The B.C. government’s approval last week of the Kinder Morgan proposal to twin the Trans Mountain oil pipeline doesn’t mean the pipeline will be built – but it is a significant step forward.
In his Jan. 17, 2017 BC Views online column, “Fake news is all around us,” Tom Fletcher accused our organization and others of spreading “fake news”. We have a number of questions for Mr. Fletcher.
Coldwater Indian Band seeks leave to judicially review federal approval
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 17, 2017
Coldwater is challenging the Trudeau Government’s November 29, 2016 approval of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project in Federal Court.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — As the premier of British Columbia, Christy Clark is on the public payroll, pulling down a salary of 195,000 Canadian dollars in taxpayer money. But if that were not enough, she also gets an annual stipend of up to 50,000 Canadian dollars — nearly $40,000 — from her party, financed by political contributions.
Some critics called it bribery to get local politicians to back the pipeline.
Or hush money to at least not oppose Kinder Morgan while its Trans Mountain expansion project was in hearings before the National Energy Board.
A total of 18 community benefit agreements worth $8.5 million were reached by the pipeline firm in B.C. and Alberta along 95 per cent of the corridor over the past three years.
OTTAWA — The proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion once resembled a political morass, something that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and B.C. Premier Christy Clark would wade into at their peril.
But both politicians have managed to put pipeline opponents on the defensive as both sides head into a three-front battle in 2017 over the $6.8-billion project.
After years of dramatic opposition by B.C. residents, the controversial pipeline expansion project of a Texas-based energy company, Kinder Morgan, is one step closer to breaking ground in Canada.
On Wednesday, the government of B.C. Premier Christy Clark issued an environmental assessment certificate for the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which aims to triple the capacity of an existing system that already ships more than 300,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta's oilsands to the West Coast.
The election is sufficiently near to develop a few axioms to carry us through the sea of a largely imponderable mass of horse buns that we’ll have to face. I suggest that the following are good starts to our defence mechanisms as our eyes and ears become mercilessly assaulted by heaps of political bullshit, endemic to all campaigns, this one having a master, or should I say mistress, of it?
Despite a wealth of smarts and determination, it’s going to be difficult for Indigenous people to stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
Ever since the 2004 Haida Nation decision, the duty to consult and accommodate has proven a powerful tool in the struggle for greater respect for Aboriginal rights and title. Courts have handed Indigenous Peoples numerous significant victories—they have also created a blueprint for overriding Indigenous Peoples’ inherent and constitutional rights.
