Trudeau’s Canadian Honeymoon Is About to End

25/09/16
Author: 
Josh Wingrove and Natalie Obiko Pearson
The remote indigenous village of Port Simpson (Lax Kw'alaams) in British Columbia, Canada.

Imminent decisions on giant energy projects are sure to anger some parts of the electorate that swept him to power.

September 25, 2016
Photographs by Ben Nelms/Bloomberg [See original article for photos]

Along Canada’s evergreen-draped west coast, the fate of a multi-billion-dollar energy project and a nation’s reconciliation with its dark, colonial past hang in the balance.

Beating rawhide drums and singing hymns, occupiers of Lelu Island—where Malaysia’s state oil company plans a $28 billion liquefied natural gas project—assert indigenous claims to the area where trees bear the markings of their forefathers and waters run rich with crimson salmon they fear the project will obliterate.

“The blood of my ancestors is on my hands if I don’t defend this land,” says Donald Wesley, 59, a hereditary chief of the Gitwilgyoots tribe which has inhabited the area for more than 6,000 years.

[photo:Anti-pipeline signs in the Haida Nation village of Old Massett in British Columbia.

Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg]

That claim is about to test Justin Trudeau, the country’s telegenic 44-year-old prime minister, who swept to power a year ago vowing to be many things to many people—to tackle climate change, revive the economy, and reset Canada’s fraught relationship with its indigenous communities. Those pledges are set for collision in British Columbia—home to more First Nations communities than any other province and the crucible where a resource economy seeks to reinvent itself.

Trudeau has promised to decide on the LNG project on Lelu Island by Oct. 2. He has big spending plans to spur growth in a commodities downturn, and B.C., the birthplace of Greenpeace, is where most energy projects able to support that growth are located. Indigenous groups, essential to public support, are divided, with some seeking to preserve their habitat and traditions, and others arguing that the projects offer a path out of poverty, addiction and suicide.

Facing five major energy initiatives in B.C., Trudeau will choose which constituency to abandon. He’s allowed a hydroelectric dam to proceed; pending are decisions on Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway crude pipeline, Petroliam Nasional Bhd.’s LNG project on Lelu Island, a pipeline expansion by Kinder Morgan Inc., as well as a ban on crude oil tankers. He’s said to want at least one pipeline, and favor Kinder Morgan.

Trudeau says regularly it’s a prime minister’s job to get the country’s resources to market, and a pipeline approval would demonstrate Canada can get major projects completed as warnings mount that the complex web of regulatory rules is spurring a flight of capital.

Alberta’s oil sands, the world’s third-largest proven oil reserve, are landlocked. It leaves the country excluded from Asian markets and selling nearly all its crude to the U.S. at a discount. Environmental opposition has mired pipeline proposals in years-long delays.

The closest path to the ocean from Alberta is west, through B.C. and its fractured indigenous communities. The port of Prince Rupert, B.C.—North America’s closest port to Asia capable of handling bulk commodities—sits at the epicenter of the contentious energy projects.

“Those who oppose these projects don’t understand the potential that’s in front of them right now,” says Ellis Ross, the elected chief councilor of the Haisla First Nation, which has supported LNG projects.

[photo:Ellis Ross, chief councilor of the Haisla Nation, in Kitimat Village.

Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg]

Yet the timing couldn’t be worse. While the province has received more than 20 LNG proposals in recent years, not a single one has taken off amid regulatory delays and a global glut. In July, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and its partners delayed a final investment decision on their C$40 billion ($30.3 billion) LNG Canada project. Chevron Corp.-led Kitimat LNG has slowed spending on another project nearby.

There are 617 First Nation communities as well as Metis and Inuit populations for a total of 1.4 million indigenous people in Canada. Trudeau has committed to a“nation-to-nation” relationship, which is a pledge to treat the communities as quasi-states.

Some live on land governed by treaties, others on territories never ceded to the Canadian government. The communities have a range of legal rights that courts have spent years sorting through, in particular around energy projects. B.C. is especially fraught, with 49 ongoing treaty disputes. One signal of the uncertainty is TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Energy East pipeline from Alberta to the Atlantic Coast, which seeks to cross five other provinces and 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) rather than navigate roughly 1,200 kilometers through B.C.’s legal minefields.

[photo:Haida artist Jim Hart works on carving a totem pole in Old Massett in the Haida Gwaii archipelago.

Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg]

Indigenous communities generally share grim realities—a remote location, acute housing shortages, soaring unemployment, high food costs, high addiction rates, poor health services and poor schools. Youth suicide rates are more than five timesthe national average. A 2014 United Nations report said the situation had reachedcrisis proportions.

The issue is close to Trudeau’s heart. His family was ceremonially adopted by the Haida Nation during a 1976 visit to the fabled island community—Trudeau was a child, his father was prime minister—that’s now become ground zero for the tanker ban. The late Pierre Trudeau constitutionally enshrined indigenous rights. The prime minister, who has a Haida raven tattooed on his left shoulder, wrote to each member of his cabinet that “no relationship is more important to me and to Canada than the one with indigenous peoples.”

He appointed the country’s first indigenous minister of justice and attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, a B.C. lawyer and former First Nations regional chief. She previously campaigned against oil sands projects. She’s now silent on the matter—she declined multiple requests for a statement or interview about her position on the Enbridge and Kinder Morgan pipelines. Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said the government’s revised environmental rules boosted indigenous consultation. “Clearly this is a challenging area, but we are serious in our commitment,” she said.

There is a broader political issue. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and others have threatened legal action. The city’s economy is based on a green reputation, he argues. The number of Trudeau lawmakers from the Vancouver region exceeds the margin by which he holds a parliamentary majority.

[Photo: Peter Lantin, president of the Council of the Haida Nation, in Old Massett.

Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg]

The indigenous element looms largest, though, and Trudeau confronts fractured communities whose hereditary chiefs and recently elected leaders often spar over what’s best for their futures and who ultimately has authority. Those schisms arise from policies over decades that Trudeau has pledged to fix.

“People like to simplify it as development versus no development or economy versus no economy,” said Peter Lantin, the elected president of Council of the Haida Nation. “We’re trying to sort these things out as a nation.”

Last month, the Haida stripped two hereditary chiefs of their titles for supporting an oil pipeline project—a move with no precedent in the oral history of a group with 13,000-year roots on the island, said Darin Swanson, hereditary chief of the Yagu Laanas clan, who had overseen the 10-hour ceremony.

Dressed in a raven’s tail blanket, sea otter pelts and a feathered headdress, Swanson had intoned the responsibilities etched into a copper shield of a community chief as he compared energy companies’ financial incentives to European colonialists who had brought diseases that decimated native communities.

The prospect of cash payouts from the projects can splinter communities where land is owned communally and fish is still a currency for bartering. Murray Smith, a Gitwilgyoots tribal leader, has never sung the national anthem. He was almost inspired to when he voted for Trudeau, wooed by his environmental pledges. “This is the test. If he decides against LNG, I’ll sing ’O Canada,’” he said.

[photo:A freighter ship moored in the port of Prince Rupert.

Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg]

It leaves Trudeau jammed between growing impatience, high expectations and sluggish economic growth. He’s also overhauling environmental review rules and pushing for a carbon price, all while the clock is ticking—former Alberta Premier Jim Prentice, who spent much of his career on indigenous and energy issues, warnscapital is simply leaving Canada’s energy sector and “that really should alarm us.”

Meanwhile, Trudeau’s C$8.4 billion in new indigenous spending announced this year is rolling out slowly, frustrating Perry Bellegarde, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations and Canada’s de facto top-ranking indigenous political leader. Disillusionment is brewing among indigenous Canadians, Bellegarde says.

“It’s going into a year now of his mandate, and we want to see things on the ground,” he said.

[Top photo: The remote indigenous village of Port Simpson (Lax Kw'alaams) in British Columbia, Canada.]