In August 2014, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau made the trek to the tiny Gitga’at community of Hartley Bay, located along Enbridge’s proposed oil tanker route in northwestern B.C.

There, in the village of 200 people accessible only by air and water, he met with community elders and Art Sterritt, executive director of the Coastal First Nations.

“He came to Gitga’at because he wanted to make sure he was making the right decision in terms of Northern Gateway and being there certainly confirmed that,” Sterritt told DeSmog Canada on Tuesday.

“My confidence level went up immensely when Justin … visited Gitga’at.”

Two months before that visit, in May 2014, Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa that if he became prime minister “the Northern Gateway Pipeline will not happen.”

With Monday’s majority win by Trudeau, Sterritt — who retired three weeks ago from his role with Coastal First Nations — says he is “elated” and “Northern Gateway is now dead.”

“I know they’re going to live up to the commitments that they’ve made. I have absolutely no doubt about that,” Sterritt said, while taking a break from carving a totem pole. “Tears of joy will be flowing in Gitga’at.”

The fight against the 525,000-barrel-a-day oilsands pipeline goes back more than a decade.

“We’ve gone through some tough times with all that’s been peddled in the past decade, especially the last few years — all that’s been done to pave the way for oil,” Sterritt said. 

“There were many, many, many people who worked every day to stop Northern Gateway from jeopardizing everything we stand for.”

'Promises are Promises': Trudeau Will Face Corporate Pressure, But Must Hold Firm

Gerald Amos, former elected chief of Haisla, told DeSmog Canada communities are  going to have to keep up that fight to make sure the project dies.

“There’s a pretty darn good sense now that it won’t see the light of day,” Amos said. “It’s going to be a huge challenge for Justin Trudeau to make it happen, but promises are promises.”

That “challenge” will be in the form of corporate pressure, Amos said.

“I don’t think we should underestimate the power of the corporations,” he said. “I think that there’s going to be a lot of pressure come to bear on them from the corporate world.”

Smithers Mayor Taylor Bachrach is also cautiously optimistic.

“There are probably community leaders and First Nations and people all across the northwest waking up this morning with a sense of relief that that particular pipeline is no longer looming over our heads,” Bachrach told DeSmog Canada.

“It’s been a long road and it’s brought people together, but it will be nice to move on to other conversations about the future of our region.”

Bachrach said it’s too early to say definitively that Northern Gateway is dead, but added: “Mr. Trudeau has made clear commitments to the region and I look forward to having him follow through.”

Enbridge did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Fight Againt Enbridge Northern Gateway Has Brought Communities Together

Terry Teegee, tribal chief for the Carrier-Sekani Tribal Council, said he’s always been confident Northern Gateway will be defeated due to court cases led by two Carrier-Sekani communities.

But he also emphasized that communities can’t let up until the project is dead for sure.

“I hope he lives up to that commitment and kills the project,” Teegee said. “Now that we have them in a place where we want them, we can’t let up politically or judicially until the project is dropped.”

Fighting Enbridge “has cost a lot of energy and a lot of resources and a lot of our time,” Teegee said.

But the fight has also brought communities together.

“We really are testing our rights and title, we’re testing our mettle as people. It really helped us develop relationships beyond our asserted title,” Teegee said.

“Asserting our rights and title collectively, we can really determine our own future, we can determine how development happens in our territory, we can determine what happens on a national scale. It would really send a message to oil and gas companies that it’s not ‘business as usual.’ You really need consent of First Nations."

Teegee thinks the battle over Northern Gateway has planted the seeds for a more proactive, productive conversation about the future.

“The next step is to keep the momentum going and start really discussing our issues. I think we need to have a real talk about energy and having an energy strategy for our people,” he said. 

Conservative Bullying Backfired in B.C.

Sterritt said ultimately the Conservatives misjudged British Columbia.

“Harper and Joe Oliver made the mistake of thinking they were going to bully their way through British Columbia,” Sterritt added. “They realized they made a mistake and have been pretty quiet for a long time.”

Enbridge’s Northern Gateway proposal hasn’t been the only oil pipeline proposed for northern B.C., however.

“We’ve got lots of noise,” Sterritt said. “We’ve got Mr. Black pushing for a refinery. You’ve got Eagle Spirit proposing something similar. But these are all just proposals. I think in light of how the people in the Pacific Northwest look at their place, I think these other projects are going to be hard-pressed to try to move ahead in the wake of Northern Gateway.”

In June 2010, the Liberal Party of Canada declared its support for legislation banning oil tankers on B.C.’s north coast. If that legislation is passed, it will spell the end of all oil tanker proposals for northern B.C.

Trudeau has also said the review process of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain oil export plan, which would see hundreds of oil tankers a year transit Vancouver’s harbour, will need to be re-done.

Image: Liberal MP Jody Wilson-Raybould, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Art Sterritt walk on the boardwalk in Hartley Bay, B.C.

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Today the internet is full of noise about the Enbridge Northern Gateway decision by the feds.

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Fun facts about Northern Gateway!

All the noise, ironically enough, makes me think about the silence of the Great Bear Rainforest — of the sea lion that popped up beside my row boat under the starriest sky I’ve ever seen while I sailed along the proposed oil tanker route three years ago.

I’m reminded of bobbing up and down on the water, thoughts coming in 60-second flashes between the breaths of a humpback whale feeding near our boat.

Now, like then, my mind moves away from all the hype to the only truth there is: clean air, clean water, wild salmon. That’s it.

My thoughts drift to the stoic face of Marven Robinson of the Gitga’at First Nation in Hartley Bay — to the people whose way of life depends on stopping this project.

And then my mind settles on the stillness and splendour of one of the world’s last untouched places … one of few places in the world that’s just as it was thousands of years ago. There's nothing like that thought to make you feel small in the scheme of things.

I’ve revisited that sailing trip in my mind more times than I can count in the past three years — when Joe Oliver called pipeline opponents foreign radicals, when I found out Canada’s spy agency was monitoring public hearings on the project, when the B.C. government called on the joint review panel to reject the project, when the town of Kitimat rejected the project in a plebiscite.

At times, the polarized debate on this issue has been all-consuming. But I’ve always found solace in going back to the heart of the matter: what kind of country do we want to live in? Are we the type of people who force the risk of catastrophe on communities that say no? Or do we know when to say enough is enough? 

Today pundits will write thousands of words about the political consequences of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision. I'll try not to add to the noise.

But I will listen to the voices of First Nations who have rejected the pipeline and tankers on their lands and waters. And I will think of the two-thirds of British Columbians who want this project rejected or delayed. And I will be calm in knowing that thousands of groups and individuals are committed to preserving that long stillness and silence of the Great Bear Rainforest. And within that silence, the sound of opposition is deafening.

Photo: Jacob Scherr

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The final report of the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel landed in Calgary today with an authoritative thud. “After weighing the evidence,” it announced in outsized type, “we concluded that Canada and Canadians would be better off with the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project than without it.”

The report sprawls across two volumes — a 76-page summary entitled Connections, and a phone-book-thick 417-page volume of conditions and rationales called Considerations. Both are bound with bright green spines and back covers, and the front covers feature atmospheric photos of rugged Canadian wilderness, similar to the sort you’d find in a travel brochure.

I mention the cover images because they are among the report’s most significant environmental assessment features. Whatever else, the Joint Review Panel knows what a pristine environment looks like when it sees one. You want pictures of salmon spawning in streams and caribou peeking out from glades and humpbacks breaching majestically from Great Bear Rainforest bays? This report’s got ‘em.

On facing pages of the “residents and communities” section of Connections (Item 2.4 for those playing along at home), there are pictures of the Gitga’at village of Hartley Bay (which lies at the mouth of Douglas Channel, where supertankers would pass en route to and from Enbridge’s oil tanker terminal at Kitimat) and a tourist office with solar panels on its roof. They know what First Nations communities and low-carbon energy technologies look like too, those graphic design whizzes down at the National Energy Board.

But surely there’s more to the most hotly anticipated National Energy Board report in many moons, right? Surely the nation’s media did not gather eagerly in a conference room in the heart of downtown Calgary to look at a long-form travel ad for northern British Columbia? Surely all those numbers — 1,179 oral statements, 175,669 pages of evidence, 47 aboriginal groups and 884 hours of hearings — amounted to more than a sort of shrugging “seems pretty good to us, eh?”

Well, you tell me. Probably the most revealing passage of the report is the one entitled “What Was Outside Our Mandate?” (Item 2.2.2). Among the not-our-department issues were “both ‘upstream’ oil development effects and ‘downstream’ refining and use of the products shipped on the pipelines and tankers.” Got that? A report on the “public interest” involved in an oil pipeline decided that it was irrelevant where the oil came from or where it goes. 

Skipping ahead to 2.4.1, “a large oil spill” was deemed “unlikely,” and in any case “the adverse effects would not be permanent and widespread.” Pipelines don’t, in and of themselves, emit greenhouse gases. And oil spills are basically spilled milk, not worth crying over. So check off the 209 conditions between the picture of the grizzly bear on the cover of Considerations and the Forest Stewardship Council logo on the back cover and you’re good to go!

(Incidentally, Item 4.3.6 concedes that eight grizzly bear populations would be affected “over the linear density threshold,” but this — and the negative impact on woodland caribou — were “found to be justified in the circumstances.” There is a picture of a grizzly with a salmon in its mouth on that very page of Connections. I have thus far resisted adding to my pristine copy a cartoon word bubble indicating an out-of-frame voice saying, “Suck it, fishface!”)

To be fair — I know, a little late in the game — the report does take some pains to indicate that it listened to a lot of dissenting voices. Why, Item 2.3 in Connections (“What were the public concerns?”) is a veritable litany of complaints and wrung hands. “People expressed concerns about the ‘catastrophic’ effects they believe a major pipeline rupture or tanker spill could have on salmon and other fish… People were concerned about the effect of tanker traffic… Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participants said clean environments are crucial parts of traditional and present-day cultures.” Duly noted, y’all. We feel you.

I could go on, but there are two odd little logical hiccups I’d like to highlight from the report. They concern the two shrugging dismissals I’ve already mentioned: that upstream and downstream impacts were outside the mandate, and that large oil spills would cause damage limited in time and space.

Let’s start with upstream and downstream impacts. There are any number, but for the overwhelming majority of people not living along the length of the pipeline, the big one is climate change. This is broadly understood beyond the pages of Joint Review Panel reports on oil pipelines to be the absolute top concern regarding the extraction, refining and burning of the fossil fuels transported by such pipelines. It’s conspicuously absent from the report, aside from some passing references to “emissions.” Which — again to be fair — are created before and after the oil passes through the pipeline.

But perhaps you’d been led to believe — by Canada’s prime minister and natural resources minister and Alberta’s premier, among others — that the whole reason Northern Gateway was such a high-priority piece of infrastructure was because it would encourage new oilsands developments, thus creating new “Economic Action” in the field of “Responsible Resource Development,” as per maybe the most vociferously championed "Plan" in the nation’s history.

Well, hold it there, hoss. “We did not consider that there was a sufficiently direct connection between the project and any particular existing or proposed oil sands development or other oil production activities to warrant consideration of the effects of these activities.” Got that? Northern Gateway has no direct connection to Alberta’s oilsands! This must just be surprising the boots right off the feet of a great many CEOs in a great many Calgary boardrooms, but there you go.

And to their credit, the Joint Review panelists offer up “four factors” to explain this reasoning. (We’re back in that gem Item 2.2.2, by the way.) They’re all impressive, but I liked the third bullet point best. “Bruderheim Station” — the eastern terminus of the pipeline — “would not be located near oil sands developments and could receive oil from a variety of sources.” I wish I could report that those Joint Review Panel dreamers suggested a few other possible sources for the hundreds of thousands of barrels of diluted bitumen per day the pipeline is being built to transport, but alas they left us to wonder.

Anyway, point being this is a report that doesn’t consider such fussy “upstream” details. Except when it’s assessing the economic benefits of the very same pipeline, over in Item 3.1, which is rather inconveniently located just 12 pages further along in the very same report. “We have taken into consideration that Western Canadian crude oil supply and the demand for imported condensate are forecast to grow significantly over the life of the project.” So a cornerstone of the economic case for the pipeline is that oilsands supplies will increase, but those increases have no direct connection to the project being used to deliver them to new markets from an environmental perspective. Connections is nothing if not one seriously gutsy Joint Review Panel report.

There’s a similarly nifty trick going on in the oil spill risk assessment section, which as I’ve mentioned estimates the possibility of a major spill to be “unlikely,” with no “permanent” or “widespread” impact. Turn to Item 5.5 for some elaboration: “We found that, in rare circumstances, a localized population or species could potentially be permanently affected by an oil spill. Scientific research from a past spill indicates that this will not impact the recovery of functioning ecosystems.”

Sure aren’t a lot of specifics there, and to be fair (yet again!) you have to turn to a whole other page of the report to find the section where it says Northern Gateway is obliged to establish “a scientific advisory committee to study what happens to diluted bitumen when released into the environment.” So we don’t actually know how the oil would behave if it spilled, but we’re really quite sure the impacts won’t be too bad. Take our word for it or whatever.

This is a report that almost physically shrugs in your hands as you read it.

I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Fisheries and Oceans Canada told the Joint Review Panel many, many moons ago it lacked the capacity to provide a full environmental impact assessment. Or that First Nations along the route are already asserting their intention to refuse to let the pipeline be built on their land. Or that as a country we have just maybe the most incoherent climate and energy policies in the industrial world.

I really could go on, but I won’t for now. Heckuva job there, Joint Review Panel. Lovely photos.

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