Canadian Parvasi 68

The International News Weekly Canada
November 09, 2018 | Toronto
03
Minister already met with 22 bands in Trans Mountain consultation redo
The Canadian Press
OTTAWA – Natural Resources
Minister Amarjeet
Sohi has personally met
with leaders of nearly two
dozen Indigenous communities
since the Federal Court
of Appeal struck down the
Canadian government’s approval
of the Trans Mountain
pipeline expansion in
August.
The court said the original
consultations with Indigenous
communities affected
by the pipeline plans was
insufficient so the government
is planning another attempt.
Sohi has already met
with people from 22 communities,
including most of
those behind the successful
court challenge, as he tries
to set rules for a new round
that he hopes will satisfy
the court’s conditions. Sohi
says this new round of talks
has no deadlines and will
follow the court’s blueprint.
“I take this very very seriously,”
Sohi said Monday,
a few days after his latest
trip to meet with communities
in British Columbia.
“We need to do things differently.”
In rejecting the government’s
approval of the
pipeline plan at the end of
the summer, the court said
the consultation plan was
sound but wasn’t properly
executed. The panel sent to
meet with people affected
by the pipeline was given
no mandate to do anything
with what it heard. The
bureaucrats took notes but
provided little in the way
of feedback or answers to
questions raised by different
band councils. In many
cases the communities were
told their concerns could be
dealt with after the pipeline
was built but got no guarantee
they actually would be.
Sohi said this time the
government has a mandate
to adjust the project
to deal with communities’
concerns where possible.
Where it’s not possible, the
government will explain in
detail why.
A band councillor from
one of the communities in
the court challenge that
halted Trans Mountain’s
expansion is not buying that
the government is sincere.
“We’re definitely not seeing
a change in behaviour,” said
Khelsilem, a band councillor
at Squamish Nation. (He
uses one name.)
Squamish’s territory
sits partially on Burrard
Inlet, the coastal fjord in the
Vancouver metro area that
is home to the Westridge
Marine Terminal — the end
of the pipeline.
About five oil tankers
a month leave the terminal
loaded with both crude and
refined oil products destined
largely for the United
States. An expanded Trans
Mountain pipeline would
triple the amount of oil flowing
to the terminal and the
number of tankers would
jump to 34 a month.
Khelsilem said his community
had neither the time
nor funding needed to do
a proper assessment of the
pipeline or its impacts the
first time, and says nothing
has changed about that.
Sohi insists the government
is not proceeding on
the assumption cabinet will
approve the pipeline a second
time. But the Liberals
just spent $4.5 billion to buy
the existing pipeline from
Kinder Morgan Canada in
a bid to ensure the construction
goes ahead.
Kinder Morgan got cold
feet last winter after the
British Columbia government
threatened to regulate
how much Alberta bitumen
could flow through an expanded
pipeline and went to
court to determine if it had
the legal authority to do so.
The Canadian government
tried to broker a deal
but at the end of May announced
it would just buy
the existing pipeline and the
work already done on the
expansion, build the new
one, and then sell it back
to the private sector when
time and economics warranted
it.
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