Don't approve Kinder Morgan pipeline, B.C. First Nation tells Trudeau

Tsleil-Waututh Nation Chief Maureen Thomas and community members hold a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, Nov. 28, 2016, to deliver an urgent message to the Prime Minister regarding a decision on Kinder Morgan permit. SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA — Members of a B.C. First Nation on the front lines of Canada’s pipeline conflict made an 11th-hour bid Monday to convince the Trudeau government to take their side in a clash over Canada’s energy future.

The appeal was delivered by the Tsleil-Waututh Nation of North Vancouver, who describe themselves as the “People of the Inlet.”

It came as Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr told reporters that the federal government, under pressure from Alberta to help its struggling oil industry expand by approving major pipeline applications, is about to make public its position “very, very soon.”

Ministers are expected to consider at Tuesday’s weekly cabinet meeting Kinder Morgan’s $6.8-billion proposal to triple the capacity of its Edmonton-to-Burnaby pipeline, which ends at the Westridge Terminal on the shores of Burrard Inlet, to 895,000 barrels a day.

And the government has already made its decision on the fate of the proposed $7.9-billion Enbridge pipeline to Kitimat — but is waiting until this week to make that verdict public.

There has been widespread speculation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet will as early as Tuesday conditionally approve Kinder Morgan’s project — but take measures to block Enbridge’s mega-project.

Carr’s “very, very soon” comment to reporters was delivered shortly before the latest hint was sent out to journalists suggesting that Ottawa is planning to approve at least one pipeline.

The Calgary Chamber of Commerce dispatched a communique revealing that Carr’s office had booked a luncheon speech for Wednesday to provide “an update on market access for Canada’s energy products in a carbon-constrained world.”

Carr heaped praise during his media scrum on representatives from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation of North Van, which met with him before holding a news conference to argue against the Kinder Morgan project.

“I learned from them today what I have learned from them from the moment we first began this continuing conversation, and that is that they have a generational responsibility for those who came before and those who come after to leave the planet a better place, to leave their own backyard a healthier place than they inherited,” Carr said. “And I agree with those values.”

But he also said it’s “an objective of the Government of Canada to expand its export markets.”

An emotional spokesman for the Tsleil-Waututh, Rueben George, said his community isn’t going to back down if Ottawa gives Kinder Morgan a thumbs-up.

“We’ll do what it takes legally to stop it. We’ll do what it takes to stop it, period,” he told reporters after a meeting with Carr. “We’re taking a stand, that’s why we say no.”

The Tsleil-Waututh said Ottawa’s recently completed panel review provides ample reasons to apply the brakes.

That report, from a three-person panel headed by former Tsawwassen chief Kim Baird, noted in its Nov. 1 submission that circumstances have changed since the company submitted its application in 2013 to the National Energy Board, during a time when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives were in power.

One of them was Trudeau’s own 2015 election campaign declaration that “governments might grant permits, but only communities grant permission,” the panel noted.

Tsleil-Waututh Chief Maureen Thomas argued that approval would also violate Trudeau’s campaign vow to conduct relations on a nation-to-nation basis.

She said approval of the project, which would increase tanker traffic into the inlet from five to 34 a month, would “risk jeopardizing and irreparably harming” that relationship with her people — “possibly” for generations.

“The project, if approved, would constitute a serious, unjustified infringement of our aboriginal title and rights in Eastern Burrard Inlet for generations to come,” she said in a letter to Carr. “It would expose our people and our territory to serious risks associated with oil spills and other concerns related to marine shipping, all of which we have communicated to your representatives and substantiated with scientific studies.”

Current evidence before the government makes it certain that “there is no clear, compelling or substantial public-interest objective associated with the project that can be relied on to justify an infringement of the magnitude being proposed.”

The letter calls on the federal government to either dismiss Kinder Morgan’s application due to the risk of “significant adverse environmental effects” or extend the deadline to allow Ottawa to accommodate the Tsleil-Waututh concerns.

The B.C. First Nation at the heart of the proposed $6.8 billion Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion made a last-ditch appeal to the Trudeau government Monday to either block or delay project approval. ARLEN REDEKOP /PNG FILES

Climate change activists surrounded the Kinder Morgan marine terminal on land and water in Burnaby, BC. May 14, 2016. Climate change activists surrounded the Kinder Morgan marine terminal on land and water in Burnaby. (Arlen Redekop / PNG photo) (story by reporter) [PNG Merlin Archive] ARLEN REDEKOP / PNG