Oil and Gas Sector-Politics and Image

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There have been no major demonstrations this week in solidarity with the First Nations people along the Coastal GasLink route who are waiting for change to come to their communities.

There have been no blockades disrupting VIA Rail trains; nothing in midtown Toronto; no one outside the B.C. Legislature; no disruptions on the Reconciliation Bridge in Calgary; no stopping of traffic in downtown Ottawa; and no protests along busy Vancouver intersections.

The demonstrations you’re thinking of were in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, who oppose the $6-billion, 670-kilometre pipeline across northern B.C. It’s their slogans that have been broadly adopted, their opinions that are being mirrored in protest and their case that has been taken up so fervently by supporters all across Canada.

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https://nationalpost.com/

Dialogue is no prescription for those who refuse to listen because they believe themselves to be custodians of the only truth

It is times like this when Lucien Bouchard’s claim that “Canada is not a real country” has an eerie ring of truth. Protesters of many stripes have the upper hand in pockets of the country. The rule of law has been parked in the cupboard.

Rail lines are blockaded and services suspended. A provincial legislature was shuttered. The country’s economy is crippled. The national interest has no defender. The preferred solution is not a return to order and apprehension of the offenders.

Rather it is “dialogue” — as remote and amorphous a prescription as the lowest form of sophistry; one that often can be a euphemism for vacillation and the evasion of responsibility.

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https://nationalpost.com/

While so-called ‘settlers’ protest the pipeline, Indigenous leaders want the project that will bring economic prosperity

The uber-woke protesters who blockaded a CN rail line last weekend would be horrified at being accused of cultural colonialism. But they are as guilty of telling Indigenous Canadians how to live their lives as any Father of Confederation.

The reason 50 of them snuck into the MacMillan Yard north of Toronto and set up camp was to protest the “oppression” of the Wet’suwet’en 4,000 kilometres away in British Columbia — an Indigenous nation whose traditional land they say was “invaded” by the RCMP in an act of colonialist aggression.

Natali Montilla, 27, explained the thinking that shutdown CN’s west-bound line for seven hours on Saturday. She referred to herself as a settler on Canadian land, but one with Indigenous roots in Venezuela.

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https://nationalpost.com/

The social-justice extremism that has been largely confined to campus life and obscure pubs has metastasized to the world of normal human beings

In late 2019, Ontario’s public broadcaster, TVO, produced a widely circulated video segment in which Indigenous public figures delivered short monologues responding to the controversial claim that Canada was perpetuating an ongoing “genocide” against Indigenous women.

The TVO commentators flatly told viewers that this ongoing genocide is a “fact,” and that any argument to the contrary amounts to “denial.” Moreover, we were told that anyone engaging in such denial is effectively abetting a crime against humanity, because “denial is a tool of genocide.”

If you find yourself astounded by the current situation in Canada, whereby protesters have been allowed to shut down a rail network that remains a backbone of passenger travel and industrial transport (and whose coast-to-coast completion in 1885 became a symbol of national unity), it’s useful to revisit the accumulation of symbolic gestures that have steadily destroyed the moral authority of our governments to push back at any assertion of Indigenous rights and grievances.

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https://nationalpost.com/

Somebody in Ottawa should be pointing out that along with the right to protest there are certain responsibilities to allow other people to go about their business

Canada is slowly turning from democracy to mobocracy, as the rule of law is tested from coast to coast.

From blocked intersections in downtown Toronto, to journalists and legislators being barred entry to the B.C. legislature; from an obstructed CN line affecting rail traffic out of the port of Prince Rupert, to the barricades impeding Via Rail’s service between Toronto and Montreal, Canada is slowly being choked into submission.

The protests are in solidarity with the opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline in northern B.C. by hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. But a considerable number of “outsiders” are using the dispute as an excuse for mischief.

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https://business.financialpost.com/

The illegal road and rail blockades perpetrated by Indigenous radicals across the country are not about pipelines or fossil fuels. It’s an existential threat to Canada and its sovereignty — and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is to blame.

Five years of pandering and subsidizing 632 First Nations leaders has led to this catastrophe, which is being spearheaded by five unelected hereditary chiefs in British Columbia who claim their nation — the Wet’suwet’en — is exempt from Canadian laws and regulations.

They claim sovereignty over a 22,000-square-kilometre swath of land, an area the size of Israel, and have successfully invoked nationwide solidarity protests that have crippled portions of the country’s rail system.

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https://vancouversun.com/

Ellis Ross is the B.C. Liberal MLA for Skeena and was chief councillor for the Haisla First Nation from 2013 to 2017.

The heated debate over who holds authority over the territory of First Nations — be it hereditary chiefs or elected band leaders — may serve the interests of those seeking to disrupt construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline, but it does absolutely nothing for the well-being of an average Aboriginal living on reserve.

As an elected councillor for the Haisla First Nation, and later chief councillor, I grew up experiencing dismal employment prospects, children being raised in poverty, tragic suicides, and horrific rates of Aboriginal youth ending up in the prison system.

We’ve always had to cope with outsiders and so-called experts telling us who best represents First Nations, or what we should do within our own territory. Yet none of these people have ever lived on reserve or spent any significant time with the people who actually live there.

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https://nationalpost.com/

It is possible, it appears, to build an oil pipeline in Canada.

Though not a 100 per cent, absolute dead certainty — Lord knows what schemes opponents may still have hidden away — this would appear to be the outcome of two recent court cases, one of which ruled that British Columbia can’t stop a pipeline from Alberta just because it makes some of them feel good, the second that Indigenous Canadians do not have an absolute veto over legislation affecting them, despite whatever impression the prime minister may have given, and no matter what the United Nations may think of the situation.

It is a big moment in Canadian history. Other countries have civil wars, coups d’etat, plagues of locusts and demented presidents. In Canada we devote vast resources to arguing over whether one pipelinethat goes to an ocean port can be joined by another pipeline going to the ocean port. Of all First World countries, Canada must have the most spare time to fight over First World problems.

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https://www.thestar.com/

OTTAWA—Like most everyone with a stake in the quagmire of Canadian climate politics, Colleen Thorpe does not know if the Liberal government will approve the Teck Frontier oilsands project. But she sure is worried it will.

The executive director of Équiterre was among a host of Quebec environmentalists who met Monday with key cabinet ministers to air their thoughts about the massive — and politically contentious — proposed development in northeastern Alberta. Naturally, Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson was there.

But so was Steven Guilbeault, the rookie politician installed as heritage minister after he was elected in Montreal last fall. In his prior life, Guilbeault was one of Quebec’s most prominent green activists, a vocal campaigner in the fight against climate change, who co-founded Thorpe’s organization and worked there until less than two years ago.

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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

In August, 2018, after the Federal Court of Appeal quashed Ottawa’s approval of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion, there was a national hue and cry over what seemed like constant setbacks for industrial projects. Some people were saying it had become impossible to get anything built in this country.

That view turns out to have been exaggerated. The 2018 ruling was not a sweeping condemnation of Trans Mountain. Instead, the court largely signed off on the federal government’s approval of the project, except for two specific failings: a failure to weigh the negative impact of oil tankers on marine life, and inadequate Indigenous consultations.

The court’s 2018 decision was, essentially, a paint-by-numbers guide to finishing those two steps, doing so in a reasonable time, and getting the project going.

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/

The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by Indigenous groups challenging the federal government’s approval of the Trans Mountain expansion project — clearing yet another major legal hurdle for the long-delayed $7.4 billion project, which will carry nearly a million barrels of Alberta oil per day to the B.C. coast.

In a unanimous 3-0 decision, the court ruled that Ottawa carried out “reasonable” and “meaningful” consultations with Indigenous peoples affected by the project’s construction before approving the pipeline for a second time.

“This was anything but rubber-stamping exercise. The end result was not a ratification of the earlier approval, but an approval with amended conditions flowing directly from renewed consultation,” the court said. “All very much consistent with the concepts of reconciliation and the honour of the Crown.”

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