It was the most exciting thing to happen in the foyer of the House of Commons, since the late Reg Alcock nearly provoked fisticuffs when he called Peter MacKay “a scumbag.”A group of native chiefs protesting new government legislation jostled with security guards outside the chamber of the House Tuesday, as they tried to push their way inside. It was over in an instant, without so much as a torn hangnail.
But it served notice that not only are First Nation leaders frustrated, they know they are riding a wave of native empowerment that has come nowhere close to cresting.
The Assembly of First Nations met Tuesday in Gatineau to catalogue the usual litany of how they’ve never had it so bad. Yet on the ground, natives are the resource rulers – wielding a veto over which projects will succeed or fail.
Bill Gallagher, a lawyer and author who has written a book called Resource Rulers: Fortune and Folly on Canada’s Road to Resources, says natives have an almost unbroken series of 171 court case victories, when it comes to resource cases.
“It is a very one sided legal contest,” he told the CBC.
Canada’s economic future is pegged to the successful completion of many of these resource projects, so we are in the somewhat ironic situation where the country’s fate is in the hands of its most disadvantaged citizens.
If you doubt that statement, look at the numbers. Canada loses $60-million a day in revenue — $22-billion a year — because of the discounted price it receives for its oil from U.S. customers. If that oil could make it to Asian markets, it could command closer to $110 a barrel, rather than the $75 producers currently receive.
To close that gap, the oil needs to get to the West Coast. But, for most informed observers, the Northern Gateway pipeline is dead, even if it wins approval from the National Energy Board next December. The reason is, in large part, aboriginal opposition.
Stephen Kakfwi is a former premier of Northwest Territories, and cut his teeth in politics fighting the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline in the 1970s.
“I was 24 years old – I didn’t even have a bank account.”
Mackenzie Valley was labeled “the biggest project in the history of free enterprise” when it was launched in the mid-1970s. It was killed by Justice Thomas Berger’s report in 1977, which recommended any pipeline be delayed 10 years.
The plan was resurrected at the suggestion of native leaders, including Mr. Kakfwi, in 2000, but he opposed it again when he became dissatisfied at the level of First Nation involvement being offered by the lead company, Imperial Oil. The mega-project remains dormant because of its $16-billion price tag and the abundance of cheap gas.
Yet the whole saga provided a generation of native leaders with experience in dealing with Big Oil. Unfortunately, Big Oil doesn’t seem to have become any more adept at dealing with First Nations.
Mr. Kakfwi said Enbridge’s approach to native relations on the Northern Gateway was badly planned and even more poorly executed — a point re-iterated in a piece last month in the National Post by the former president of the B.C. Mining Association, Tex Enemark.
“Enbridge’s Alberta executives made appallingly bad presentations across the planned route …. Likely more damaging have been the actions of the Harper government to downsize and weaken almost everything environmental …. Nobody believes the environmental review process will be fair, thorough and competent,” he said.
Mr. Kakfwi said the pipeline is dead without major changes.
“I think everybody needs to step back and say ‘This is not going to go at this time.’ You need to start with a new team and a fresh approach,” he said.
“You need to have all the people in the room from the first agreement and plan it together. It’s a foreign concept for many companies but it’s not hard to do. Industry just has to take a leap of faith and change the way it operates.”
In his book, Mr. Gallagher makes the same point – that it’s not good enough to just consult First Nations or even offer a token equity stake; they need to become genuine partners.
It’s clear something has to give. While First Nations are regular winners in court, they end up being the losers because companies whose plans are foiled tend to leave and take their jobs with them.
Native leaders sense their new-found market power and aren’t afraid to use it. There is anger, frustration and a determination to block projects that are not developed jointly and the spoils shared. The next confrontation is unlikely to be the handbags-at-five-paces scuffle we saw in the foyer of the House of Commons.
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: John Ivison
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