Grand Chief Stewart Phillip says he'll get arrested on Burnaby Mountain

by Charlie Smith on November 26th, 2014 at 1:05 PM

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One of B.C.'s most beloved First Nations leaders is willing to go to jail to oppose Kinder Morgan's pipeline expansion.

The corporation plans to bring an additional 590,000 barrels a day of tarsands oil to the Lower Mainland for export via tankers through Burrard Inlet.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip told B.C. Federation of Labour convention delegates that he will go to Burnaby Mountain and be arrested on Thursday (November 27).

"As I am being arrested, I will think of our grandchildren," Phillip said.

He will hold a news conference on Burnaby Mountain at 10 a.m.—the same time that Kinder Morgan will be in court attempting to extend the area covered by a B.C. Supreme Court injunction.

Then he plans on violating the injunction. It seals off an area to protesters as a Kinder Morgan contractor conducts surveying work.

As president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, Phillip has been one of the province's foremost critics of pipeline projects.

Earlier this year, he told the Straight that Canada's constitutional landscape was altered by the Williams decision in the Supreme Court of Canada. It affirmed that the Tsilhqot'in First Nation has title over 440,000 hectares of land a few hundred kilometres north of Whistler.