To the editor,
TMX, now that it’s owned by you and me, seems quite confident that their (our?) legal battles with Indigenous peoples are over. Their hubris is showing.
As quoted in the Edmonton Star, a general contractor responsible for building sections in Edmonton, the Lower Mainland and Clearwater, B.C., said, “We have no reason to believe that we’re not going to continue proceeding towards construction and getting it built.”
Allow me to suggest a few reasons: You are trying to build a pipeline to ship a product the world does not want. There are no longer viable markets for tar sand sludge. Major players in the fossil fuel industry are abandoning tar sands bitumen mining in droves because they know there is no money in it. The coast of B.C. remains highly vulnerable to spills in the waterways between the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. The people of Canada shouldn’t own, much less promote and build, infrastructure that can do untold damage to the environment from Alberta to Burnaby, and beyond.
And most important of all, if we are going to even pretend to have a shred of honour left, regardless of how one feels about fossil fuels and pumping bitumen to the coast, there is a far greater human rights issue at stake here. We absolutely must stop violating treaty rights of our Indigenous peoples. We have ignored their rights, treaties and sovereignty of unceded land repeatedly for far, far too long. It’s really time to demonstrate our respect and the rule of law.
Lex Dunn, Nanaimo
RELATED: Federal appeals court approves six First Nations challenges of Trans Mountain pipeline
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