Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue No. 51 - Evidence - April 17, 2019 (morning meeting)
TERRACE, Wednesday, April 17, 2019
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, to which was referred Bill C-48, An Act respecting the regulation of vessels that transport crude oil or persistent oil to or from ports or marine installations located along British Columbia’s North Coast, met this day at 9 a.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator David Tkachuk (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Today, we continue our study of Bill C-48, An Act respecting the regulation of vessels that transport crude oil or persistent oil to or from ports or marine installations located along British Columbia’s North Coast.
We are honoured to be in Terrace this morning to hear from witnesses on this bill. Before we begin, I will ask all senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Cormier: René Cormier, New Brunswick.
Senator Gagné: Raymonde Gagné, Manitoba.
Senator Dasko: Donna Dasko, Ontario.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Treaty 6 territory, Alberta, straight down Highway 16 in Edmonton.
Senator MacDonald: Michael MacDonald, Nova Scotia.
Senator Smith: Larry Smith, Quebec.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne, Quebec.
The Chair: I am David Tkachuk, Saskatchewan, and chair of the committee.
For our first panel this morning, we are pleased to welcome, from Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs, Joel Starlund, Executive Director; from Kitsumkalum Band, Don Roberts, Chief Councillor; and from Haisla Nation, Crystal Smith, Chief Councillor. She has with her another guest who will not be testifying but will be available if she needs some assistance.
Welcome, witnesses, and thank you for attending our meeting. We will now start with Joel Starlund.
Joel Starlund, Executive Director, Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs: Good morning. I would like to thank the Senate for taking time to meet with us today. We are here to support the Coastal First Nations Allied Tribes of the Lax Kw’Alaams, Gitga’at, Heiltsuk, Haida and those nations on the coast directly affected through their marine and terrestrial territories that have taken the position to protect those territories from potential spills and malfunctions resulting from crude oil tankers stopping or unloading cargo at ports along British Columbia’s North Coast.
Since 1985, when an informal voluntary band was established, a lot has changed. As a result, we have even more reason to protect the coast. We have seen overfishing, mismanagement of our fisheries, climate change, ocean warming and habitat destruction in critical spawning areas. To reopen the question of whether or not to allow oil tankers on our coast is to blatantly ignore the years of scientific study and careful conservation that Coastal First Nations and upriver nations have led.
Gitanyow rely on salmon from both the Nass and Skeena watersheds. We harvest up to 11,000 sockeye and 1,000 Chinook annually, which sustains our people with organic protein. The majority of our members consume salmon and other traditional foods at least two to three times per week, and many consume them daily. The transmission of cultural knowledge is not possible without healthy and abundant salmon stocks.
In addition to the potential risk of oil spills, Gitanyow is greatly concerned about the ongoing impacts felt in our territory due to climate change, which has caused lower snow pack, hotter and dryer summers, unprecedented drought conditions, and low to negligible flows during critical spawning periods.
In 2013 and 2017, we have seen unprecedented closures of food, social and ceremonial fisheries in both the Skeena and the Nass rivers. Meziadin, a major tributary of the Nass within Gitanyow territory, has failed to meet its escapement goals in the past 12 out of 20 years and produces two-thirds of the Nass sockeye.
While we are a small nation impacted by colonial governments overriding our concerns and decisions about climate change, we nonetheless continue to demand climate action from federal and provincial partners to do everything in our collective power to prevent further impact on our water, fish and wildlife resulting from an unchecked fossil fuel industry.
Salmon is an economic driver to all of our local economies. Skeena salmon generates $100 million annually. Nass salmon generates $9 million annually. According to the government reports in the 2016 IFMP, the processing of wild salmon generates $15 million in wages annually in British Columbia. It has an export market value of $100 million annually. Processed salmon represents one-quarter of the processed seafood within British Columbia and annually produces $1.3 billion in British Columbia. This is an example of a sustainable economy, if managed and protected properly, that can provide for future generations in perpetuity.
Today, you will hear from several individuals who are not concerned about those risks. They may feel that gambling our grandchildren’s future is acceptable to further this generation’s economic goals. Unfortunately, I am one of the few voices that you will hear today asking you to exercise caution. There are many who could not be here today because they were denied an invitation to speak. Two of those groups have provided letters of support, which I have here today and will be providing to you. One is from the Skeena Fisheries Commission, an umbrella organization that represents the Gitxsan, Wet’suwet’en and Tsimshian nations. The other is from the Friends of Morice-Bulkley Valley.
To set the record straight on Gitanyow’s position on a proposed Eagle Spirit Energy pipeline and associated tanker traffic, in 2014 Chief Gwaslam wrote to the president of Eagle Spirit Energy Holding stating opposition to any oil pipeline through Gwaslam territory. This was supported by other Gitanyow Wilp. He stated that an oil pipeline would violate the principle in our law of Gwelx ye’enst, the right and responsibility to ensure that the territory is passed on in a sustainable manner from one generation to the next. For this company to continue to misrepresent the support the project has among the Northwest Coast First Nations is damaging to the integrity and reputation of that company and to the leaders who support them.
As an Indigenous government acting in our own capacity as hereditary leaders, Gitanyow takes the responsibility to make decisions that will not deprive our future generations of their right to healthy land, environment and a sustainable economy. Going back to at least 2008, Gitanyow has expressed consistent support for the Coastal First Nations and their tanker ban. We continue to do so today, and we will continue to do so in the future. Thank you.
Don Roberts, Chief Councillor, Kitsumkalum Band: I thank the Senate Committee for coming here on Bill C-48, the oil tanker moratorium act. This is the territory of the Kitsumkalum and part of the Tsimshian Nation. Protocol must be done on opening, that is welcoming who is here. That didn’t happen. I’ll move on. Furthermore, this is not a consultation. These are five minutes of time to speak to a major oil tanker on the North Coast of the Tsimshian is an unrealistic act against our section 35 constitutional title and rights.
Sm’oogyet, sgyidmna’a, smgigyet, Canadian Senate Committee. My name is Sm’oogyit Wiidildal, Waap Lagaax/Gisbutwada, Kitsumkalum, originating from the northern Hecate Strait, Chatham Sound, Granville Channel, Lower Skeena River, Ecstall River, and Kitsumkalum, the territory my chief title holds. I am elected chief for a seventh term now. Kitsumkalum is one of the original tribes of the Tsimshian Nation people of the Skeena River that has four Waap groups: Gisbutwada, Ganhada, Laxsgiik and Laxgibuu, which must all be consulted. The Kitsumkalum four Waap territories range from inside the Skeena River and marine coast of the Tsimshian Peninsula. There are 14 tribes now and seven villages that make up the Tsimshian Nation. The other villages are Kitselas, Metlakatla, Lax Kw’Alaams, Kitkatla, Gitga’at and Klemtu.
Tsimshian Nation are a people of the Skeena River and the North Coast of British Columbia. Altogether, we own approximately one-third of the British Columbia coast. Kitsumkalum lives off the sea, river and lands. The Waap or territory I speak about is called the Laxyuup. In each trapping and harvest area each group has responsibilities for those waters and lands. We have the protection of section 35 of the Constitution and the Tsimshian Ayaawx, the laws of the Tsimshian Nation’s constitution. We follow the seasons yearly in and out with our food harvest and economic commercial fisheries. Ocean tankers are a risk. We are situated like the points of a star. The tide and winds go in every direction. All oceans pull into the rivers two times per day. Tides never wait for anybody. Where we were in Rupert yesterday, that’s an inlet. If something were to happen there when the tide comes in, it comes all the way in and then goes all the way up the river twice a day.
From what I heard yesterday, Canada and British Columbia aren’t even close to having equipment to clean up oil spills on the ocean or river. I heard yesterday that the best in all of Canada is a 3 per cent cleanup and 15 per cent in the overall world. I saw on the Knowledge Network that the owners of big ships change their registrations and have all kinds of underwriters. They do this in case something happens. Then they are hard to hold accountable. This is really alarming. There was a two-hour special on the Knowledge Network about what is happening with the big ships in the world. The guy just gets off. He walks away and leaves it to his lawyer to deal with the issue.
Canada, why don’t you build refineries in our own country? Why don’t you create jobs here instead of trying to dump the issue on us? I heard you guys talking yesterday and putting the onus on us. This isn’t what this is about. That’s crap to me. We use oil and so on. Yes, we do, and we give you another solution: build our own refineries and sell the product.
Canada, you took a lot in just a short century: our culture, our lands, and fish and forest resources. You are now risking our seafood resources.
Another example was the Japan 2011 disaster. The radiation and driftgoods all ended up on our shores. The radiation is now interrupting the plankton food chain. It’s interfering with whales and big salmon feeding off all the smaller ones. They are being affected out there.
Today I’ll give you the January 12, 2012, committee report of the Joint Kitsumkalum-Enbridge Review Panel. I have it on a stick and in paper. Kitsumkalum don’t support oil tankers in our coastal territories the way it is now. A few major issues will have to change. Tsimshians are taking a risk. If something happens, we will all pay the full price with our food chain. All Tsimshians will have to agree or not agree to oil tankers. We will have to consult, plan and share altogether.
Crystal Smith, Chief Councillor, Haisla Nation: I would like to introduce our CEO, Jason Major. He is the representative who will be reporting back to our technical and our legal teams, and I am our elected Chief Councillor.
Our Aboriginal nation has occupied our traditional territory since beyond recorded time. We have extremely powerful evidence of our Aboriginal title to our territory and to our Aboriginal rights throughout the territory. Our Aboriginal rights include the right to fish, hunt and gather. These rights also include the right to govern our territory and protect our environment.
Over the last number of decades, the Haisla Nation has fought vigorously to protect the natural environment. We spearheaded the protection of the Kitlope, the largest intact temperate coastal rainforest on the planet. We took the necessary steps to eliminate industrial fish tainting from the Kitimat River. We continue to seek responsible forest practices within the Haisla Nation territory.
Our dedication to environmental integrity was tested when the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines sought to transport diluted bitumen by pipeline through our territory and by tankers through our waters. This project could have brought much-needed jobs and economic benefits to our people. The Haisla Nation, however, spoke strongly against the project because of the profound risks of driving an oil pipeline through our pristine territory. The risk of an environmental disaster and irreparable harm to our people and our culture was seen to be simply too great. We welcomed the end of the Enbridge project, as did many of our neighbours in the district of Kitimat that voted against the Enbridge project in a local plebiscite.
Our opposition to oil tanker traffic through our territory is not driven by ideology. Our opposition was a result of careful analysis of the risks imposed by transportation of the particular product through our traditional territories and waters. Let me be very clear that the Haisla Nation is not opposed to industry. The Haisla Nation has strongly and consistently supported the construction of a natural gas pipeline and terminals within our territory and the shipment of LNG by tanker in our waters. Indeed, one of the leading LNG projects within our territory will be located on a Haisla Nation reserve.
The key for us is always balance. We are seeking jobs, training and economic benefits for our people, but we will not do this at the expense of our environment and future generations. We are charged with protecting our people’s Aboriginal rights and title and will never sit idly back in the face of what we see as a dangerous industrial proposal.
Bill C-48 represents Canada implementing a promise made during the last federal election. The Haisla Nation fully supports the legislation as it protects the environment while allowing for the continuation of environmentally appropriate projects like LNG export to continue within our traditional territory.
Our support for the legislation is not new. We would like to table with the committee today two letters written by Haisla Nation to Canada concerning the moratorium. These letters were sent on November 4, 2015, and on August 9, 2016. Neither our position nor our reasoning has changed since that point. The August 9, 2016, letter is more detailed. The letter speaks for itself, but I would like to read to the committee some of our key thoughts as set out in that letter.
There has been a moratorium on crude oil tankers within the waters of the North Coast of B.C. for 44 years. We have expressed profound and well-evidenced concerns that the pipeline, marine terminal and tanker aspects of the proposed Northern Gateway project would create substantial and unacceptable threats to the environment and to Haisla Nation Aboriginal rights and Haisla Aboriginal title.
This formalizing of the crude oil tanker moratorium on the North Coast of B.C. is best seen as a political decision by Canada to protect the North Coast from the devastating impact of a spill from a crude oil tanker. This protection is consistent with Canada’s constitutional obligations to honour the constitutionally protected Aboriginal rights and title of Coastal First Nations. It is consistent with Canada’s obligations to all Canadians to protect these pristine and sensitive waterways from the potentially devastating impacts of crude oil tankers.
Any project that seeks to export crude oil from Kitimat would need to transport that crude oil by pipeline to a terminal site at the water’s edge. Because bitumen is too thick to flow through the pipeline, it must be diluted by a carcinogenic substance known as condensate. The proposed NGP pipeline would transport diluted bitumen across no less than 70 streams and creeks within the Haisla Nation territory. They all make their way into the Kitimat River and from there into saltwater. Any pipeline breach within the Haisla Nation territory, therefore, would create an enormous risk of devastation, not only to the immediate receiving environment, but also to the Kitimat River and the saltwater our people have relied on for our sustenance and our livelihood from time immemorial. The crude oil tanker moratorium will protect our people against the risk of devastating harm.
To be formal and explicit, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the moratorium exists and that it will not be changed lightly. Accordingly, the moratorium should be enshrined in legislation. We also ask that the moratorium be endorsed by way of formal agreement between the Haisla Nation and the Government of Canada. This would help to ensure the moratorium would have a lasting impact and would not be a political restriction that could be removed with the change of a federal government. Our concerns remain exactly as they were in 2016.
In conclusion, the oil tanker moratorium in our area has been in place informally for the best part of a half-century. On behalf of the Haisla Nation, I urge that the committee move swiftly to endorse this important legislation. It is a way for the government to keep its promises to citizens to protect the North Coast environment and to advance to some degree,reconciliation with Aboriginal nations. Thank you.
Senator Simons: My first question is for Mr. Starlund. We heard a fair bit from the coastal tribes yesterday in Prince Rupert. I am gathering, your territory is more inland, so I am wondering if you could explain in a bit more detail exactly where your traditional territories are and a bit more about the way you’re fearful of tanker traffic affecting the inland fishery.
Mr. Starlund: Yes, we are located in the Nass and Skeena watersheds. We are about 300 kilometres inland from Prince Rupert. We’re next to the Portland Canal. We are concerned because we have major spawning grounds within our territory. We are also concerned about what happens on this coast. We went through this Lelu Island process with LNG. We were able to track that the smolts coming from our lakes were going down into the Flora Bank estuary. There are ways that we could be impacted by something if it happened on the coast or if something happened right within our territory with an oil spill.
Senator Simons: You expressed some belief that other inland nations might not be in agreement with you. One of the challenges we’re facing as a committee is that we’re hearing from Indigenous communities both for and against the legislation. People on both sides are saying that they don’t feel there was proper consultation. Do you feel your inland nations got the necessary consultation about this legislation in advance?
Mr. Starlund: For us, we haven’t been too involved in the consultation. I think we’re lucky enough to have a voice here at this table right now. We support the bill as proposed right now.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a question for all of you but maybe first for Chief Councillor Crystal Smith. Could you give us a better sense of what is the agreement with LNG? You said they were going through your reserve. Could you explain that for us? Will it create jobs? How do you assess the risk of that? What will you get out of it?
All of you talked about fishing and salmon, but could you describe what is the percentage in your community of the population involved in fishing? Is it the main activity? Do you have other activities? I would like a sense of your community. Is it diverse in terms of activities? Is it one activity? If so, how many are involved in it?
Ms. Smith: On the question around LNG as opposed to the product we’re speaking about here today, they are significantly different products. If there were a spill within the LNG development in our territory, LNG warms and then evaporates. This product we’re speaking about today does not have those similar aspects to it. As Chief Councillor Don Roberts alluded to, there is only a 15 per cent world-wide cleanup aspect of this product. The impacts of both products are significantly different.
The employment aspect is the difference in terms of what LNG has to offer, not only to my community of Haisla, but to our neighbouring nations. It also brings opportunities for training. When we speak about changing our people’s lives, these projects have those types of impact.
In terms of the reserve portion of my presentation to you, one of the proposed projects will actually be built on one of the reserves within our territory.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: The second part of the question is for either Mr. Starlund or Mr. Roberts or Ms. Smith. You talked about fisheries in your own communities. What’s the percentage of the population involved in fishery? Is it the biggest or not the biggest? Is it helping to raise the level of living or not?
Mr. Starlund: We’ve done a socio-cultural needs assessment with our people in 2011 and 2015. Both of them demonstrated that our people eat salmon about two to three times per week and that 90 per cent of them eat it at least once a week. We are heavily reliant on the salmon within our community.
We’ve recently had a Chinook salmon fishery closure in 2017, which really affected our people. That was unprecedented in our area. Usually it’s economic; then food, social and ceremonial; and then conservation. That’s part of the reason why we’re so concerned with what the topic is here today.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: How many of your people fish and sell fish?
The Chair: How many make a living off fish? That is what the senator means.
Mr. Starlund: I guess you and I might have a different perspective of the meaning of a living. A living for us is anybody, at the end of the day, being able to put food in their families’ mouths. Two-thirds of the population.
The Chair: Mr. Starlund, you spent quite a bit of your presentation on climate change. Perhaps you could help me out here. How will preventing the tanker traffic, if a pipeline is approved, affect climate change? We’re a long way from having a pipeline approved, even if the bill wasn’t here.
Mr. Starlund: We can’t just be operating in this bubble anymore and pretend that climate change isn’t happening. We have to take proactive steps to mitigate what is coming toward us in the future. To me, it doesn’t make any sense to bring more risk to ourselves by doing what we’re talking about here today. It’s about risk management for all of us.
The Chair: But what does this have to do with climate change?
Mr. Starlund: I don’t know how much more clearly I could say it.
The Chair: I want you to be clear.
Mr. Starlund: Take the forest industry, for example. It hasn’t really contributed to climate change, but there are certain elements of what the forestry industry has done in our territory that exacerbates climate change. We’re talking today about the closures of our food, social and ceremonial fisheries in 2013 and 2017. Why are we talking about adding more risk with something in our area like that?
The Chair: Any one of you can answer this question. We’ve heard about the bitumen before, but I haven’t heard a good explanation of it. The bitumen is mixed with regular crude oil. Is it the bitumen that you’re concerned about, or is it the light crude oil itself, for example? If light crude was being taken, would that be a problem, or is bitumen the problem?
Mr. Roberts: Oil in general that can destroy our coast. I just want to get back to the lady that questioned the importance of sea fish to our nations. Tsimshian means people of the river and the coast.
All along the river and the coast, you’ll see our villages. The reason why they’re there is because we get our food from the river and the ocean. We fish all salmon: the Chinook, the sockeye, the pink, the chum, the Coho, the steelhead and the trout. We just finished the eulachon run, and the herring is still there on the coast. We move up and down with the four seasons. Starting in May/June, we’ll be out there harvesting seaweed. We used to harvest abalone and all the life that is there. In the commercial fishery, we commercial fish halibut and we commercial fish all the cod. We eat them, too.
It used to be 100 per cent. Food is still 100 per cent, but the fish economy has gone down, and again there’s climate change. Climate change has had a dramatic effect. If you happen to live on the coast, you can tell that. You can’t tell it living up here. When you’re fishing on the water, boy, you know when things change. You know when the plankton is all dead. When it’s all over your net and it’s all slimy, you know that it has all died. You know, if you’re out there for 60 years and it has never happened before and then, all of a sudden, there’s an occurrence.
On the blog they talk about the news with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It’s real. All these hurricanes are down in the gulf. The winds out here are so extreme now in November that you can’t go out there anymore. All these things are real. I answered that a bit.
The Chair: Thank you for answering that one. I asked about bitumen. Is it the bitumen that is the problem, or is it the oil? If it was light crude, would it be a problem?
Mr. Roberts: When Eagle Spirit came to Kalum, the Helin boys brought a different product there. First, they brought the crude oil to show what it looked like and said that it would be refined. They were looking at putting a refinery somewhere down here and maybe one back there. The product they brought looked like Mazola oil. That wasn’t a yes, but it was, “At least you’re trying something.” We’re dead against crude oil or any kind of oil of that magnitude travelling.
I talked about all the resources to show that we have a life on the coast and that product will destroy it all.
We have heard about the ferry that sunk there 11 years ago. It’s still letting out its ugly oil that is destroying all the food in that area. We have also heard about the Fitz hitting the beach there. Those First Nations came over here with the Coast Guard, showing us what it was like 30 years later. They took a spade and put it in the sand. The beach looked all cured. It is right in the film there where they’re digging clams. They lifted up the sand up and were just watching. Within a minute, oil just filled up that little hole where the water came in. That was 20 or 25 years later when the guy came to show the Tsimshian people.
Senator Gagné: Ms. Smith, you mentioned that you would see agreements being signed between the Government of Canada and your Haisla Nation. Could you expand on your comments pertaining to the signing of agreements between Canada and the Haisla Nation or any other communities over and above the adoption of Bill C-48, if it is passed into law? Could you expand on that and what you would see as terms of agreement?
Ms. Smith: Through this adoption of the reconciliation aspect, it refers to the fact that it would go in line with being able to establish open communications in terms of what is acceptable in our territory and how we can work together for the benefit of our people. That portion of our letter alludes to establishing that relationship with the Government of Canada.
Senator Gagné: My question is for Chief Councillor Roberts. Pertaining to the marine response capacity, could you elaborate on that when there is an incident?
Mr. Roberts: When the oil was first coming aground, we went and asked the Alaska government to describe how they viewed the marine response of Canada and B.C., but mostly B.C. They said that the Valdez oil spill was the best sophisticated cleanup in the world, but he said when Valdez hit the rock they found out they had zero. What B.C. has right now is zero-zero. They still haven’t left where they think they are.
The Alaska government said that there needs to be proper legislation. There needs to be an account for a billion dollars or more up there for the loss. There were no courts but there were all these things they had to do over there. He said that they had no tugboats. That’s right when we heard the person talking about at Haida Gwaii. It was right then when that guy came here. He used that as an example. He said that boat was drifting. It was drifting there. I think it drifted about a week. Finally, the U.S. Coast Guard had to come over to rescue that boat.
There is nothing here. A tugboat hit the ground by Bella Bella two years ago. They had nothing. They should have just got a hoist and sucked it out of there, but they sat around, letting that oil drift around, and wrecked that whole inlet there. At least they got that boat out so that it could begin to heal, but the other boats that are still in there will never heal.
In answer to your question, from what I heard yesterday we got nothing yet. God, I couldn’t believe I heard 3 per cent. This is what Canada has at best, and 15 per cent is the best in the world for cleaning up right now. We have to improve that.
Senator Smith: I have a question that anyone could answer. Marc Garneau was asked if, when Bill C-48 goes through, there would be a commitment to a response program. From what I heard, he said no.
You were just talking eloquently, Mr. Roberts, about the problem in response. You mentioned two other cases of 12,500 tonnes of oil or whatever. It was smaller ships that caused problems. The issue is that Bill C-48 will not protect smaller ships from the same problem, but I was just wondering about your comments on the whole idea of response. You said that something needed to be done.
Do you folks have some form of a lobby to try to pressure the federal government? If the Minister of Transport passes this bill and it goes through, it goes through. If there’s no program response planning with a significant commitment made by the government, both federally and hopefully provincially, then it seems there’s been no benefit to you folks. How does that affect you?
How does that affect you, Mr. Starlund? You say people eat salmon X times a week and stuff, but what’s the condition of the fishing industry? How many licensed boats do you folks have. Is this a business that is starting on a decline?
What about your people? An MP came in yesterday and she said, “Our people are suffering.” It’s sort of poverty, but the people that want some of these projects to go through are saying, “We have to get our people out of poverty.” How do you balance one against the other? How do you get the response program set up properly so that existing configurations of ships can be actually monitored and managed better?
Those are my two questions.
Mr. Starlund: For me, this discussion doesn’t preclude discussions in response time and different efforts that need to happen on vessels that are smaller than 12,500 tonnes. I don’t think it is an either/or question. It’s something we have to work on together to also improve.
In terms of the economy, I would describe like watching a game show and you see a contestant who has won something. They can say, “You’re going to get $10,000 a month for life, or else you could have this brand new Ferrari.” They’re saying, “Let’s go with the Ferrari,” and you’re staring at the TV and saying, “What are you doing? You’re making a huge mistake here. What about your children and your grandchildren? That money could be going toward them.” It’s kind of a selfish way of choosing how you want to use your resources.
Senator Smith: If we go back to the initial question, how are average people in your area living now? What’s the definition of comfort to them? Hopefully it is more than just eating properly. Hopefully it is education.
We had about 30 young Indigenous people come down to Ottawa, and they come down regularly through different groups. These people are fantastic in terms of their ambition, what they want out of life. Some of the messaging we’re seeming to get through in some of these discussions is that it may not be that way with the people situated in some local areas.
I am just trying to understand. What’s the reality? What’s your reality in terms of the living conditions, economics and unemployment that you face?
Mr. Starlund: The reality is that we have a lot of resources within our territory that we aren’t able to benefit from because of government policies and models. Throughout our territory since 1956 we’ve had $101 million worth of logs leave our territory that the governments have benefited from. We are trying to build forest economics. Meziadin produces two-thirds of the Nass sockeye, which represents about $9 million worth of economic benefit to the area. We only access about 2,000 pieces of fish a year, and that’s not equitable.
These are the areas in which we’re trying to build our local economy for our people. A question about an oil tanker kind of hinders what we’re trying to do for our people and for our local economy.
Senator Patterson: Thank you for your presentations. I am glad we’re here. I am sorry we couldn’t hear everyone, apparently, but we can still receive submissions and invite people to Ottawa if they need to be heard. Having said that, I want to be respectful of what you’ve said, Mr. Starlund. I was a bit surprised when you talked about the unchecked fossil fuel industry. I think those were your words.
Our job is to represent all of Canada and all its regions. We’re will be going to Alberta and Saskatchewan to discuss this bill. There are 200,000 or so people out of work in Alberta. There has been $100 billion of investment taken off the table. There have been two major pipelines cancelled, and a third one is in limbo. Investment capital is fleeing to the U.S.
Some would say that our fossil fuel industry, as you call it, in western Canada is paralyzed because there’s no way to get product to a hungry market. Whether or not we like it, the world is hungry for oil at least until 2040 according to the International Energy Agency.
Why you would describe the fossil fuel industry as unchecked when we’re hearing that it is on the ropes, paralyzed and a crisis in Canada? It contributes 10 per cent to our GDP, which helps pay for the social programs we all care about. Why do you think it’s unchecked or out of control?
Mr. Starlund: I’ll just lead off by saying that I feel bad for some of those Albertans, hard-working people and all of that stuff, but do you know what? Their government has not done a very good job of creating wealth from that industry. They’ve really squandered a big opportunity and now they’re pointing their fingers at people like us who are trying to protect our economies so that we don’t end up in a position like them.
For the unchecked part, I would say that right now the government is trying to put in some measures like the climate action process. Again, there are some people that don’t see the benefit of that. If you look at places like Calgary getting flooded out, how much damage has there been? Entire cities have burnt down. Alberta is starting to see the real pain. People won’t realize the problem until it hits them in the pocketbook. That’s what you’re starting to see with Albertans, and I think change is coming.
Senator Patterson: I will tell you that I am the critic for this bill. It’s my job to look at all angles and I suppose look for flaws in the bill, but I’d like to address the issue of the risk of an oil spill. This is a difficult subject and a sensitive subject.
I visited Valdez with a Senate Committee. We did a lot of studying of what went on there. We saw the accident site. What we learned in Valdez is that since the spill there is oil-spill response capability of the highest standards in the world. A lot has changed in 30 years. The vessels have to be double hulled. They need escorts before and after leaving the channel. There is oil-spill response capability on standby 24/7 with very impressive state-of-the-art equipment. The Coast Guard is involved. All of this is paid for by the industry.
I’d like to ask you: We learned that 500 ships a year were coming into the harbour at Prince Rupert, apparently without incident. It’s a sheltered channel and a deep-water port. If we had proper marine oil-spill response capability, and Alaska Valdez has set the standard in the world, and we had a safe channel that was established —
The Chair: Get to your question.
Senator Patterson: — would you think the risk would be reduced and tolerable?
Mr. Roberts: Obviously, we have the equipment but the risk is still there. We had people from the Valdez First Nations come over to talk to the Tsimshian about what happened there. They said that the oil was all around them. They said it just grew like a sickness, right to suicide. All their food was gone. What food was there, they couldn’t eat because it was contaminated. The suicides are still going on. They talked about all of the fishing licences. Some of them were worth $300,000 went down to nothing. Was there compensation? If we lost our food chain on that coast, I do not think compensation will ever help that.
You asked a question about what would happen with us. I think you were talking about the economy. Our economy is the coast. We talk about Alberta being paralyzed, but if something should happen here, boy, we’re going to be paralyzed because the whole nation depends on that, not just one of us. We’re going to be totally paralyzed because that’s going to cover everything.
I’ll give you a tape on Enbridge which has a lot of stuff from our presentation. We have to look at solutions and refineries over here. All we’re looking at is quick dollars to get over to China and other parts of the world. We live right here. The refinery should be right here. We should benefit from those products too. Our oil goes down to the United States and gets pumped back. We get charged premium rates, and we’ve got the stuff right here in our own country.
Senator Dasko: The topic of Northern Gateway has come up in your comments. I just wanted to get into the weeds a bit to clarify that I believe all of your communities opposed Northern Gateway. If that is true, could each of you tell me the reasons why you did? Was it the issue of the tanker traffic? Was it the disruption of construction? Was it that perhaps no benefits were coming to your communities?
Could you just articulate, Ms. Smith, Mr. Starlund and Mr. Roberts, how you viewed that development with respect to your communities?
Ms. Smith: Each of our statements kind of allude to the answer to that question. The risks of that product are just too great.
Senator Dasko: All around, do you mean?
Ms. Smith: All around. We didn’t take that decision lightly. We don’t take any decision that has any impacts in our territory lightly. We’ve stated time and time again that our territories are our cultural identities. It is our ties to the land and what the land provides to our community.
You talk about fishing being an economy or what it means to have a dollar going back to some of our memberships. That industry wasn’t taken care of in our territory. Therefore, you see a drop in the dollar aspect of that. What is not recognized and what has been stated here is that the industry doesn’t only provide a dollar sign back to our communities.
We’ve had economies in our communities prior to contact. I’ve stated that numerous amounts of times in public. Our communities trade those aspects of our culture. What we were able to provide for our communities was a staple for them to be able to then trade. Those were our economies. That’s what fish, the eulachon and halibut means to our communities.
Senator MacDonald: Mr. Starlund, I liked your analogy about the $10,000 a month or the Ferrari. If I had my way, I would want to get both. Your concerns about risk are legitimate. I think risk management is very important.
We have a lot of experience with risk management on the East Coast. You have six million tonnes of Canadian crude going into Canadian vessels on this coast. We have 283 million tonnes a year on the East Coast of Canada. We have good spill response units. I think you need one here.
I am sure a pipeline going through will be built here. I think one should be built anyway. As Senator Patterson mentioned, you have 500 large vessels landing and moving product at Prince Rupert every year. Those are all single-hulled vessels. My family has been in the shipping industry for years. There’s not a single-hulled vessel that’s safer than a double-hulled vessel. They all have greater risk. You’re at risk right now without a spill response.
I guess I just wanted to put that out there. I appreciate your concern about risk, but risk is something that has to be managed in life, no matter what we do. We’ve done a good job on the East Coast managing risk and getting benefit from managing the risk. We have very lucrative fisheries on the East Coast. They pump half a million barrels a day out of the Grand Banks, and they fish there. It’s the greatest fishing banks in the world. Newfoundlanders and other people on the East Coast want to keep both because it’s so important for everybody’s livelihood. When you say you want to protect the environment, I completely support your concerns about protecting the environment, but I think that both can be managed with good planning, proper technology and proper equipment.
We heard a lot about the Nathan E. Stewart a ship that went down. Again, that was a single-hulled vessel. They can do a lot of damage. Anything that can crack open and spill can do a lot of damage if you don’t have a proper response capacity.
If the government, along with industry, would put the proper response mechanisms and response infrastructure in place to give you the comfort you need, could you be more amenable to reassessing your approach to this so that everybody here can benefit, including yourself, and protect your way of life and the resources here?
Mr. Starlund: Thank you for your question. What my response would be is that what we’re talking about here today is over 12,500 tonnes of crude oil and persistent oil. What my presentation is talking about is limiting risk. What the 12,500 is limiting is the risk of a catastrophe. That’s kind of something that’s hanging over ahead. It’s likely not to happen. If it does happen the effects will be terrible, and we could never recover depending on what the situation is.
That’s what we’re trying to manage our risk for. We don’t want to bet on something that will give us some economic comfort in the next 50 or 75 years but on something that could provide for us in perpetuity, all of us. I’d stick to what we’re talking about here, the 12,500 tonnes of crude oil and persistent oil.
Senator MacDonald: I want to make the point that I wish we were producing more of our own finished products as well. We used to produce a lot more in this country. On the East Coast we had a couple of refineries shut down because they were small capacity. It would have to be a large capacity state-of-the-art facility to compete in the world market. Yes, we should be producing more of our own product.
Senator Cormier: My question is for all of you and concerns the Eagle Spirit Energy pipeline corridor project. In his testimony before our committee, Kenneth Brown said that the problem with Bill C-48 was that it unilaterally discarded constitutionally protected rights and title to land that could not be extinguished by simple legislation. It didn’t allow for a federal and provincial environmental assessment process, exacerbated the current helplessness in First Nations communities, perpetuated the current monopoly America has on our most valuable resource, and was based on political rather than economic or environmental concerns.
Could you please comment on the arguments that he brought to us? Do you agree with them?
Mr. Starlund: No, I think I was pretty clear in my statement that I do not agree with them. I think that they do really represent the actual perspectives of the First Nations people on the North Coast. I think they will use any political means they can to try to make this happen.
Do you know what? They want to call us radical, but protecting our economy and our way of life isn’t radical. That’s something that I can see is the view of some members of the Senate as well, but the role of government is to step in, take in all these facts and say who’s in the right here.
Mr. Roberts: We’re against the oil the way it is now and the moratorium on our oil. The risk is very big here. The solution is to do with refineries here and create jobs over here.
You’re not going to create very many jobs once the pipeline is in. There’s only building it. You’re going to lose four-fifths once the pipelines are in just like anything else. If you have the refineries here, the jobs stay here. It is just like the Rio Tinto over there: build the refinery over there and the jobs are all over here. That’s what we should be doing instead of talking about a moratorium on oil tankers and risking everybody else. We should try to create something that works both ways.
If something did happen out there, if the stuff is refined, it’s contained. Oil on a barge or a ship isn’t contained. It’s just puking out like the yolk of an egg and all over.
Ms. Smith: Technologies may emerge and regulations may, but it doesn’t make sense. That is not the world we live in today. Things may change, but it doesn’t make sense to start it backward and not protect what we have stated here today.
If and when technology becomes relevant for the pipeline, for the tanker and for spill response aspect of what we’re talking about here today, maybe the moratorium can be revisited but we can’t start backward.
The Chair: I’d like to thank the witnesses for attending the meeting today and making their presentations.
For our second panel this morning, we’re pleased to welcome from Nisga’a Nation, Eva Clayton, President; from B.C. First Nations Council Energy Corridor Group, Eagle Spirit, Gary Alexcee, Hereditary Chief and Vice Chair; and from Gitsegukla Hereditary Chiefs, Larry Marsden.
We’ll now hear from our witnesses, starting with Ms. Clayton.
Eva Clayton, President, Nisga’a Nation: I would like to begin by expressing the appreciation of the Nisga’a Lisims Government to the committee for inviting me to appear before you on behalf of the Nisga’a Nation. I have with me the executive chair and member of the executive of Nisga’a Lisims Government, Brian Tait who is sitting with the observers.
The Nisga’a Nation does not support the imposition of a moratorium that would apply to areas under our treaty. We believe that Bill C-48 flies in the face of the principles of self-determination and environmental management that lie at the heart of the Nisga’a Treaty. I will provide more details on why the Nisga’a Nation is opposed to this legislation as currently drafted, but I would like to begin with a bit of the background of the Nisga’a Nation.
The Nisga’a Treaty was the first modern-day treaty in British Columbia. It was also the first treaty in Canada, and perhaps the world, to fully set out and constitutionally protect our rights to self-government and our authority to make laws over our land and our people.
Under the Nisga’a Treaty, we have substantial rights over the Nass area, which encompasses over 26,000 square kilometres in northwestern British Columbia. We also own and have legislative jurisdiction over approximately 2,000 square kilometres of land in the Nass River Valley, which is known as Nisga’a lands.
When our treaty came into force on May 11, 2000, after more than 113 years of struggle, the Indian Act ceased to exist and ceased to apply to us. For the first time, our nation had recognized legal and constitutional authority to conduct our own affairs. It is in this context of seeking respect for our modern treaty that we come before you today to express our concerns about Bill C-48.
This legislation was introduced without any discussion about the significant implications it would have on the Nisga’a Nation and the Nisga’a Treaty. Discussions were limited to preliminary ideas about various approaches to protecting the coast, potential geographic extent of the legislation and what products may be covered by the legislation, all in highly hypothetical terms.
In the weeks that preceded the introduction of Bill C-48, we urged the minister, his cabinet colleagues and staff that the moratorium must not be introduced before the implications on our nation and our treaty were well understood, and that the moratorium should not cover our treaty area. Despite these efforts our appeals fell on deaf ears, and the legislation was introduced without any further dialogue with the Nisga’a Nation.
This lack of consultation and the failure to assess the implications of the proposed legislation on our treaty are contrary to the expectations of the assessment of modern treaty implications process that was set out in the 2015 cabinet directive on the federal approach to modern treaties implementation, the government’s own process for ensuring treaty commitments are honoured in policy processes.
Clearly, consultation on this legislation fell short of what would be expected between treaty partners. We believe it is clear that this Bill C-48 undermines the principles of self-determination and environmental management that lie at the heart of the Nisga’a Treaty. Moreover, this legislation is not based on scientific evidence. It does nothing to protect sensitive ecosystems on the West Coast and represents an arbitrary choice of one coastline over others.
We aspire to become a prosperous and self-sustaining nation that can provide meaningful economic opportunities for our people. This aspiration is reflected in our treaty, which sets out Canada’s, British Columbia’s and the Nisga’a Nation’s shared commitment to reduce the reliance of Nisga’a Nation on federal transfers over time. The Nisga’a Nation takes this goal very seriously. However, it stands to be undermined by Bill C-48. The future prosperity and ability of our people to enjoy a better quality of life require the creation of an economic base in the Nass area that meets the requirements of our treaty. This is the first priority of our government.
In the 19 years since our treaty came into effect, we have successfully negotiated many environmentally sound agreements in the mining, hydroelectric transmission and liquefied natural gas sectors. Unfortunately, the economic climate in northern B.C. is poor and few of these projects are under way. The economic opportunities to be gained from many of these agreements have not yet been realized. We want to be well positioned so that the provisions of our treaty can be employed to enable our nation to consider whether an environmentally sound approach to export project development is possible when economic conditions change.
Our treaty includes comprehensive provisions for environmental assessment and protection over the entire 26,000 kilometres of the Nass area. These and other provisions under our treaty have opened the door to joint economic initiatives in the development of our natural resources within the Nass area. They ensure that the necessary balance between building a strong economy and protecting our lands and waters are achieved. Allowing the provisions of our treaty to assess any potential project on its merits would ensure that scientific evidence plays an essential role in assessing impacts and informing decision making, instead of the current approach which unilaterally and arbitrarily enacts a blanket tanker ban over a particular region of Canada.
Put differently, how come the same systems and regimes sufficient to support the expansion of tanker traffic through the Port of Vancouver and along either of the north or east coasts of Canada are not sufficient to support tanker traffic on the North Coast where ease of navigation and low marine traffic present even fewer risks?
In conclusion, I would like you to know that the Nisga’a Nation has never and will never support a project that could result in the devastation of our land, our food and our way of life. We have attempted to persuade this government to preserve the opportunity for the Nisga’a Nation, Coastal First Nations and local communities to work with the government to assess any future proposals and their scientific merits, and to ensure that we maintain our ability to have a meaningful say in what happens on our lands and in our region.
On an issue which has such immense implications to the Nisga’a Nation and to all Canadians, we regret that the government has proceeded without any meaningful accommodation for the Indigenous people that have the most to lose. We urge you in the strongest possible way to consider amendments to this legislation that would reflect Canada’s commitment to the Nisga’a Treaty. Amending the northern boundary of the moratorium to exclude the Nass area and the Nisga’a lands would meet this commitment.
We believe that there is a way forward, using the positions of the Nisga’a Treaty in conjunction with Canada’s robust regulatory processes, to allow Canada to achieve the objectives of the proposed moratorium without interfering with the Nisga’a Nation’s rights under the Nisga’a Treaty.
Our government is committed to creating an economic base in the Nass Valley that meets the requirements of our treaty. It is the first priority of our government. We will not continue to see our way of life eroded and to consign our children and grandchildren to a way of life without meaningful opportunities, particularly in the face of a policy decision by a government that is contrary to our interests. Under our treaty, the Nisga’a Nation decides what we do. With that, thank you.
Larry Marsden, Head Chief, Gitsegukla Hereditary Chiefs: As Chief Guxsen of Gitsegukla, I am here to represent the Gitsegukla chiefs of the Fireweed Clan.
In 2004, Calvin Helin and his group came to Gitsegukla to tell us what were their pipeline plans. They know that the Gitxsan don’t want the pipeline near their territory. Calvin informed us that they would try to move the pipeline as far away as possible from the Gitxsan territory. He also told us that the government doesn’t consult any First Nations and that they would consult us. The Gitsegukla chiefs really liked what Calvin said, so we signed up with them and support them.
If this pipeline doesn’t happen, the government will ship oil by CN Rail, which is really risky for Gitxsan, especially in Gitsegukla, because we do all our fishing along the Skeena River. We know how bitumen explodes if a derail was to happen. All of us in Gitsegukla we fish along the Skeena, and the CN Rail runs along the Skeena. If the train derails while we’re checking our nets, the bitumen oil will blow us right out of the river. We rely on our fish. All Gitxsan rely on fish. Without fish, we would all starve. I encouraged James Kennedy who is here with Eagle Spirit to push this project because, like I said, if the pipeline doesn’t happen then there will be a big risk with CN trains hauling bitumen.
That’s about it. Thank you.
Gary Alexcee, Hereditary Chief Gingolx, Vice Chair of the B.C. First Nations Council Energy Corridor Group, Eagle Spirit Energy, as an individual: I thank the Tsimshian Nation for allowing us to be here to speak to the Senate Committee on Transportation.
First, we’re really against Bill C-48 because of what it proposes to all First Nations of the Eagle Spirit Energy Corridor Group, 35 First Nations to be exact. We’re looking to the Saskatchewan First Nations and the Manitoba First Nations to joining our group. We want to transport light crude oil, out of Grassy Point, seven minutes away from getting directly to the ocean and to the market and not going near any other lands in the area.
To refresh everyone’s minds, a port study done in 1978 on the North Coast. It was deemed to be the safest port in British Columbia at that time. This leaves the south coast at Burnaby. We don’t have to go near there or touch anything in that area because it’s already congested with the cruise ships, other oil tankers, et cetera. Vancouver is a busy port, whereas if you come through the port of Prince Rupert we have the ability. We’re working with the Alyeska people. Those are the people that have refined the safekeeping of ships. We would be creating so much work and employment with this oil pipeline and the shipping from the Port of Grassy Point in Prince Rupert.
You’re going to create employment, training and further education for our kids. Right now, under the Indian Act, you’ve got nothing. You have nothing there to support what we’re doing. We have a 90 per cent unemployment in all those First Nations corridors that I told you about. It is very important that we stop Bill C-48. That’s one of the most important reasons we want that to be stopped. There was no consultation by Minister of Transport Marc Garneau with any of the First Nations about stopping Bill C-48.
We understand that the U.S. wants to stop our oil shipments going from the West Coast because they want to lock up Alberta and oil people and go through them, where we lose economic value. That’s not very good for Canada, whereas the ESE pipeline going through at the corridor group backs it up.
You will have many people employed and energy there. The funds will be there. We don’t need to depend on Indian Affairs. This is what the federal government does. It keeps the First Nations dependent upon them, giving them little handouts, little bits here and little bits there.
We have people in the First Nations group that are part of Treaty 6 and part of Treaty 8. They said they don’t even get peanuts from what their treaty has done for them. It is 2019, and they’ve had their treaties before the Nisga’a Treaty was put in place in 2000. This is the lack that the federal government doesn’t think about. They never consulted with any of the First Nations along the corridor or in the interior of British Columbia.
We respect what their concerns are in the First Nations group. We have environmental people that are First Nations who know how to look after the land, contain the rivers, maintain the trapping areas and maintain their food sustenance. This is what’s important for all of us.
Along the coast right now, there are hardly any fishermen. There is a lack of boats and a lack of licences. There are no opportunities there. You can’t survive on one licence. You need several other licences to be accompanied by each of the fishing villages. I am speaking totally of Lax Kw’Alaams and Kitsumkalum. There used to be a thriving fishing community. There is nothing there now or very little. The forestry is gone. The provincial government made sure that there was nothing there leftover for any of the impacts it caused by logging it off, and that’s it.
The impact of Bill C-48 is totally tremendous. This leads to the safety of what we want to do with First Nations in terms of the training that goes along with Bill C-69. I want to finish because this is very clear. We have training components here that rely on the land, shipping, caretaking and tugboat operations. Those should be certified by the opportunities we’re going to have. Working with Alyeska, the federal government and their new bill, we can take Bill C-69, the Ocean Protection Plan and improve upon it. They haven’t done that. They haven’t mentioned that. Thank you.
Senator Simons: I am embarrassed to admit how little I understand the intricacies of the geography of this place. I wanted to ask Ms. Clayton, first of all: Do the Nisga’a have access to tidewater from their treaty lands? How far is Nisga’a territory from Grassy Point, which I understand is about 30 kilometres north of Prince Rupert?
Ms. Clayton: The Nisga’a Nation has a community situated at the mouth of the Nass, the Nisga’a community of Git Gingolx.
Senator Simons: I guess I am trying to figure out if you would want to have a pipeline terminus on Nisga’a territory. If there were a pipeline terminus at Grassy Point, are you hoping that it would have some collateral benefits for your nation?
Ms. Clayton: Yes, and what the Nisga’a Nation wants is to be consulted by our treaty partner to get into meaningful discussions of such projects.
Senator Simons: I made that question too complicated. Do you want to have a port? Could you have deep-water access from the Nass inlet, or is that too shallow a place for oil tankers to come? Would they have to go someplace else like Grassy Point?
Ms. Clayton: Within the Nisga’a Nation we have deep-water portability.
Senator Simons: Mr. Alexcee, is Grassy Point the preferred location, or are there other places you could go farther north?
Mr. Alexcee: Yes, Grassy Point is the preferred area of the Tsimshian Nation as the open port because it’s the safest area to transport crude oil to market.
We have looked at other areas for deep-sea ports. We do have other avenues. We’ve talked to Alaska. We’ve talked to the landowners in Hyder, Alaska, already. The governor has given us an MOU to work with. That will be out of Observatory Inlet, which is a deep-sea port as well.
To answer the question you asked of the Nisga’a Nation president, Gingolx is a natural deep-sea port already. It has been established as a port.
Senator Simons: On whose territory is Grassy Narrows?
Mr. Alexcee: I just told you it was Tsimshian Nation. Lax Kw’Alaams.
Senator Patterson: I just had distributed some maps that were prepared by the Library of Parliament, showing the Nisga’a lands and the proposed exclusion zone.
I would like to thank Ms. Clayton for her presentation. I understand that one of your concerns about Bill C-48 is that it would ban tanker traffic without any environmental hearing whatsoever. It would preclude any environmental hearing.
I understand that the Nisga’a have control over their own lands and can manage their own lands. You would be in the driver’s seat if there was a proposal that would utilize your lands. You would be able to determine the conditions following a thorough review.
Is one of your concerns about Bill C-48 that it would preclude any review of any project and limit control that you might otherwise have?
Ms. Clayton: The main concern the Nisga’a Nation has with Bill C-48 is that there was no meaningful consultations on how Bill C-48 would play out and the fact that it was included in Nisga’a territory, the Nass area, with no consultations. We could have worked together to find that balance.
Senator Patterson: Could you describe your Aboriginal rights to the land and waters and whether those rights are impacted by this legislation?
Ms. Clayton: The rights of the Nisga’a Nation to the land and the waters are impacted. It’s a very serious impact. We take that very seriously because the Nisga’a treaty is a constitutionally protected treaty. Our treaty sets out our rights and our title. For the nation to proceed, we would have to convey that we would need to sit down with our treaty partner. It has been deeply impacted by the particular bill that is the question you asked.
Senator Cormier: My question is for Ms. Clayton. You spoke about lack of consultation and non-respect of treaties. You also spoke about possible amendments to the bill.
To make sure that consultation takes place and continues with the Nisga’a Nation and other First Nations, would an amendment stating that there must be a periodic revision of the bill to ensure proper assessment and consultation be a good addition to the bill?
Ms. Clayton: The Nisga’a Nation participated in the dialogue initiated by Minister Garneau in the summer of 2016. The initiative appeared to be directed at the starting conservation about these matters with local communities and First Nations.
Given the general nature of discussions, the Nisga’a Nation reasonably expected, once the government considered the feedback and developed a proposed approach to the regulatory framework, that in-depth consultation with the Nisga’a Nation on the proposed approach would follow. This is what we wanted. This way proceeding would be consistent, not only with the law, but also with the promises your government has repeatedly made to Indigenous people, most recently in adoption of the modern treaties implementation framework by deputy ministers in accordance with the 2015 cabinet directive.
Senator Cormier: Do you think that periodic revision of the bill could be part of the solution to continue conversation and consultation with your nation, if a periodic revision were added to the bill?
Ms. Clayton: Yes, we would appreciate a meeting.
Senator Smith: I have a question on economics. I am trying to get an understanding. Mr. Alexcee, you were very strong in your response about the unemployment situation. I am not sure, but is it just your territory or is it in other territories and other nations down the West Coast?
We ask the question to try to understand what economic situation exists right now for many of members and nations. It seems to be an elusive answer, always tied to the fact that they have their salmon to eat twice a week. They have food, but what other things do the people want? What’s the particular situation? Is the unemployment as bad as you say it is? If I understand correctly, 90 per cent unemployment is a very serious issue.
What is the economic side of many of the nations? Could you speak for other nations that you may have at least observed besides your own?
Mr. Alexcee: As I said in my opening remarks, I am speaking for 35 First Nations that are members of the Eagle Spirit Energy corridor. Along that corridor is 90 per cent unemployment. That includes oil, gas and the fishing industry on the coast. Other industries are affected by the lack of fishing in each of the communities. There’s no more net mending. There are no more mechanical or electronic services to take care of their vessels anymore. There is no maintenance upkeep on the vessels because you don’t have the dollars for specific fisheries in salmon, halibut, herring, crab and other shellfish. Those are the things that I am talking about. They have repercussions.
None of that is available anymore because of the lack of opportunity. The logging industry is completely bare bones. There are no more operators.
Senator Smith: The 35 nations that are conceptually part of the group, how far do they go geographically? Can you go from the origin point where the oil comes in right across with bands, members and partners to the drop-off point?
Mr. Alexcee: That’s correct. They start from Fort Mac, Alberta, where the tar sands are right now, right through that corridor group where we’ve laid it out on the map that was presented to you in Ottawa. I don’t have it with me today, but it comes right from there to the coast.
Mr. Alexcee: We’d rather ship oil than have it come through a railway. There’s too much risk in the railway issue.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I want to clarify something first. I have a map here. I want to be sure that you are part of the Gingolx tribe and that it is one of the tribes in the Nisga’a Nation. Do I understand correctly?
Mr. Alexcee: You understand correctly.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Grassy Point is part of the Lax Kw’Alaams territory, but you’re part of the Nisga’a Nation. Why aren’t you promoting the terminal to be on Nisga’a Nation?
I am just trying to understand the relationship between tribes. I am sorry if my question is really basic.
Mr. Alexcee: You’re trying to start trouble, are you?
Senator Miville-Dechêne: No, no. I am trying to understand geography. I have this map with 100 tribes. It’s really complicated.
Mr. Alexcee: I can’t promote the Nisga’a Nation territory because I am not in the government. We speak to the government of the Nisga’a Nation to see where we will be locating, if it happens in the Port of Gingolx, the Nass River Valley, the Observatory Inlet or the Portland Canal, the watershed areas of the Nisga’a Nation. Because they’re not partners with Eagle Spirit or part of the 35 First Nations, we’re inviting them to come and join us and then we’ll talk. Is that what you want to hear?
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I’d like you to be a bit more specific about job creation. We’ve heard testimony to the fact that the job creation is essentially while the pipeline is being constructed. They’re short-term jobs, and obviously the investors will get more money.
Are you an investor? Who is financing Eagle Spirit? We don’t know. I don’t know. Who’s financing it? How can you be so sure that there will be jobs for your people? Do you have agreements? Do you have signed agreements?
Mr. Alexcee: We are currently working on that. We have investors that are talking and knocking on our door. Job creation is part of that rebuilding of the refineries and the gas line. There will be an oil line, gas line, naphtha and propane. All of those will be shipped from that refinery when it’s established. There are several places along the corridor where we will have a refinery and can expand that. We have very good people that have been looking at this and scientific background to prove that it’s the cleanest operation you’ll have.
Senator MacDonald: I find this project very interesting from a conceptual point of view. I am curious, though, about the geography and the place that was chosen for the terminus.
Is the terminus chosen because it’s the easiest to sell politically within the native communities, or is there a better place for the terminus to be that is more difficult to sell?
Mr. Alexcee: It’s not more difficult to sell, but it is the safest and the shortest route from the pipeline to where it’s going to go to market. That’s why we’re pushing Grassy Point.
We are looking at two other ports as well. We’re still working on those. We already have an MOU from the governor of Alaska to do the work, and Canada will miss out altogether. Only the First Nations will benefit. It’s Canada’s loss if they want to push through Bill C-48 and Bill C-69.
Senator MacDonald: When you look at this map, you realize how close we are to Alaska and the American authority. We’re very close.
You mentioned that there were two other ports you were considering. Do you want to elaborate on that a bit?
Mr. Alexcee: At this time, no. I can’t because we’re still in discussions and agreements with our investors.
Senator Gagné: Mr. Marsden, the fears you’re expressing around train derailments and the effect they could have on your rivers and your environment are the same fears I was hearing from a lot of the coastal nations pertaining to oil spills if ever tankers were allowed.
Let’s consider the following scenario. I ask the three panellists to answer. If there is no moratorium, the Eagle Spirit Pipeline is built, tankers are allowed and there is a serious spill, how would your communities be affected by an oil spill?
Mr. Marsden: We’ve seen a derailment in Montreal and how bitumen explodes. That’s what we’re really concerned about.
Senator Gagné: I was describing a scenario. Let’s say that tankers are allowed, that you would be allowed to ship through the Eagle Spirit Pipeline and there would be a port. If there would be a spill, would your communities be affected and how would they be affected?
Mr. Marsden: Like I said earlier, Calvin Helin told us that they’re going to try to move the pipeline as far up north as possible, away from our territory and our communities, if Eagle Spirit were to get the pipeline.
Senator Gagné: But someone could be affected.
Mr. Marsden: Yes.
Senator Gagné: Do you have the same answer?
Mr. Alexcee: We are moving it away from the Gitsegukla area and the title of land because we are looking at the shortest route from point A to point B to the coast, and the direct line from there to B is the safest route. That’s the best way you can build a pipeline, which will probably encompass liquefied natural gas, naphtha, propane and all the rest of it coming out of those areas to be on the coast.
The Chair: Is the oil moving now on CN via Skeena all the way to Vancouver? Is that what is happening now?
Mr. Alexcee: Currently, some oil is being shipped by rail in the tanker cars. They’re going to Rupert. They’re already offloaded into bunker containers and then loaded. In the past three years, they’ve had spills in the Skeena area, but they were lucky they were wheat or sulphur. There was some harm done to those specific areas along the Skeena route from Kitsumkalum to Prince Rupert.
The Chair: None of it is moving south to the Vancouver port.
Mr. Alexcee: Nothing, not that I am aware of.
The Chair: CP is doing that.
Mr. Alexcee: That’s correct.
Senator Dasko: As a Senate, we have three things we can do right now. We can pass it, we can defeat this bill or we can amend it. I’d like to ask a question of each one of you. Obviously, you don’t want us to pass it. I got that part. What would you have us do? Would you have us defeat it or amend it and, if amend it, how? I would like to hear from all of you, please.
Mr. Alexcee: I’d prefer you defeat it. If you amend it, you would have to amend it so that we would be allowed to ship crude oil out of the port of Prince Rupert or Grassy Point.
I would rather see you defeat it because, first, there was no real consultation and, second, the Constitution states that you have to do real consultation with First Nations.
Senator Dasko: Mr. Marsden, defeat it or amend it and, if amend it, how should we do that?
Mr. Marsden: I agree with Mr. Alexcee, only because it will create jobs for our people. There are a lot of our people who are unemployed right now.
Ms. Clayton: As I stated in my presentation, we are looking for an amendment to exclude the Nass area from the bill.
Senator Smith: I have a quick question on response time.
The Chair: I am sorry, but next is Senator Patterson.
Senator Smith: Please, I especially stand beside an ex-running back in high school from Grand Valley.
Senator Patterson: On the amendment that the Nisga’a would propose, you’re already very close to Alaska, as I understand it. The amendment that you mentioned excluding Nass lands would have a result of simply, slightly modifying the northern boundary of the proposed moratorium zone. It would make almost no difference in the proposed moratorium zone, which ends at the U.S. border near your lands.
This would be a very minor modification to the bill. Would I be correct in stating that?
Ms. Clayton: Yes, and we want to have an audience with the bill writers on Bill C-48 so that we can work together. You’re right.
Senator Patterson: You feel your rights protected under the Constitution have been ignored and violated by this unilateral action without consultation from the Government of Canada. May I ask, are you taking any steps to enforce your Aboriginal rights so as to have them respected where they were not?
Ms. Clayton: Yes, we have been diligently following up respect for the treaty. We’ve been to Ottawa many times. We’ve been putting up our hands in the face of all of the challenges to the treaty to say that we would like to meet with our treaty partners to discuss matters such as Bill C-48. We are currently involved with the national group of modern day treaties to take a look at the challenges that we’ve faced with implementing modern day treaties.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Following up on your question, I want to be sure because I didn’t quite understand, Ms. Clayton. You’re saying it would take a slight modification in the moratorium but, in the way I see the map and I see your nation, you would also need a corridor in the water. You would need the whole northern border of the moratorium to be changed if you wanted to use the waterway up to the sea or up to international waters. It’s not just a small modification. I wanted that to be clear.
Ms. Clayton: Thank you for that point. It’s a matter that requires discussion, as I’ve stated before. We won’t be able to reach any kind of discussion or agreement on possible modifications or amendments. We are, however, open to sitting down with Canada and with the minister to take a look at how the amendment would look. I cannot say how it’s going to look right now.
The Chair: Thank you very much, witnesses.
For our third panel this morning we are pleased to welcome from Maple Leaf Adventures, Kevin Smith, CEO and President of Wilderness Tourism Association of B.C.; from Stewart World Port, Brad Pettit, President and Director; and from Resource Works Society, Stewart Muir, Executive Director.
Thank you for attending our meeting today. We will start with Kevin Smith.
Kevin Smith, Chief Executive Officer, President, Wilderness Tourism Association of British Columbia, Maple Leaf Adventures: This is a B.C. business perspective on Bill C-48, respectfully submitted on behalf of Wilderness Tourism Association of British Columbia and our members, as well as my own company, Maple Leaf Adventures.
I’ll bring everybody back to June 2010 during the Gulf of Mexico’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Southern Mississippi’s charter boat industry was in free fall. Business crashed an average of 70 per cent due to that spill. The statistics caught my attention. Some 70 per cent declines are disastrous numbers for any industry. This was a coastal tourism industry very similar to the one we have here in coastal B.C.
I own a growing B.C. expedition cruise company that operates in the Great Bear Rainforest in Haida Gwaii. I also represent the entire Wilderness Tourism Association of B.C. as the president. We are part of the emerging eco-adventure tourism industry in B.C., a conservation-based economy. One of the hottest and fastest growing regions is the North Coast.
Back in 2010, when I saw the statistic, my team did some research. We found that rescinding the oil tanker traffic moratorium here would risk wildlife, ecosystem health and local food fisheries. You are no doubt already aware, according to studies by reputable firms and universities, that it would pose a great risk for long-term damage to British Columbia’s economy in the event of a large oil spill.
One of the sectors it threatens most is tourism. At $18 billion, tourism is a major industry in B.C. It has grown more than the general economy in recent years. The wilderness tourism sector alone grew at 8 per cent per year for the last decade. It employs thousands of skilled British Columbians and three-quarters of the businesses in our association are over 10 years old. Many are much, much older.
Depending on whose projections you use, wilderness tourism in B.C. will produce between $600 billion and $5.6 trillion over the next 50 years, half of it on the coast. Our Great Bear Rainforest area is one of Canada’s hottest merging destinations. The potential for sustainable growth of eco-adventure tourism here is great. National Geographic Traveler designated it as one of the world’s 20 best destinations. Our sector’s businesses have won dozens of the world’s top awards for what we offer.
Our national tourism marketing organization, Destination Canada, explains that our industry’s experiential holidays in the natural world are a key element of Canada’s success in the global tourism market. This is a valuable long-term industry, not just for locals but for all of Canada. Whether we are luxury lodges, expedition cruise companies, kayak guides or fishing outfitters, our product is the glorious and unspoiled nature of the B.C. coast. We thrive in intact fully functioning ecosystems. The ocean food chain supports humpback, orca and fin whales. Sea lions and dolphins regularly churn the water beside our boats in a frenzy of feeding. Bears along the shoreline fatten on shellfish and salmon. They provide a sought-after chance to photograph wildlife in their natural habitat. The inlets and reefs rich in marine life provides some of the best diving in the world. With one large oil spill, this spectacular resource and hundreds of small businesses would be wiped out.
More than that, our entire tourism industry and related industries would be affected. Study after study shows that the impact of a large oil spill extends the location of the crisis and beyond the resolution date of the crisis. This is due to brand damage and ongoing traveller misconceptions. If a large spill tainted the north and central coasts of B.C., tourism to all of B.C. would be affected for years.
For example, after major spills in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico people cancelled holidays to those entire regions, not just to the oil-affected area. In the case of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico which lasted from April to July 2010, tourism was decimated. TripAdvisor searches for popular destinations there declined by 48 per cent to 65 per cent that summer. It was estimated that the oil spill would cost the Gulf Coast communities $22.7 billion over three years in an economy where tourism is a major economic driver.
In Alaska, site of the Exxon Valdez spill, 40 per cent of businesses in the affected region reported significant or complete losses. Visitor centre inquiries fell 55 per cent in the year after the spill. Furthermore, 27 per cent of businesses in parts of Alaska with no oil spill reported significant or moderate losses.
Now, I am a business owner.
The Chair: We’re running out of time in a half-minute from now.
Mr. Smith: Thank you. I do not believe in stopping the market economy or overregulating it, but I absolutely believe in environmental and social responsibility. That includes responsibility to businesses and ecosystems that exist here.
B.C.’s nature-based tourism businesses have tremendous opportunity, as travellers increasingly seek to see the planet’s last wild places, to invest in and to pursue that opportunity. We need certainty. The uncertainty for the B.C. coast and this industry from allowing oil tanker traffic in the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii regions would be an unacceptable risk to the future generations who will continue to build this world-class industry that is important for B.C. and Canada. Thank you.
Brad Pettit, President and Director, Stewart World Port: Welcome to British Columbia, and thank you for letting me speak at this event. Stewart World Port is the most northerly western Canadian port in Canada, and we’re on Nisga’a traditional territory. We’re a private company. To date, we’ve invested $75 million. We started construction in 2015 and went into operation in 2016. The funding has all been from the private sector — one individual.
Currently, we handle break bulk cargo, stuff that isn’t containerized, such as oil and gas cargo. We’ve done some modules for the Redwater project in Alberta. We’ve done wind projects for B.C. We’ve handled lots of mining equipment and stuff like that. It is usually heavy stuff. We also signed a long-term contract with Lafarge cement to service the mining sector in northwest B.C.
There has been a lot of talk about energy projects coming through Stewart in the last several years. We’ve talked to LNG proponents and LNG investors, but lately it has been all about oil. Right now we don’t have a rail into Stewart. The closest rail is Kitwanga. It’s 216 kilometres away. We would love an opportunity to have a pipeline into Stewart. Where Eagle Spirit was talking about going to Alaska, I could stand on my dock and watch the tankers roll out of there if that were to ever happen. I am in Canada; I am in British Columbia.
Even a modest one tanker a month or two a month would be a big thing for Stewart and for our port. It would be huge for our port. The revenues in that alone are hundreds of millions of dollars if you can look from the wellhead to the vessel. It’s big dollars and it’s a big opportunity for the local communities.
All of the discussions to date have been really preliminary in nature because the pending tanker ban stops it in its tracks. No one will commit a bunch of energy and money looking at these projects when there’s no opportunity for them to actually take place. I know first hand that this represents hundreds of local jobs, right at home for the local communities and the First Nations communities. I came from the oil and gas industry. They’re good paying jobs. They’re full-time jobs. You can send your kid to school with them. You can raise a family with them. I know that first hand because that’s where I grew up, in the oil and gas industry, and now I operate a port in Stewart. Some of these local communities are depressed. There are very few full-time good paying jobs in Stewart. Most of the work is seasonal. Just a few jobs in Stewart would make a big difference to the local economies, everything. This is an opportunity that I’d really like to be able to explore with the Nisga’a Nation, local communities and investors. I think there’s an opportunity there that we’d be missing if the tanker ban were to be approved.
Stewart Muir, Executive Director, Resource Works Society: Resource Work is a not-for-profit society based in Vancouver. We’ve existed for five years. Our mandate is to share with British Columbians information about the benefits of a responsible natural resource sector in the economy. My personal background is as a journalist for over 35 years. In 1997, a team I headed at the Vancouver Sun, won an award for the telling of the Nisga’a Treaty story in our newspaper. Storytelling is one of the things I like to do.
I am not here with polemic or a particular recommendation, although I do think you should be looking at a corridor carve out. I would like to give you some context, visually speaking, and that is the purpose of the book you have in front of you. I probably have about 30 seconds per spread for the 12 spreads here. Two facing pages is a spread. I’ve called this “Tracking Oil Tanker Movements in British Columbia.” Anyone who wants to see it can look at resourceworks.com. It is right there. These are comparisons and context. I’ve used some tools available to people who follow tankers for commercial and other reasons. It is tanker traffic type of tracking information. What I have done is drawn from aggregated commercial information.
I want to start with the notion of the world-class safety system, of which Minister Garneau has spoken so eloquently. The Oceans Protection Plan that is being implemented is one. As the page 2 excerpt says that the government has enhanced marine safety and reduced the risk of spills to address gaps that have existed for far too long. That’s a good, strong, clear statement. On the facing page, you see, just a few days ago on April 4, an animation generated from marine traffic software showing the Erik Spirit crude oil tanker going through the Second Narrows under the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge. It is escorted by three tugboats. One of the things that Minister Garneau speaks of there is the strengthening of the system.
As this goes out once the Trans Mountain twinning is complete, there will be more tugs to protect these tankers and get them out to sea safely. There will be two pilots, not one pilot, all the way out to a farther point in the Strait of Juan de Fuca than before. Many other enhancements are being brought in as part of the twinning. It’s a very good story.
Flipping the pages to 4 and 5, I have a word on pilotage safety record. I know this has come up. You’ve heard from pilots, but perhaps I could encapsulate a national picture here. It is one of very good safety records for piloting vessels. It’s also an improvement of that very good record. We see the most recent data for 2017 that I was able to secure. For Pacific Pilotage Authority, they have a 99.97 per cent incident-free rate. That’s up slightly a couple of hundredths of a percentage from the last time I had data for in 2009. For Great Lakes Pilotage Authority it is the same. It is the same story in the Laurentian and Atlantic authorities, an increase in that safety rate.
Flipping the page, it seems that your committee has heard from those who have spoken of a double standard. I think that’s true if you look at the East Coast. You have, for example, the work of the Tanker Safety Panel Secretariat done for Transport Canada in 2013. That’s on the left, on page 6. There’s a map there showing environmental sensitivity of the St. Lawrence and the outlet into the Atlantic. You can see there is very high environmental sensitivity in many parts of that. On the right is an actual picture from a couple of days ago on April 6. I’ll explain this because it recurs on some of the following pages. These red lines represent all of the tanker trips during the year 2017 tracked by marine traffic. Then the red objects are actual ships, either moving or anchored. The round ones are anchored. The moving ones are pointed. Those are all the tankers that were moving around Canadian waters on April 6 when this map was generated. You can see there’s a lot of them and you can compare it to the environmental sensitivity areas. Isn’t it interesting to see that?
On pages 8 and 9, if you look at the north end of the Island of Montreal, the term we use here is persistent oils issue in an area of great environmental sensitivity very close to a national park. It’s a provincial park, but it’s called the Parc national des Îles-de-Boucherville across the river. It is interesting to look at.
I am going to move quickly for the sake of time, but you have this document to reflect on if you want to. Pages 10 and 11 show the Gulf of Mexico. Those are oil tankers on the right hand of this map. I counted these. There are more than 430 oil tankers floating around on April 14. It was over the weekend.
The Chair: It is hot off the press.
Mr. Muir: Indeed, it is. Yes, sir.
There’s a lot of activity. This would be how many years’ worth of West Coast tankers in one day, one snapshot? There is a little table there showing world-wide tanker spills. It’s part of a trend of greater safety. It is just like in the 1970s when you got on an airplane and maybe thought, “Should I get on this plane? Will it be safe?” Nowadays you don’t think about that. It’s really the same with tankers; they are so safe.
On pages 12 and 13 is an example. I’ve narrowed in on Venezuela. Look to the right. This is one of their major oil ports on the Caribbean Sea. Those are tanker tracks over the year 2017. All of those round circles, the red ones, are ships sitting there a couple of days ago. What are they shipping? Where is it going? I’ll tell you what. That’s Orinoco oil. That’s heavy oil. It’s like oil sands, bitumen. It is really the same thing. It comes from a different process. Where is it going? I have fresh data from TankerTrackers.com probably showing 300,000 barrels a day. It is as much as Trans Mountain Pipeline ships to the coast today, 300,000 barrels. That’s how much goes just to India in heavy oil right now. I don’t know whether it’s going out to the Suez or Panama. We could look into that if you wanted, but it’s interesting. China is number two. It’s getting over a couple of hundred thousand. That’s the same oil that they want from here because they need it for things. It’s great for making jet fuel, diesel. Also, they can pave roads with it. Even with electric cars, if they go 100 per cent electric cars in China, what do you think they’ll be driving on? I suspect it will be paved roads.
On pages 14 and 15, I often hear from my European friends, “Oh, you terrible Canadians and your oil tankers.” Well, hold up a mirror, folks. Here we are. I’d like to go to the next one. The Pacific century on pages 16 and 17 is really the most important one. On the right, you have a little snapshot of actual oil tankers on April 14. There must be thousands there; there are many. I’ve taken Singapore as one of the inset boxes. You can go in there and then zoom in again, and there are two inset maps that you can see. There are probably 25 tankers in that little box. They’re moving around. This is a place that has typhoons and cyclones, just like we have storms here. Isn’t it funny to look at these tracks? Again, the lines are from 2017.
There is a note on the change in daily oil use on the left. It is more than Canada produces today. India will increase its daily oil use by five million barrels in the years 2017 to 2040, according to BP Energy Outlook, 2019, published in February by British Petroleum. There’s something to think about there. They seem to do it very safely, don’t they? I mean people go to Thailand and enjoy the sunshine and the sand. Yet, look at what’s happening around them.
I’ll come to an end very quickly here, but perhaps you could look at pages 18 and 19. I know you’ve lots of data on the northwest, but this is my two cents’ worth. I have identified five ships that were the commercial ships moving around on April 12. They’re carrying a combined capacity of 9.8 million litres of fuel oil. I know you’ve heard from another witness that it’s possibly easier for such a ship to spill its fuel contents than for a tanker. That’s just a snapshot. There are not very many ships compared to Singapore.
On pages 20 and 21 is the crux of the matter. It’s so very safe here that in fact even the Tanker Safety Panel Secretariat found that the environmental risk index for cargo crude spill is very low in the North and very high in the South. Yet, we are talking about growing it in the South and not doing any in the North.
Just moving to the final spread on pages 22 and 23, that’s the global picture. Tankers in 2019 are a common daily method of moving a necessary fuel or feedstock for any number of industrial uses all around the world. There’s not very much of that activity on the West Coast or the North Coast of Canada. Those, again, are the 2017 trips you see in the lines. I think it’s important for the government in Ottawa to remember the Barton Report.
Audience Member: Time’s up.
Mr. Muir: Is time up?
The Chair: Keep going.
Mr. Muir: Thank you. The Barton Report has urged Canada to position itself as a global trading hub by strengthening links around the world, and 65 per cent of our GDP comes from trade, which is quite a contrast to the United States where it’s only 30 per cent. We really need trade.
In summary, I would say that this is some information that perhaps will help to inform wise decision making in whatever it is you choose to do, and I thank you for your time.
Senator Simons: Mr. Smith, I am going to have to come back to take one of your tours because our visit here has just been too short and this place is too beautiful. I take your point. I remember when Alberta had its mad cow problem that tourism dropped, and you couldn’t explain to people that the cows were not going to bite them.
My question is for Mr. Pettit. Your port is new to me. Could you tell me where it is, exactly? How does it access tidewater? Is it a deep-water port such that you could safely anchor big oil tankers there? Is it actually a plausible place where one could create a corridor, or is your port really too small for the kind of tanker traffic that something like Eagle Spirit would require?
Mr. Pettit: Stewart World Port is at the north end of the Portland Canal. The Alaska-B.C. border runs right down the middle of the canal. It has been used for shipping for hundreds of years. Mining ships, concentrate ships, and what have you, are going there now. It is a deep-water port. Ships anchor offshore right now. There could be a ship there right now. I don’t know for sure. They load logs and whatnot. The channel is very deep and there are very few navigational hazards. It’s calm as well.
Senator Simons: We heard yesterday of one of the challenges with Prince Rupert. Some of the witnesses told us that it was hard to anchor there because of the depth of the water and the hardness of the bottom of the water. Could you talk about your port in comparison to the Prince Rupert port that way?
Mr. Pettit: Yes, the base of the seabed in the Stewart harbour is gravel. Ships anchor there and it’s calm. The winds are calm. They’re always north-south, as well. There’s no west-east winds because the mountains are 7,000 feet high on both sides. It’s a good anchorage.
Senator Simons: Do you have maps or visuals you could provide to the clerk for our later use? I don’t mean right this second.
Mr. Pettit: I can get them for sure, yes.
Senator MacDonald: Mr. Muir, that’s a very interesting deck of information that you have there. As somebody from the East Coast, it doesn’t really surprise me what is in there actually. We’re used to managing petroleum.
Out here, we hear a lot of fear of Bill C-48 in terms of Nathan E. Stewart, the Queen of the North and the Shimshur. Of course, none of these ships were tankers, let alone double-hulled tankers. Bill C-48 does nothing to address anything that could happen from an incident with ships of this nature.
Do large container ships regularly ply these waters along the North Coast, and how much fuel can some of these ships hold that are single hulled?
Mr. Muir: I am afraid I don’t have any information on the traffic numbers, but when I looked at the specific ships that were actually calling on Prince Rupert, on the day I looked there were bulk carriers. There is a container port at Prince Rupert. I am sure you’ve seen it. A bulk carrier, the Shoryu, is shown on page 19 of the presentation. That one contained 3.8 million litres of marine diesel.
Globally, the IMO 2020 is a move away from some of the denser, dirtier marine fuels. There will be more diesel in future. It’s not necessarily the case that the fuels, should they be spilled, would be as deleterious as they might be today. Nevertheless, 3.8 million litres of marine diesel is a lot to spill if there was an accident.
Senator MacDonald: It was interesting to look at your piloting safety records. I mean, piloting is a way of life on all the major ports. We heard some concerns from the Port of Prince Rupert and others that the government did not conduct a scientific risk analysis of the area covered by the present moratorium, the proposed ban or the list of products banned under Bill C-48.
Have you followed the government’s scientific analysis leading up to their proposal of Bill C-48? Do you think that bill is adequately supported by science?
Mr. Muir: I was struck by the minister’s comments to this committee that the precautionary principle seemed to be the driving force. That could be theoretically imagined in future as what they’re managing for rather than what their own scientists and technical advisers are telling them. To me, that is a peculiar element of this whole discussion.
Senator MacDonald: Their own scientists are reticent to say too much at the table.
Senator Dasko: Mr. Muir, thank you for these beautiful maps. They are really quite stunning, and I am very happy to look at them.
Mr. Muir: You’re most welcome.
Senator Dasko: Mr. Pettit, my question is for you. Yesterday, we were listening to the mayor of Prince Rupert who came to speak to us, Mayor Lee Brain. He said to us that the benefits of a pipeline terminus in Prince Rupert would be minimal. He also said that about 20 jobs would be created and that there would be no revenue benefit whatsoever for his community if a pipeline were to have a terminus, I guess the plan would be, outside the city limits.
I was very struck with what he said. I wonder what your comments would be about that. He was quite clear that the actual benefits of jobs outside the initial construction period and the revenue benefits would be almost nothing. I’d like your reaction to that and to another thing he said that Prince Rupert is able to benefit now from a lot of other economic activity that’s going on. Lots of other opportunities exist now with the moratorium in place, benefits in shipping and other industries that are developing there.
I am wondering if those are opportunities for your community right now. You’re obviously taking advantage of some of them. Would there not be other opportunities now that your community has that would not be dependent on the flow of tanker traffic? I’d like your response to what he said. He was quite strong, I would say.
Mr. Pettit: The first question was about the terminal jobs. I am not going to argue that there may be 20 jobs at a terminal. That could very well be true. I always look at the jobs for all of Canada. Twenty jobs in a place like Stewart is a lot of full-time employment. They’re service jobs too. Service companies come in to service the terminal.
I don’t know how they’re structured. They have a port authority there. We don’t. We’re structured significantly, probably, different from Stewart. On every ton of product that goes through Stewart, a royalty is paid to the district of Stewart. On every piece of cargo that goes through our port, the district gets revenue. They would be wealthier if oil were ever to go through Stewart.
Senator Dasko: Are there other opportunities?
Mr. Pettit: Yes. We have always wanted to be a multi-purpose port. We would like to do bulk, mining concentrate, and continue to do break bulk. We would like to do all of those things. I think there’s opportunity to do all of those things. We’re not anywhere near as advanced as Prince Rupert, but we are trying to get all those types of cargo. We’d like to pursue all cargo. All we’re really asking for here is to be able to pursue them, oil being one of them.
Senator Patterson: I too would like to thank Mr. Muir for the excellent information. I would also like to ask Mr. Pettit about the Port of Stewart.
You said that you can almost see Hyder, Alaska, from Stewart.
Mr. Pettit: I can see it.
Senator Patterson: I have heard proponents of the Eagle Spirit Pipeline and Calvin Helin. By the way, they are to produce upgraded oil with a very low carbon footprint. It will leave the heavy metal and most of the CO2 in the ground. What if Canada won’t allow shipment of their product from Canadian waters? We also heard from another witness today that they have an MOU with Alaska, particularly with the Port of Hyder. They will establish there, and the benefits will go to the U.S. rather than to Canada. I guess the tankers would sail down the same channel that you’re in, except on the U.S. side.
If we were to consider a modest amendment to the exclusion zone to move the border slightly south from the Alaska border to include Stewart and possibly a terminus on Nisga’a Nass lands or even Grassy Point, would that provide an opportunity that you feel Bill C-48 right now prevents you from having, if we were to move a slight amendment to the north boundary of the moratorium zone?
Mr. Pettit: That would meet the needs of Stewart World Port. I said before that we are on Nisga’a traditional territory. Although I would like to see it at Stewart, I would like to see others have that opportunity as well. I’d like to see it go farther south than just Stewart. Yes, an amendment of that nature would suit my needs.
Senator Patterson: Is Hyder, Alaska, a rival of your port? I did a bit of Internet research, and it seemed like a pretty quiet place. Are they currently a competitor?
Mr. Pettit: No, they currently don’t have a deep-water port. They’re a really good boat launch, but they don’t have a port.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: This is a question for Mr. Muir. As my colleagues, I love the maps. However, I am going to ask you more of a content question that has to do with risks.
This booklet shows us that the risks are minimal or contained. However, we have seen oil spill coming out of double-hulled tankers. The last one is the Sanchi Iranian oil tanker collision in the China Sea last year. We’ve heard many witnesses yesterday and today who say that they don’t want any risk of oil spill. Since you seem to be good with figures and maps, could you calculate the risk for the North Coast region having tankers? If there’s one pipeline, I understand it’s about one tanker a day. Could you calculate the risk of oil spill? We’re talking about huge tankers, so there may be, theoretically, a huge oil spill.
Mr. Muir: That’s an excellent question. Although I am not an expert in risk analysis and I am afraid I can’t provide any personal expert information on that, but in the course of researching and relating information to the public about the Trans Mountain story I certainly encountered a lot of expert information, including some of the realities of what is at risk.
If you look at modern tankers, they contain 12 to 14 separate compartments. If there is a problem, it’s not like a bathtub suddenly losing its contents and it is on your neighbours downstairs. It’s like having a case of beer and a bottle or two break because something happens. This phenomenon of this was documented by one of the risk assessments cited by the Trans Mountain proponents. Given the kind of risk that exists, they came to the conclusion that collisions and groundings are the main source of problems for tankers historically. The fact that you have double hulls and compartments within double hulls, the risk in Vancouver for the worst case scenario was something like once every 2,000 years with the expanded Trans Mountain Pipeline.
Because some catastrophe results from a ship spilling some of its contents, that is a case of how much content. It’s a portion of the load, not all of it, in any scenario that these experts forecast. I thought once every 2,000 years was a significant finding for that scenario.
I know Exxon Valdez is commonly cited here, but a perspective on it is that’s 30 years ago. It would still only rate as probably the 35th worst spill in the world. Because it’s so well known to us on the West Coast, it’s symbolic of the risk but it’s not necessarily representative of the actual risk that exists today after 30 years.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: However, there is a risk is what I am getting at. There is a risk.
Mr. Muir: I don’t think anyone would ever come to you and say there’s no risk of things, absolutely.
The Chair: Mr. Smith, you talked about the tourism industry and the eco-tourism industry on the West Coast. The people come from all over the world, how do they get here?
Mr. Smith: They fly, of course.
The Chair: Exactly. They come by boat. They come by car. They fly. They use the oil industry. I come from Saskatchewan. We have another senator here from Alberta. I haven’t heard too much about Canada. Actually, the first time was Mr. Pettit who actually talked about the country.
How would Alberta and Saskatchewan get their oil out of the country if they can’t get it out on the West Coast? Do they carry it somewhere or what?
Mr. Smith: I feel I’ve been put on the spot a little bit with that one.
Senator MacDonald: You’re making the statement that they don’t want any tankers out, so I am asking: How do Alberta and Saskatchewan get their oil out?
Mr. Smith: To be clear, what I am saying is we have a world-class economy right now with this tanker moratorium in place. It’s developed. There’s employment. It’s a gem of an industry. It’s sustainable. We’re talking about the threats to that way of life and all of the people in it.
Senator MacDonald: I’ve been on holiday on the East Coast. Cape Breton is probably one of the greatest drives in the world. It ranks as one of the greatest drives in the world, along with the Vancouver-Whistler drive.
Senator Smith: There’s Terrace.
Senator MacDonald: Terrace is not a bad drive, either. I am just saying. I was there once for a week. Another time I was there for a few days. I never, ever saw a tanker, actually, but there are a lot of tankers that haul oil into Canada because we can’t get it out.
Mr. Smith: I think it’s interesting that you referenced the drives along those other places in Canada. What makes the Great Bear Rainforest in Haida Gwaii, especially the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site and the marine conservation areas, so special is that there are no roads. They are unique in that they are still functioning wilderness.
There are small coastal villages. Our friends in these coastal villages, the Gitga’at, the Kitasoo/Xaixais, the Heiltsuk and the Haida, have lived there for 14,000 years plus. We have these beautiful protocol agreements to travel respectfully into their traditional territories. There are no roads.
Senator MacDonald: They travel by boat.
Mr. Smith: Yes, by boat. It’s like a Galápagos cruise. The Galápagos is another part of the world that doesn’t have oil tankers and it works that way.
Senator Gagné: I’ve been to the Galápagos, and I believe they are not allowed since there was an oil spill. I just wanted to mention that.
The Coastal First Nations Great Bear Initiative commissioned an environmental and economic assessment of the development of the Pacific North Coast to identify the economic, traditional and subsistence activities in the region, and to evaluate the impacts of an oil spill on the commercial and traditional activities of these First Nations. The analysis completed by the Coastal First Nations identified that the costs of one oil spill could exceed the benefits derived from the community over a project’s lifetime.
I was wondering if you have read this analysis and if you’re able to comment on that particular finding.
Mr. Smith: I’ll just comment briefly. The Coastal First Nations allow us to travel in their traditional territories. Their entire existence is completely tied up with the coast and a healthy coast, from the harvesting of their food to their cultures and traditions. I absolutely have no doubt in those findings of the Coastal First Nations. One oil spill, with the kind of currents that drive northwest and southeast up and down the channels on this coast, would have a disastrous impact.
Mr. Muir: I looked into the Exxon Valdez incident a little further but I didn’t bring any details on this issue. Since you’ve asked the question, one year after the local tourism had increased. I don’t know why. I mean it sounds counterintuitive.
Having localized involvement in a spill management regime such as we’re seeing in the Georgia Strait, whether it’s Nanaimo or Beecher Bay, there is an opportunity for First Nations to be part of the spill regime. I know there are those who say, “There are no jobs in this,” which I don’t think is true, but clearly there are jobs in having the ability to be part of maritime response regimes from First Nations.
Whether it’s to deal with Nathan E. Stewart types of risk or other kinds of risk, we can look at what has happened in Valdez since the Exxon Valdez disaster. A local regional response community has grown up. They have capacity. They have funding. They have the ability over time to apply local expertise.
We heard from Chief Slett and you heard from Chief Slett. Those who watch your proceedings heard of her idea of having some sort of Aboriginal safety response capacity on the coast. It seems to me that’s a terrific idea. Why can’t we make, as part of the reconciliation agenda, having the ability to be a high capacity on the maritime front, whether it’s to move tourists to go look at grizzlies or whether it’s to be there for a spill incident where there is a risk of that? Either way, you have people who are equipped with the boats, all the paraphernalia, the expertise and the intergenerational hope of having long-term jobs in communities where jobs are extremely scarce, especially non-seasonal ones.
Turning this risk and this problem into an opportunity, it seems to me not to be far fetched, based on lived experience.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: This question has been posed to many environmental groups by the committee. With all respect, I would like for you to tell us how you are financed. Who finances Resource Works Society?
Mr. Muir: As we like to tell the public, we are funded by industry.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Industry?
Mr. Muir: Industry, yes.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Which industry?
Mr. Muir: By natural resource industries. We have oil and gas. We have forestry. We have mining. In the past we have had agriculture. We have had transportation of resources. All of these.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: How do you ensure independence, considering the funding?
Mr. Muir: As we like to say, it’s not where the dollar comes from. It’s how we use it. I have a board that I report to. We are a British Columbia registered non-profit society. I am accountable as executive director to my board. We seek to be factual in our information. We have a point of view, and we are not shy about that.
The Chair: Many supporters of the bill believe that Asia is transitioning to renewable resources of power and that in the near future their demand for fossil fuels will decline. What is your perspective on the future demand for energy, not only here but in the Asia-Pacific region, Mr. Muir?
Mr. Muir: If we look at the most austere reduction in GHG emissions to mid-century that will meet the targets of 1.5 or 2 degrees, getting there still entails a minimum of $25 trillion in oil and gas investment. Part of the reason for that is the decline rate in wells. You always have to keep drilling to keep ahead. Also we need to move things around and that’s infrastructure. It’s a bit of a fantasy for those who think we can,wish this reliance on hydrocarbons away because it’s not what expert information is telling us.
On the higher side, it may be that up to $70 trillion U.S. will be needed for this. As we see the escape from energy poverty in India as the big story of the mid-century and China being maybe a little closer to us, there is the need for those countries to source their hydrocarbon products responsibly. They too have climate obligations. They too have political systems in which they must operate. They’re different ones, obviously, and they will seek to supply their citizens first with what is expected.
Without this kind of energy, you can’t have a modern economy even as you diversify. I don’t think there’s any contradiction at all in embracing energy diversification in renewables. This totally makes sense, but at the same time you have to recognize that by mid-century, even with a rush away from intense hydrocarbon reliance like now, we won’t really have reduced our dependence on it all that much. How do we get it safely to where it needs to be?
The Chair: Thank you very much. It has been another good session. I really like this map, too.
(The committee adjourned.)