s plan to build a crude oil pipeline across their land to transport oil-sands bitumen to the B.C. coast for export to Asia.
“We will defend our rights, no matter what bully tactics the federal government throws at us,” she said. “Our decision has been made: Enbridge will never be allowed in our lands.”
Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has lashed out at opponents to the Gateway pipeline, saying they are undermining the country’s national interest and oppose all resource development.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made it a key priority of his government to diversify oil and natural gas exports beyond the traditional U.S. market to target growing Asian markets.
Ms. Thomas said the Saik’uz community is not anti-development. It is working with other mining, forestry and energy companies on projects. It is partnering with Apache Corp., a U.S. oil company, on a pipeline to feed a liquefied natural gas plant in Kitimat, which would also be aimed at exporting energy to Asia.
But the community feels an oil pipeline would be far more risky, and far more disruptive to the salmon fisheries and other species.
“They can’t attempt to offset the water needs of my community, the salmon that goes in the water, and the animals and plants on the land that are in jeopardy,” Ms. Thomas said.
Read more from The Globe and Mail:
Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 20, 2012 | Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling
By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times
The prime minister is talking about being “held hostage” by U.S. interests. Radio ads blare, “Stand up to this foreign bully.” A Twitter account tells of a “secret plan to target Canada: exposed!”
Could this be Canada? The cheerful northern neighbor: supplier of troops to unpleasant U.S.-led foreign conflicts, reliable trade partner, ally in holding terrorism back from North America’s shores, not to mention the No. 1 supplier of America’s oil?
Canada’s recent push for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the nation’s West Coast, where it would be sent to China, has been marked by uncharacteristic defiance. And it first flared in the brouhaha over the bananas.
Responding to urgings from U.S. environmentalists, Ohio-based Chiquita Brands International Inc. announced in November that it would join a growing number of companies trying to avoid fuel derived from Canada’s tar sands, whose production is blamed for accelerating climate change and leveling boreal forests.
Then in January, President Obama abruptly vetoed a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada’s $7-billion project to deliver oil across the U.S. Midwest to the Texas Gulf Coast , which environmentalists have long opposed.
Mix in a touch of nationalism, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s view that Canada needs to hedge its oil bets by diversifying its export markets, and the fight was on — not only with the neighbor to the south, but also among Canadians.
“Canada is not what it used to be,” said Todd Paglia, executive director ForestEthics, an environmental group that has been calling for the international boycotts on tar sands oil. “It’s hard to believe, but it’s tilting toward becoming more of an authoritarian petro state, positioning itself as a resource colony for China.”
On the other side, a lobbying group pushing Canada as an alternative to unstable and sometimes unsavory oil producers in the Middle East ramped up a boycott of its own, this one targeting Chiquita bananas.
“Stand up to this foreign bully. Don’t buy Chiquita bananas,” said a radio spot by the group, which calls itself EthicalOil.org, complaining about what it called Chiquita’s record of supporting terrorist groups in South America. A Twitter profile was set up for @bloodbananas to expose the allegedly hypocritical campaign against Canada.
Over the last few weeks, a two-agency review panel has convened the first in a long round of hearings on Northern Gateway, pointedly described as a pipeline that won’t deliver much oil to the U.S. Instead, it will allow Canada to end its sole dependence on American buyers for its most important export by opening up markets in Asia, and allow it to attract the badly needed foreign investment to develop the sands.
“I think what’s happened around the Keystone is a wake-up call, the degree to which we are dependent or possibly held hostage to decisions in the United States, and especially decisions that may be made for very bad political reasons,” Harper, whose government has labeled pipeline opponents as foreign-funded “radicals,” told CBC television in January.
The $5.5-billion Northern Gateway project, which would carry 525,000 barrels a day of crude 731 miles from a town near Edmonton through the Rocky Mountains to a new port on the British Columbia coast, has long been in the works as a companion to Keystone XL.
But with Keystone’s recent turmoil in the U.S., Northern Gateway has risen to new prominence as a defiant Plan B for a nation increasingly aggressive in combating international hurdles, whether it’s greenhouse gas treaties, low-carbon fuel standards or U.S. presidential politics.
“There has always been very strong support by the Harper government, by the province of Alberta and by the oil industry for the Northern Gateway pipeline. But there’s no question that for all three of those entities, that urgency increased dramatically with the apparent defeat of Keystone XL,” said George Hoberg, a political scientist and professor of forestry at the University of British Columbia.
“The Harper government’s view is that, especially in the Obama years, the U.S. is becoming a less reliable partner for the oil sands.”
Officials at Enbridge Inc., which is proposing the western pipeline, say it has been in the works for nearly a decade, though its need has become more apparent as the economy in Asia has boomed while the American one, which until now has consumed 99% of Canadian oil exports, has slowed. By some estimates, Canada has the third-largest proven oil reserves in the world, with 175 billion barrels.
“It’s an attempt to respond to the reality that the geographical location of the demand is changing,” company spokesman Paul Stanway said, though he said the U.S., which imports more than 2 million barrels a day of Canadian oil, will remain the country’s biggest export market. Chinese state companies have more than $16 billion invested in Canadian energy development and are helping fund Northern Gateway to ship their oil.
The Northern Gateway pipeline faces its toughest opposition in Canada. More than 4,000 people have registered to speak at hearings over the next several months — more than for any project in the nation’s history.
Debate is especially intense here in British Columbia. Although some residents are eager for the tax revenue and thousands of local jobs the pipeline could bring, many who live along the corridor and in many First Nations territories, homelands of Canada’s aboriginals, are mobilizing to fight it.
Crucial are the streams and tributaries of the Fraser and Skeena rivers that lie in the pipeline’s path — possibly the greatest salmon rivers on Earth.
Along the coast, there are fears that piloting more than 200 oil tankers a year through the fiords of Douglas Channel and then southward could jeopardize the spectacular coastline of the famed Great Bear rain forest, full of azure waters and rocky waterfalls.
“We truly live in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. We live right at the start of the Fraser River watershed, and if we have a spill, it will devastate everything from here straight to the Pacific Ocean in Vancouver,” said Bev Playfair, until recently a municipal councilor in Fort St. James, where a hearing on the pipeline this month was preceded by dozens of townspeople marching down the main street with signs such as “Say No to Enbridge.”
The most formidable opposition comes from the First Nations of British Columbia, most of which, unlike those in other provinces, have never signed treaties with the federal government and thus have never relinquished title to their historic lands.
“We have the ability to go to court in Canada and say, ‘What you are proposing violates the Constitution of Canada.’ And that’s the trump card in all of this,” said Art Sterritt, director of the Coastal First Nations’ Great Bear Initiative.
On the Saik’uz Reserve, near the town of Vanderhoof, schoolchildren spent part of the afternoon before the pipeline hearing making signs and sitting quietly as tribal leaders explained the project and why it must be stopped.
“You’ve got to understand that it’s a huge, multibillion-dollar project that they’re trying to put through our lands. And it’s going to be a tough fight, because they have so much money. They probably have 10 lawyers to our one,” Geraldine Thomas-Flurer, the Saik’uz First Nation’s liaison on the Northern Gateway issue, told the students.
Tribal Chief Jackie Thomas has held meetings and written letters pointing out Enbridge’s record on accidents, including the spill of 810,000 gallons of oil from a pipeline in Michigan in 2010, much of which flowed 30 miles downstream into the Kalamazoo River. Enbridge has spent $700 million so far and workers are still trying to clean it up.
“It’s going to be a war,” she predicted of the fight ahead. “The only question is, who’s going to draw the first blood?”
From Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-canada-pipeline-20120220,0,4067907,full.story
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 11, 2012 | NEWS, Repression at Home
By Shawn McCarthy
After vowing to take on radical environmentalists determined to stop the Northern Gateway pipeline, the Harper government has released a new anti-terrorism strategy that targets eco-extremists as threats.
With his announcement this week, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has increased the concern among environmentalists that Ottawa regards them as implacable adversaries to be monitored and battled, rather than well-meaning advocates to be consulted.
“This is just one more step in their attempt to marginalize the environmental movement and to quiet its voice,” John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada, said Friday. “It’s an indirect suggestion that somehow environmentalism is attached to terrorism and that’s just wrong.”
On Thursday, Mr. Toews released a statement on the government’s strategy, which will target not only known terrorist groups but “vulnerable individuals” who could be drawn into politically inspired violence.
The minister said that, in addition to foreign threats, the government would be vigilant against domestic extremism that is “based on grievances – real or perceived – revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism.”
New Democratic Party MP Megan Leslie said the new strategy should be seen in the context of the government’s effort to demonize the environmental movement and aboriginal groups that are opposed to the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.
The project, which would carry oil-sands bitumen to the B.C. coast for export to Asian markets, is a top priority for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has extolled Canada’s ability to supply oil to China during his visit to the rapidly growing Asian country this week.
Mr. Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver have warned against foreign-funded, radical environmentalists who are determined to derail the Gateway pipeline, while a document from the Department of Foreign Affairs listed allies of the government’s oil-sands development plans and “adversaries” that included environmental and aboriginal groups.
Ms. Leslie said the anti-terrorism strategy carries the adversarial relationship between the government and the environmental groups to the extreme.
“I find it offensive that there is a list that puts people trying to protect the environment on the same list as white supremacists,” Ms. Leslie said. She said Ottawa has created a chill among groups that worry they are being infiltrated and subjected to surveillance, as police did with protest groups prior to the G20 meeting in Toronto in 2010.
However a spokesman for Mr. Toews said those fears are baseless, that the government is not targeting legitimate dissent.
“Terrorist action occurs when an extremist ideological group plans to carry out a violent attack that reasonably can be expected to kill people or destroy property,” Michael Patton, Mr. Toews’s director of communication, said in an e-mail Friday.
“We have seen individuals or groups of differing ideologies or points of view both internationally and domestically who have planned and carried out violent attacks to bring attention to their causes.”
There have been fringe groups that advocated violence to stop resource development, and a few years ago, there was a spate of pipelines bombings in northern Alberta that caused damage but no injuries.
At the same time, native leaders have warned Ottawa that their younger generation is becoming increasingly impatient with the poverty of first nations, and may turn to violence if resource projects are approved without their agreement and participation.
From The Globe and Mail
Photo by Rene Baker on Unsplash
