Tria Donaldson: Resistance to Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline is growing

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      “There is no dollar value that equals the wealth of our waters.”

      That may be a foreign concept for Stephen Harper, but in recent days those words have been repeated all over British Columbia, as people come together to fight the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

      The proposed Enbridge pipeline poses a massive threat to pristine areas across central B.C., including the Great Bear Rainforest. The pipeline would bring over 500,000 barrels of crude bitumen a day from the tar sands in Alberta to supertankers in Kitimat, B.C. Of course, a spill anywhere on the B.C. coast would be devastating for coastal communities and an economy that has been based on fisheries and the ocean for thousands of years.

      Currently, a joint review panel is travelling to communities around British Columbia to hear oral testimony about the impacts people would feel from the pipeline. Hundreds of brave souls have spoken out passionately and eloquently about the consequences of this proposal.

      Recently, things have heated up. Last Saturday, I joined a crowd of close to 2,000 people in the Comox Valley for the first hearing in southern B.C. Folks travelled from all over Vancouver Island to attend and to be heard. We heard from local First Nations, coastal fishermen, retired truckers, and young people who all shared one message summed up very nicely by a placard I read: “Our coast, our decision: no Enbridge pipeline.”

      People from all over the world are speaking out against this project, including a group of students from the Bella Bella Community School who undertook a two-day hunger strike during the joint review panel hearings to draw attention to what their lives would be like if their primary food resources were destroyed by an oil spill.

      Bella Bella is a community that depends on the bounty of the ocean. This project would see supertankers on their doorstep carrying thousands of barrels of crude bitumen every day. One young person says in the following video: “I am willing to do quite a lot of things to make sure that those tankers don’t go through our waters—we really don’t want them here.”

      This message was echoed by the community of Bella Bella, which welcomed the panel on Sunday, apparently a little too enthusiastically. When members of the panel got off the plane, they were greeted by members of the Heiltsuk First Nations and students at the Bella Bella Community School.

      While the RCMP at the scene said the demonstration was peaceful, the panel felt otherwise and cancelled the first day of hearings in Bella Bella due to safety concerns. Though they later said it was because of an “undisclosed logistical issue”, their original statement suggested the concern was less substantive.

      The hearings are back on, but many members of the community will have missed their chance to speak.

      The joint review panel process that the Enbridge pipeline is going through was targeted by the Conservative budget last week. The three-member panel is an independent body set up to review the science and risks and come up with a proposal to recommend or deny the project. The process can take time, especially when so many people want to participate. Over 4,000 people have signed up to make oral statements, which breaks every record for participation in a government environmental assessment.

      Apparently all this opposition has government worried. They have announced plans to limit the timeline of environmental assessment reviews to 24 months—a policy that would apply to projects like the Enbridge pipeline retroactively.

      As the federal government makes it clearer that they intend to push through the Northern Gateway pipeline all costs, community resistance is growing stronger. And resistance will continue to grow because there is no way the people of B.C. will let this project get built.

      Tria Donaldson is the Pacific coast campaigner for the Wilderness Committee. As a youth climate activist, she has been involved with the goBeyond project, the Sierra Youth Coalition, and the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition.

      Comments

      14 Comments

      Brian Waddington

      Apr 3, 2012 at 6:20pm

      I fear that Western Canada is being moved into civil disobedience and possibly an Afghanistan style war for freedom. Harper has been globetrotting and deal making as if the Northern Gateway proposal was a done deal.

      The JRP has shown their contempt for the Heiltsuk and all who stand for freedom with responsible stewardship.

      I am scared, very scared of where this could lead. If we roll over and do nothing our Mother is destroyed. If we stand our ground and defend our Mother she will be stained with the blood of her children.

      There is still time for a peaceful and righteous ending to this but time is running out. Now we need to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly.

      Jim Van Rassel

      Apr 3, 2012 at 9:17pm

      @ Brian... Awesome.
      Jim Van Rassel
      Coquitlam BC

      Canadian for how long

      Apr 3, 2012 at 10:10pm

      @Brian Waddington - I hear what you're saying, but I'd rather see BC separate from Canada before civil disobedience or war becomes a must. IMO, the best way to 'walk humbly' is to walk away on our own path.

      Mary Russell

      Apr 3, 2012 at 11:20pm

      Very well spoken Brian, and I am afraid too. What happens when the unstoppable Projectile meets the impenetrable Wall? It seems to me that somehow, and before Herr Harper cuts our online communication threads on purpose, we have to unite in a fission and a fusion of indignation across this province, this country, and indeed the world, for what Harper is pushing to initiate will effect all peoples, degrade the ability of the whole Earth to nurture life, and at the same time will corrupt other nations; will to change.

      Harper's fixation on dirty fossil fuel production and shipment overseas is ramping up global warming already accelerating towards a point of no return, when it will be game over for this beautiful world as we know it; the end of Nature's diversity that is her strength, and a world of chaos, with rampaging heat, drought, fires, hurricanes, tornados, floods, rising seas, drought, starvation, misery, and the end of Natures diversity that is her strength..

      The looming consequences of accelerated global warming over-arch all other reasons why the dirty Tarsands crude oil should not be expanded, nor sold overseas, but harbored in our own country while we seek dilignently for other sources of energy, and this "with the strength that is the strength of ten" because the heart is pure..

      So how do we light a fire in the hearts of the majority? I am shocked that more are not onside...but perhaps as has been said, some polls have not included tanker traffic with the pipeline debacle and so are unrealistic. And yet looking around me I find astounding indifference, as if this were a local annoyance and not a life-changing, world-changing affliction on everything right and good and beautiful and belonging to the future.

      All I can say is we have to unite as the stars against Tankers in our waters first of all, for on Tankers depends the Pipeline and Expansion. . "Go with God", is an honorable parting still alive among some peoples of the world. Also honorable is the saying that "Rebellion to tryrants is obedience to God", as we unite to turn this nightmare away, .

      David Wilson

      Apr 4, 2012 at 7:07am

      some of us in Toronto were moved to follow the lead of the Waglisla kids - we surely thank them for getting it started.

      a brief review of our fast is here:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRamEEmHCCk
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_d5bxZj38U
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co4Z5u5ER8E

      where do we go from here? that is the question. the only strength we have is in the connections that are established between individuals. So? What's next? Tell me and I will be there.

      Be well, David Wilson.

      Save Vancouver

      Apr 4, 2012 at 9:10am

      Can some of the chicken littles please enlighten me as to the number of catastrophic oil spills that have occurred in Vancouver harbour over the last 80+ years of moving oil by tanker through it? Or in Canada's East Coast waterways where tankers are a regular occurrence?

      Ron S.

      Apr 4, 2012 at 11:35am

      Frankly "Save Vancouver", you are the chicken little, running around saying "the sky isn't falling, the sky isn't falling". Meanwhile avoiding all the evidence to the contrary.

      Al Roth

      Apr 4, 2012 at 12:29pm

      Risk = PROBABILITY + Consequence. Everyone is leaving probability out of their fear equation. The real, true, actual probability of the kind of catastrophic pipeline spills and tanker incidents everyone is hyperventilating about is very close to zero. BC's bigger risk is becoming a hillbilly have-not province with nothing but spectacular scenery to eat.

      Conservative Dan

      Apr 4, 2012 at 2:55pm

      The Anti-Enbridge coalition is growing. It isn't just First nations, environmentalists, and lefty's. Conservatives like myself are very much against the pipeline.

      This kind of coalition will be unbreakable. Governments will tremble when we stand together.

      three mountains blow

      Apr 7, 2012 at 9:29pm

      There is a vision and a major earthquake is happening in a area where there is pipelines nearest you. The third one is major and for you none believers quit blowing up an earthquake zone with enough fracking gas to see how soon you can get it to errupt.