Two months after Premier Christy Clark travelled to Ottawa to promote LNG, a delegation of First Nations leaders from northwest B.C. went to Parliament Hill to send the opposite message.
The group met with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in Ottawa to try to persuade the federal government to reject Petronas’s Pacific Northwest LNG proposal.
Hereditary chief Na’Moks (John Ridsdale), from the Office of the Wet’suwet’en in Smithers, and Richard Wright, from the Madii Lii camp near Hazelton, were among the seven leaders who made the trip.
They joined hereditary chiefs from the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation, whose traditional territory near Prince Rupert includes the proposed site for the $36-billion LNG processing facility.
Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip was also part of the delegation.
Chief Na’Moks said the trip was a reaction to Premier Christy Clark’s February visit to Ottawa to promote B.C. LNG to federal officials.
“We’ve done this trip previously and the fact is if you don’t look them in the eye, tell them the truth about what is happening, they could listen to the propaganda that is currently being put out by the premier and that would be it,” he said.
The federal government was due to make a decision on whether to grant environmental approval for the project in mid-March, based on the findings of a draft report by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA).
However, the decision has been delayed for three months while the CEAA seeks more information from the company.
Read the full story in the April 27 edition of The Interior News.
