First Nations chief tracks down cabinet ministers to protest Site C dam

If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new cabinet ministers needed any reminder of how difficult their jobs are going to be when it comes to rebuilding trust with First Nations, they got it last week.

Working the crowd, when the Liberal caucus gathered for its annual Christmas party, was Chief Roland Willson, a big man with a powerful voice and an intractable problem he wasn’t going to let anyone ignore.

Mr. Willson, chief of the West Moberly First Nations, went to Ottawa hoping for sit-down meetings with several ministers. When he couldn’t get them, he walked into the Christmas party with briefing papers and a short, hard pitch about why the Site C dam has to be stopped.

“Oh, I tracked them down. I presented them with our documentation,” said Mr. Willson.

“I got in front of [Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn] Bennett. She’s been given the mandate to meet First Nations,” he said. “I got in front of Minister [Hunter] Tootoo, the Minister of Fisheries. A couple of the big permits that have to be issued to BC Hydro come out of his ministry … and I got in front of Justice Minister [Jody] Wilson-Raybould … She told us they would look at this. They are supposed to review all their legal issues and this is one of the biggest.”

Mr. Willson also met James Carr, the Minister of Natural Resources, who invited him to his office.

“The mere fact we got to sit down with Minister Carr was a big deal with everything that’s going on in Ottawa,” he said. “We had an hour-long meeting. That’s an hour longer than we ever got with the Harper government on this issue.”

Mr. Willson asked the federal government to hit pause on BC Hydro’s $9-billion Site C hydro project on the Peace River, to allow time for a review of the assessment process and to look for alternative energy sources. With site preparation work already under way on the river, it might seem his trip to Ottawa came too late.