Civil disobedience ‘absolute possibility’ if pipeline proceeds, coalition says
OTTAWA — A coalition of labour and B.C. aboriginal groups said Tuesday that civil disobedience is a clear possibility if the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline between Alberta and the B.C. coast goes ahead.
David Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, said his union does not endorse any form of violence, but added that "civil disobedience is an absolute possibility."
Coles was part of a five-member delegation in Ottawa expressing its opposition to the project Tuesday. Speaking beside him was Chief Jackie Thomas of the Saik'uz First Nation, who said her band will "use every means available under international, Canadian and aboriginal law" to thwart the project.
She too said civil disobedience is "not out of the question."
"It will not be built," Rick Smith, executive director of the lobby group Environmental Defence, said bluntly without elaborating.
A news release from the alliance later stated that the pipeline "will not be permitted to proceed."
"What is really disconcerting here is that we do not have a national energy strategy," Coles told a news conference. "We have a prime minister who, one day, is in the United States saying, 'We are your gas tank.' And when that doesn't work he's in Japan saying, 'We are your gas tank'. One has to wonder when he'll go somewhere else and say, 'We are your gas tank.'"
The group also argued that if built, the pipeline would threaten thousands of jobs in the province and increase pollution from the oilsands.
Enbridge proposes to build a pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat on the B.C. coast where oilsands bitumen would be loaded aboard tankers for export to refineries in Asia.
Tankers off the B.C. coast, for instance, could harm tourism in addition to presenting the risk of an oil spill, said Michael Uehara, a business leader in the B.C. tourism industry.
"The very existence of tankers on the coast makes it incompatible with tourism operations," he said.
Uehara said tankers could directly affect 2,300 workers, and indirectly affect 8,000 more along the coast.
Members of the delegation said they had tried to organize meetings with Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver and Environment Minister Peter Kent. Oliver's office declined a meeting, and they heard nothing back from Kent's, said Arnie Nagy of the United Fisherman's and Allied Workers Union.
The only meeting they were able to set up was with B.C. Conservative MP Randy Kemp, who did not say whether he supports the proposal.
"That's the response we got from this government for us being here to protect our livelihoods and our ways of life," Nagy said.
The CEP represents over 150,000 workers across Canada, including most unionized employees in the oilsands.