Bands in Alberta and B.C. want in on energy infrastructure to reap the economic benefits—and to implement environmental protections
Not long ago, Stephen Buffalo, the president and CEO of the Indian Resource Council of Canada , held a conference called “Pipeline Gridlock” in Calgary to discuss the involvement of Indigenous people in natural resource projects. Invitations went out to its 174 First Nation members and prominent oil executives. The year was 2016. Enbridge’s Northern Gateway was months away from being killed and the Trans Mountain expansion was better known as TMX. Fort McMurray, Alta., had partly burned.
Last year, the Federal Court of Appeal harshly criticized and quashed Ottawa’s approval of the Trans Mountain expansion, which would have twinned an older pipeline linking Edmonton and Burnaby, B.C. The fallout ensued in rapid order. The previous owner, Kinder Morgan, announced it wanted out of the expansion, leaving Ottawa to purchase the pipeline for $4.5 billion.
Fort McKay is a case study of what can happen to a community that chooses to embrace the oil sands and withstand the fierce debate that comes with it. Its unemployment rate is nearly zero. Its members earn an average income of $78,916, as of 2015. Its financial holdings exceed $2 billion. Between 2012 and 2016, government transfers accounted for only five per cent of its total revenue. “Not every community can have a casino,” says Buffalo dryly. “We have to work with what’s around us.
In Wilson’s mind, the idea of Indigenous ownership is another attempt by Ottawa to “dangle a carrot” with false promises. Many of the jobs the expansion is expected to provide, she stresses, will be temporary, and the economy itself unsustainable. She suspects there’s something more sinister at play. “It’s been divide-and-conquer tactics all along in regards to Trans Mountain,” she says.
Economics is one reason, he says, “but more important is the ability to direct environmental oversight into operations.” The 180 people of Whispering Pines strongly support the pipeline, LeBourdais says. It’s a place from which locals—many of them already employed by the energy industry—travel far and wide for work, and see the prospect of work and income from the Trans Mountain expansion as an opportunity to come home.
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