Export Development Canada (EDC) is a little-known federal Crown corporation with a track record of using public finance to back projects that violate Indigenous rights and push past our global carbon budgets.
When EDC acted as a key financier to allow for the government’s purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018, I thought I had seen the worst.
As the western sun sank into the Pacific, hundreds of voices echoed around the transit station at Commercial Drive and Broadway in Vancouver.
Hundreds of people again blocked a key intersection in this West Coast city, snarling rush-hour traffic and closing out the 13th straight day of nationwide solidarity actions in support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and their fight against the Coastal GasLink pipeline through their traditional territory.
Will it continue to bulldoze Indigenous rights in the name of resource exploitation and jobs and profits for the few, or it will renounce its colonialist past and strike out on the path of respect, collaboration and partnership with Indigenous people?
A NEGOTIATED SETTLEMENT TO THE SITUATION ON WET’SUWET’EN TERRITORY
The following statement was adopted at the February 18, 2020, regular meeting.
The Vancouver and District Labour Council is alarmed by the ongoing conflict taking place on the Wet’suwet’en territory. While the recent discussions between the Provincial Government and the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs was a hopeful development, it unfortunately did not lead to a resolve of the dispute.
The Wet’suwet’en Nation is opposed to a fracked gas pipeline crossing their territory in British Columbia without their free, prior and informed consent.
To assert their sovereignty over their territory and stop surveying and construction activities related to the pipeline, the Unist’ot’en and Gidimt’en clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation established two checkpoints on key roadways on their lands.
