First Nations coalition calls for rejection of Trudeau tanker ban, plans to file UN complaint

The coalition has sketched out plans to build a roughly $18-billion oil pipeline from northern Alberta to around Prince Rupert, B.C.

GlobeandMail.com
December 12, 2018
Jesse Snyder

A coalition of First Nations groups is imploring Ottawa to rein in an oil tanker ban on the northern B.C. coast, and plans to level a United Nations complaint against the government to protest the legislation.

The plea is a last-ditch effort to reverse Bill C-48 as it nears passage through the Senate. The National Chiefs Coalition met with a number of senators Tuesday morning in Ottawa to oppose the moratorium.

Calvin Helin, CEO of Eagle Spirit Energy Holding, heads the coalition, which has sketched out plans to build a roughly $18-billion oil pipeline from northern Alberta to around Prince Rupert, B.C.

Helin, a Lax Kw’alaams Band member, has long pitched the idea as Canada’s sole First Nations-led oil pipeline. Helin said C-48 is a matter of “enormous concern” for the roughly 200 First Nations communities represented by the coalition, and said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tanker ban explicitly targets the project, effectively stripping Indigenous people of their economic self-determination.

“Is this what reconciliation is supposed to represent in Canada?” he said.

His comments come amid intense angst in Alberta, which has failed for many years to build the necessary pipelines to carry away steadily increasing oilsands production.

The National Chiefs Coalition said on Tuesday it would file a complaint in “coming days” under the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) against the federal government.

The chiefs said the ban unfairly restricts oil exports by the First Nations group, while allowing multinational corporations to ship their products from the southern portion of the B.C. coast.

“All we’re trying to do is take advantage of the resources available to us,” said former chief Wallace Fox, chairman of the Indian Resource Council, a part of the coalition.

Eagle Spirit Pipeline President Calvin Helin speaks surrounded by members of the Indian Resource Council, National Coalition of Chiefs, and Canada’s Four Craft Pipeline unions during a news conference in Ottawa, Tuesday December 11, 2018.

The Eagle Spirit pipeline appears to present a conundrum on Indigenous rights. A handful of First Nations communities -- including the Yinka Dene Alliance, which opposed other pipeline projects in B.C. -- have opposed the project in the past due to environmental worries. Meanwhile, a host of Indigenous communities along the pipeline route support Eagle Spirit, saying it will give them more financial independence.

Helin said he is close to a consensus among First Nations on Eagle Spirit. He said much of the First Nations opposition to the pipeline comes from Indigenous people, backed by activist organizations, who claim to speak for whole communities but do not.

“They’re just puppets and props for American environmental groups,” he said.

The pipeline project, first floated in 2013, was proposed as an alternative to the other two major oil conduits planned to reach the B.C. coast -- Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain, now owned by the federal government.

Eagle Spirit had plans to ship a lighter, upgraded bitumen than the Northern Gateway project, Helin said Tuesday. He also claimed the project would use low-emissions production techniques that use less freshwater.

“We can produce oil in the oilpatch with a smaller carbon footprint than almost any producer on the planet,” he said.

A tanker is anchored in Burrard Inlet just outside of Burnaby, B.C., on Friday, Nov. 25, 2016.

Eagle Spirit was widely viewed by industry as unlikely to move ahead even before the tanker moratorium, due to its high capital costs and First Nations opposition. The group has not yet announced firm private sector investors.

The tanker ban was first announced in 2016, at the same time Trudeau axed Northern Gateway and approved Trans Mountain. It bars any shipment of oil products off the northern B.C. coast, but does not apply to liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Many B.C. residents have expressed concerns over building new oil pipelines in the north of the province, saying a single spill could permanently spoil the region’s coast or waterways.

Alberta has supported the Eagle Spirit pipeline, and has called on Ottawa to revoke Bill C-48.

In a November 2017 letter to Transport Minister Marc Garneau, the Alberta energy minister said the bill “significantly jeopardizes our efforts to diversify our economy, putting thousands of jobs and billions of dollars at risk.”

The province said it was “concerning” that condensates will now be included under the moratorium, a decision that is expected to apply to the sort of product that would be shipped by Eagle Spirit.

The National Chiefs Coalition on Tuesday called on the senators to potentially propose an amendment to the moratorium that would allow oil or condensate shipments through a narrow channel in the northernmost reaches of the B.C. coast.

Bill C-48 is in second reading in the Senate.