An open letter to:
Rt. Hon. David Eby,
Premier of British Columbia
Dear Premier Eby:
Just recently I attended a meeting in Gitanmaax in the Hazelton area of northwestern B.C. of hundreds of Gitxsan and Gitanyow people, and their neighbours. The meeting was organized by the nation’s youth leadership, well attended by elders and House chiefs, and was successful in consolidating opposition to the Ksi Lisims LNG project.
Their concerns are threefold and shared by many of us in the northwest and indeed the province - climate change, salmon and the lack of adequate consultation by government.
The reality and enormity of climate change has grown over the last decade, like a forest fire on the near horizon. The Ksi Lisims LNG project is still going through its environmental assessment but its backers, including the Nisga'a Lisims Government, have now purchased an already-approved pipeline project plan meant for an earlier development a decade ago at Prince Rupert that never went ahead. Ksi Lisims LNG is now seeking environmental approval to change that pipeline's route so it can feed its proposed facility.
Our global, environmental reality has fundamentally changed and to pretend otherwise simply removes credibility. At the very least, approval of Ksi Lisims LNG and the request to change the pipeline route would make a final mockery of your government’s Clean BC strategy.
I am equally sure your government is well aware of the growing declines in salmon population over the last decade and the work of First Nations here to stabilize and protect the viability of the runs. The long term outcome is still uncertain but what is certain is that cumulative effect of this project would be to make the success of that work harder still. Who in BC prefers to consider a future without salmon?
One of your government’s greatest achievements has been to begin to bring provincial legislation within an UNDRIP framework. So it is saddening and maddening by turns to see the NDP and the public service miss that mark of free, prior and informed consent whenever it is not convenient to them. This continuing failure makes true reconciliation impossible. Gitxsan consent is required.
I was impressed by the solidarity shown in Gitanmaax, but not surprised, remembering Delgamuukw. Please refuse to accept the fallacy that a decade-old environmental assessment for a pipeline is still valid and that approval of Ksi Lisims should be contemplated so that another mega-project spewing carbon dioxide and methane into a rapidly heating atmosphere is possible.
Robert Hart,
Terrace, B.C.
