The first coastal nations in British Columbia have issued an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, asking him to reject any new proposal for a crude oil pipeline to the Northwest coast.
The movement occurs when Alberta Premier, Danielle Smith, presses a new private sector pipe that would send crude oil to the northern BC coast for export to Asia.
Marilyn Slett, president of the coastal initiative of the first genatory nations, says in a statement that there is no pipe or oil project that is acceptable to your group, and any proposal to send crude oil through its coastal waters is an “non -bets.”
The group is asking Carney to defend the 2019 Petroleum Moratory Law, which prohibits tankers who transport more than 12,500 metric tons of crude to stop, load or download in marine ports or facilities along the north coast.
He says that the act is the recognition of Canada of more than 50 years of effort to protect the Northern Pacific coast, which includes the great tropical jungle and Gwaii, due to the risks of an oil spill.
The nations say that they have not changed their position since the tankers were expelled from their territorial waters in 2010 depending on the ancestral laws, rights and responsibilities.
The group says that the North Pacific coast has one of the richest and most productive cold and productive waters of the Earth, and remains a source of livelihood, culture and sustenance for coastal communities and all BC residents.
Instead, the group has suggested that the prime minister meets them to “better understand the credible ecological treasure that is the North Pacific coast.”
The letter occurs less than a week after Carney met with hundreds of chiefs of the first nations, where he faced resistance to the Canada Construction Law, which allows the Government to accelerate the main projects that it considers that it is of national interest, even for avoiding existing laws.
A press release from the Prime Minister’s office after meeting with the prime ministers in Ontario, says that Carney “will continue to meet with the key stakeholders in the coming weeks to ensure that the big projects are fully built with the association of the first nations, Inuit and Methis, and to build a Canadian economy.”
BC Prime Minister David Eby said on average after the meeting that “for the pipe project that Premier Smith is a great enthusiast of the heavy oil project, there is no project, there is no defender, there is no money from the private sector involved in everything I know.”
Eby says that his government focuses on projects with proponents that are ready to go and have approved an environmental evaluation.
“When Prime Minister Smith crosses those obvious obstacles to make a project, then we have those conversations. But to be Franco, we have important projects that advance, and that is where our approach is.”
When it comes to the spectrum of a possible oil pipe, EBy says that there have been no discussions with the first nations because the project does not exist.
