New Feds Natural Resources Min (Oil, Gas, Tarsands, Minerals...) Rickford Faces Aboriginal Backlash Over Enbridge Northern Gateway bitumen pipeline/supertankers terminal project awaiting a Govt Cabinet verdict by end of June latest. (not the welcoming he was expecting in his new senior post?) quote: British Columbia’s coastal First Nations have a stark message for Ottawa’s new Natural Resources Minister: If the federal government wants to build a working relationship with them, then it should reject Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway project. “One of our conditions on stepping up to the plate and working with [the government] on future projects is that basically Northern Gateway has to be put to bed,” said Art Sterritt, executive director of Coastal First Nations, which represents nine nations on the B.C. coast. “There’s no way anybody in B.C. is going to be supporting that project any time soon.” Mr. Rickford will now assume the job of building aboriginal support for resource development across Canada and in B.C. specifically. But Mr. Sterritt said his job will be immensely more difficult if the government approves the Enbridge pipeline. “If you want to talk about resource projects in British Columbia, you need to build a relationship first,” he said in a phone interview Thursday. “You don’t show up with a project and then try to build a relationship just to get the project through. That’s not the way it works.” Enbridge has appointed former Conservative minister Jim Prentice – now deputy chairman of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce – to negotiate with aboriginal communities on its behalf. Several aboriginal communities – including those represented by the Coastal First Nations group – are challenging the National Energy Board panel report, arguing among other things that the government had predetermined its outcome. And they vow to battle in court if the federal government approves the pipeline over their objections. Mr. Sterritt warned that people are willing to take direct action against the construction of the pipeline. unquote theglobeandmail/report-on-business/resources-minister-rickford-faces-aboriginal-backlash-over-enbridge-project/article17598247/
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 16:16:33 +0000
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