When plans were announced last October to build a $40 billion liquefied natural gas project in British Columbia, Justin Trudeau couldn’t contain his glee.
“It is a vote of confidence in a country that recognizes the need to develop our energy in a way that takes the environment into account and that works in a meaningful partnership with Indigenous communities,” the prime minister said in Vancouver.
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B.C. Premier John Horgan was equally chuffed. “This is a spectacular day for British Columbia,” he said. “I can’t stop smiling.”
Indeed, it seemed that the project’s proponents had managed to successfully navigate the shoals of both Indigenous and environmental politics.
First Nation band councils along the proposed natural gas pipeline route, from northeastern B.C. to Kitimat on the Pacific coast, had given their consent.
And while B.C.’s Greens, who hold the balance of power in the provincial legislature, remained opposed, they were not threatening to bring down Horgan’s minority New Democratic Party government over the issue.
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After years of stalemate over pipelines, it seemed that Canada had finally managed to come up with an energy project that could proceed.
But as this week’s events have demonstrated, in the world of Canadian pipeline politics nothing is ever really settled.
A few dozen protestors representing the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en set up a blockade on one part of the proposed pipeline route to remind Canada’s governments that while their First Nation’s elected band council may have agreed to accept the project, they had not.
