On Thursday, June 16t h, a tanker accident in the Upper Kennedy Lake area released approximately 3,000 litres of aviation fuel resulting in the shutdown of Highway 4 for approximately 24 hours. The spill has impacted the immediate site as well as the adjacent lake. Kennedy Lake is an important fish bearing site which is of critical importance to the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations.
Simogyet Malii is chief negotiator for the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs
There has been a lot of talk in Canada lately about cultural appropriation of Indigenous stories and imagery. This is a conversation that actually goes back to the origins of first contact between settlers and this land’s first peoples, and it is a conversation without end. The latest dust-up just happens to be a high point, or a low one depending on your point of view.
Dimitri L.: This is Dimitri Lascaris for The Real News in Vancouver, British Columbia. I'm here today with Eugene Kung, a staff lawyer with the West Coast Environmental Law Group. Eugene specializes in aboriginal and natural resources law. Thanks very much for joining us today.
Eugene Kung: Thank you for having me.
Dimitri L.: Eugene, why don't you just start by telling us a little bit about West Coast Environmental Law. What does the organization do? What is the nature of the practice?
Crude exports via supertanker from the Port of Vancouver fell 40 per cent between 2014 and 2016, a decline that has led critics of the $7.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to challenge the need for the project.
In its report last year recommending approval of the Kinder Morgan project, the National Energy Board cited the company’s figures when it said the terminal typically loads five crude tankers a month. It forecast that, with the proposed pipeline expansion, that number could climb to 34 a month depending on demand from shippers.
Roland Willson is a practical man. As chief of the West Moberly First Nation in northeastern B.C., he’s got to be.
“The natural gas industry is the main source of employment,” Willson said over coffee in Victoria this week, before heading into meetings with the B.C. NDP and B.C. Green parties. “It’s a natural resource economy up there.”
FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — Peace Valley residents Ken and Arlene Boon, who were cc’ed on Premier Christy Clark’s letter to NDP leader John Horgan earlier this week, have written back to the Premier saying they are confused about some of the points in her letter.
A Federal Court case has cast the spotlight on a hereditary tribal leader’s battle against a liquefied natural gas project in northern British Columbia.
Donnie Wesley argues that he has the rightful claim to be recognized as hereditary head chief of the Gitwilgyoots tribe – one of nine allied tribes of the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation.
VICTORIA — When B.C. Hydro expropriated some of the final parcels of land needed for the Site C project late last year, it also granted brief respite to one of the high-profile opponents of the project, Ken Boon and his wife Arlene.
The Boon property on the north bank of the Peace River straddles the right-of-way for the intended relocation of Highway 29, which will eventually be submerged by the waters rising behind the giant hydroelectric dam.
