Canada and Oil Exploration
No trespassing.
Ownership
Whose pipeline is it? Trudeau is the adopted parent after Kinder Morgan, the birth parent of the oil project abandoned the baby because negative media from ongoing protests by Canada’s indigenous communities, environmental groups and the British Columbia provincial government, was hurting their brand.
Jobs. That is what it is, a fallacy because they have an expiry date. They are created by shareholders, money men who close shop once they have depleted mother earth of gold, copper, diamonds and oil. Therefore, the promise of temporary jobs is today. Damage from oil spills and other social and environmental scars from oil exploration is tomorrow, something that doesn’t concern the present prime minister because he will not be in office.
But Justin Trudeau is not taking the Court of Appeal’s August
2018 ruling lying down. Most likely, he passed the baton to his communication
managers who have an online ad, with the keep Canada working message.
The Federal Court of Appeal’s ruling on August 30, 2018 to
delay Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to expand the Trans Mountain
pipeline, adds another tile to what we can call the ‘no trespassing on native
land’ rulings.
It is even misleading to use the term native because it came
with European settlers who had one item on the agenda, free land or what they
thought was free land. Canadian courts
consistently reaffirm that it is not.
Canada originally belonged to First Nations the same way India in Asia belongs
to Indians, China to the Chinese, Africa to Africans and Europe to Europeans.
Consultation
The Federal Court of Appeal wrote: “There was no meaningful
two-way dialogue.” Canadian courts consistently reaffirm land rights of
indigenous people, which was not the case when British and French settlers,
driven by biting poverty in Europe, initially grabbed the land through fraud
and the bible.
What is the bone of contention? It is oil, expanding an existing oil pipeline
that will be built across two Canadian provinces and through the little land
left that First Nations (you used to call them red Indians) call their own.
That is why the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that there was
no adequate consultation with them before Trudeau’s government approved the
expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, to move crude oil from the province
of Alberta to British Columbia Province where it is shipped to other countries,
especially the United States.
Tsleil-Waututh First Nation has been at the forefront to
stop the Kinder Morgan expansion oil pipeline long before environmental groups such
as Greenpeace and Save The Arctic pitched in. The First Nation raised the issue
of inadequate consultation way back in April 2018. The following quote is from a CBC website.
“A
British Columbia First Nation is questioning the greenlighting of the Kinder
Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, arguing there may be new evidence the
federal government failed to complete consultations with First
Nations prior to approving the expansion.”Ownership
Whose pipeline is it? Trudeau is the adopted parent after Kinder Morgan, the birth parent of the oil project abandoned the baby because negative media from ongoing protests by Canada’s indigenous communities, environmental groups and the British Columbia provincial government, was hurting their brand.
The August court ruling identified trespassing on two
fronts, on First Nations’ land and British Columbia’s. It said the proposed Trans Mountain expansion
pipeline is bound to result in more oil tankers along the province’s coastline,
something the National Energy Board (NEB) did not take into consideration
during its environmental assessment of the project.
The NEB website states its mandate. We
regulate pipelines, energy development and trade in the Canadian public
interest. Before we make a decision or
recommendation, we factor in economic, environmental and social considerations.
The National Energy Board missed the boat because of the
definition of Canadian. More often than
not, decision makers regard big business and their promise of jobs as Canadian.
Who is and what is Canadian? Who are the
twins: Canadian and public
interest? Understanding what the
government regards as public interest is important because it is Prime Minister
Trudeau’s raison d'etre.Jobs. That is what it is, a fallacy because they have an expiry date. They are created by shareholders, money men who close shop once they have depleted mother earth of gold, copper, diamonds and oil. Therefore, the promise of temporary jobs is today. Damage from oil spills and other social and environmental scars from oil exploration is tomorrow, something that doesn’t concern the present prime minister because he will not be in office.
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Canada Day 2015
Photo: Nonqaba waka Msimang
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The Court of Appeal said there was no ‘meaningful two-way dialogue’
with First Nations. That is the hole communication
experts will try to fill. It will take
more than conferences, conference bags crammed with printed material most
people don’t read and t-shirts, to convince Tsleil-Waututh and other First
Nations that Trans Mountain is good for them and Canada.
European settlers found Canada incredibly beautiful because First
Nations had lived in harmony with land, the sea and the air for thousands of
years.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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