Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue No. 50 - Evidence - April 10, 2019
OTTAWA, Wednesday, April 10, 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 6:45 p.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator David Tkachuk (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, we’re continuing 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, the “Oil Tanker Moratorium Act.”
For our meeting this evening, we are pleased to welcome, from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Aaron Henry, Director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy; from the International Union of Operating Engineers, Mr. Steven Schumann, Director of Canadian Government Affairs, and Mr. Patrick Campbell, International Representative.
Thank you for attending our meeting today.
Aaron Henry, Director, Natural Resources and Environmental Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce: Good evening, senators. Thank you so much for providing this opportunity to provide testimony on Bill C-48. As some of you may know, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is one of Canada’s most broadly based business associations. Through our network of 450 local chambers we represent 200,000 businesses.
I’m here today basically to iterate a few messages. Our members have been quite clear on how they feel about this bill. Essentially our starting point is that this is not a bill that we believe should be passed.
There are several reasons why this is the case. I’ll start off with one key point that I really would like to underscore here. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has long supported responsible development of our resources. We think it is absolutely key that we make sure we develop our minerals, our oil and gas and our other resources in such a way that is ecologically sustainable and responsible.
Unfortunately, as drafted, we do not see this bill contributing to any of those aims. For the most part, we actually see this simply as undermining confidence in our investment climate in Canada, harming our ports and not actually containing any measures or recommendations that would actually help it achieve its aim of preserving the B.C. northern coast.
There will be three points that we’d like to really drive home here: One, on examining this legislation we do not find that it is evidence-based. We find that this in many respects feels, to be blunt, a little precooked, and all of the available options that could actually be utilized to preserve the northern coast of B.C. and the Haida Gwaii region have not actually been considered or put into play within this bill, at least from our examination of it.
Two, if this bill were to be passed, it will pose a significant barrier to our access to world markets. This is an issue for three reasons: First, it is going to affect our ports. As some of you may know, the port in Prince Rupert is actually one of the fastest growing ports in North America at the moment. This bill jeopardizes that possibility. Second, this government has made a firm commitment to combatting climate change and lowering emissions. Believe it or not, actually getting our resources to market internationally is one way that we can have a significant impact on global climate change. This bill will make this harder.
Finally, there are nearly 200 First Nations communities that have signed on to the Eagle Spirit pipeline. For them, this moratorium quashes that possibility of economic self-determination. Again, this government has made economic reconciliation with Indigenous people a key priority. We find that this bill, as currently drafted, again challenges that possibility.
Finally, the economic consequences of this bill are heavy. They will send a significant message that Canada may not be open for business when it comes to resource development. At the same time, those economic consequences are disproportionately heavy compared to the environmental benefits this bill proposes.
We’d like to point out that essentially when it comes to spills and leaks in the fragile ecosystem in the ocean in Canada, it’s not tankers that are the primary contributors. In many respects, most of the spills — up to 78 per cent — actually come from commercial vessels, barges and others type of cargo ships. As a result, the moratorium simply on tankers seems discriminate, arbitrary and will not actually serve to protect the northern coast.
In addition to that — and I think my colleagues will probably make a similar point — we don’t understand how this can be applied to the northern coast of B.C. when in reality 85 per cent, I believe, of total shipping comes to the Atlantic Coast. There are 17,000 oil tankers a year on the Atlantic, yet there’s no moratorium in place when there are equally fragile ecosystems and important coasts there.
The reality is that we have measures at our disposal that can be used to balance ecological concerns with the ability to continue to develop our resources. I’ll name a few of those that I’d like the committee to consider. I will provide this to the clerk at the end, but one mechanism at our disposal is to designate a protected sensitive sea area along the coast. This would allow us, on the one hand, to balance some of these ecological concerns while, at the same time, advocating for a specific corridor to be made that would allow for both persistent and non-persistent oils to travel through.
In addition, we are blessed with the Canadian Marine Pilots’ Association, which has expertise in navigation and ensuring they reduce the risks of collision. When it comes to oil spills and that potential, that can be mitigated generally when we try to avoid collisions or running aground. These are all things that could be achieved by creating a designated corridor and having marine pilots ferry the tankers in and out of that corridor to avoid potential collisions.
Finally, we believe that the actual naming of the act seems inappropriate. A moratorium is generally a temporary suspension with some possibility of being lifted.
As drafted, this bill contains no actual avenue upon which this moratorium would ever end.
In consequence, we believe that a moratorium on the northern B.C. coast should be a measure of absolute last resort. Before that takes place, we believe that we would benefit from a sustained cost-benefit impact analysis, a consideration of the risks and, in addition, an overview of all the mitigation measures at hand, from PSSAs to some of the techniques and initiatives being used by the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion on their maritime assessment. Additionally, eco-research is being developed to find ways to mitigate and reduce traffic noise, which can be disruptive to ocean life as well.
When we look at the bill, we ultimately see that there’s a number of other things at our disposal that could be utilized to achieve its sensible aims of balancing ecological concerns along the northern coast without jeopardizing our economic and investment environments.
To be really clear, when investors are looking at Canada, they are growing increasingly wary, especially when it comes to our energy sector. We have a regulatory system that’s not supporting its development. This bill is yet another layer that suggests Canada is not open for business when it comes to that kind of development. I think it’s exactly the wrong message to send at this point in time.
The Chair: From the International Union of Operating Engineers, we now have Mr. Patrick Campbell, International Representative.
Patrick Campbell, International Representative, International Union of Operating Engineers: Good evening, senators. I am honoured to be with you this evening and extend greetings on behalf of the 55,000 women and men who make up the Canadian membership of the International Union of Operating Engineers. As indicated, my name is Patrick Campbell, an international representative responsible for pipeline construction for Canada, and with me is Steven Schumann, Director, Canadian Government Affairs.
Our members are the hardworking, highly skilled tradespeople who go to work every day to build and maintain Canada’s infrastructure. We help to construct our nation’s hospitals, hydro dams, mines, nuclear plants, wind turbines, solar farms, roads, schools and also our pipeline infrastructure. In short, our membership builds it all.
We take particular pride in the fact that, with our industry partners, we have safely constructed over 90 per cent of Canada’s NEB-regulated pipelines.
Our members’ livelihoods are reliant on a vibrate economy and a steady stream of infrastructure projects. Government regulation oftentimes directly impacts the ability of our members to provide for their families. The oil tanker moratorium proposed under Bill C-48 would have an impact on the approval of new projects and employment opportunities available for Canada’s skilled workforce.
One such project that would be negatively impacted by this bill is the proposed Eagle Spirit Energy corridor project. Supported by 35 First Nations groups and with 100 per cent Indigenous backing, the proposed Eagle Spirit Energy corridor has the potential to be a game changer for the Canadian energy industry.
Providing an energy corridor will allow Canadian natural resources to go from Fort McMurray, Alberta, to Grassy Point on British Columbia’s northwest coast for export purposes. The Eagle Spirit Energy corridor project provides a low-risk and low-emission solution for shipping oil from Canada’s oil sands to our West Coast and abroad.
Together with our three labour partners, we make up the pipeline craft unions: the International Union of Operating Engineers, the United Association representing the welders, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Labourers’ International Union of North America . On behalf of our collective 330,000 members in Canada, we’ve entered into a memorandum of agreement with the Eagle Spirit Energy team to develop a project labour agreement to cover the construction of the corridor.
The critical piece to the memorandum of agreement and the eventual PLA between Eagle Spirit Energy and the trades is to ensure that throughout the construction process there is a clear commitment to promoting local involvement at every step, benefiting the communities along the project’s right-of-way while building to the highest safety and environmental standards.
Unfortunately, if Bill C-48 were to become law, this nation-building project would not move forward. By banning oil tanker traffic along British Columbia’s north coast, this bill would provide the death knell for the Eagle Spirit Energy corridor project and all of the social and economic spin-offs that would result from it.
The decision of the government to impose a moratorium on this area of Canada’s West Coast, knowing the impact it might have on projects like this one, seems at odds with many of the government’s own goals and, from our perspective, for two reasons.
First, we question why there is a need for this bill in the first place. Why ban a specific tanker traffic along a specific section of Canada’s West Coast when there are no similar bans on any traffic along any other Canadian coastline? All of Canada’s coastlines, oceans, as well as inland waterways, deserve protection, which is why we must do all we can to mitigate risks and invest in oil spill containment and remediation in those unlikely instances.
Furthermore, this bill does nothing to prevent the steady tanker traffic that travels by Canada’s coastlines from Alaska. Yet, with all of our other coastlines, we recognize the need for marine transportation, without which our economy and our society would not exist as it does.
The West Coast of Canada has an impeccable track record when it comes to mitigating risk and protecting the environment — in part because of commitments like the government’s Oceans Protection Plan — while at the same time allowing tanker traffic access to vitally important deep-water ports. Maintaining access to all these deep-water ports is essential to the development and export of all of our resources. The deep-water port at Grassy Point, which is the terminus point of the Eagle Spirit Energy corridor project, has in fact been identified as the safest deep-water port on the entire West Coast.
Second, we question why the government, in spite of its commitment to Indigenous communities, protecting the environment and building the economy, would want to impose legislation that would prevent the Eagle Spirit Energy corridor project from moving ahead. This project aligns perfectly with these economic and social goals. This isn’t just another pipeline project. As an Indigenous-led, environmentally focused and community-oriented project, the Eagle Spirit Energy corridor project has the potential to lay the groundwork for how future projects should be planned and developed in Canada. Creating roadblocks to this project is not only a detriment to Canada’s economic prosperity and Canadian workers, but also counter to empowering Canada’s Indigenous people and the long-term benefits that would come from this project.
We do not feel that imposing a tanker ban is needed or necessary and would only do more harm towards the government’s goals of supporting the self-empowerment of Indigenous communities and growing Canada’s middle class. Therefore, for these reasons we appreciate the opportunity to speak with you this evening in opposition to Bill C-48.
If the decision to move forward on this bill cannot be reversed, we believe it is in Canada’s best interests to make an exception for this particular project and similar projects. We look to the Senate to provide guidance and recommendations to address these issues. We welcome any questions you may have. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Campbell.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: My question is for Mr. Campbell. I understand that you represent 55,000 workers from across Canada. We’ll be travelling to British Columbia next week, and to Alberta and Saskatchewan at the end of April. We’ll certainly be meeting with people who are affected by these bills. Since the issue concerns future projects, I want a more concrete idea of how the bill will affect the members of your organization. Do you have any more specific information, for example, on the number of jobs that would be lost, the loss of income, and the impact on the labour market in the affected areas?
Since I don’t work in this industry, I want to better understand the direct impact on workers. Have you done any studies that show the impact and, if so, could we have a copy?
[English]
Mr. Campbell: There are impacts on the Canadian workforce, the women and men who make up our membership of 55,000 in Canada. Along with our three trade partners, we represent over 330,000 members throughout Canada.
The geography of this particular project covers Fort McMurray all the way out to the coast. When we discuss pipelines within the industry, they are put in terms of spreads. The spreads range anywhere from 100 to 150 kilometres. Each spread is then allocated to an individual contractor, and that contract is to construct that portion.
Each of these spreads are multimillion-dollar operations to construct just one small piece of this project with thousands of operating engineers, United Association members, labourers and Teamsters involved in the construction, not to mention all of the benefits added to those local residents who would have an opportunity to work on these projects. From the way we look at it, they get access to a career, not a job. We have seen it time and time again; when people are given an opportunity to access this kind of employment, many of them take it on as a career.
Putting a number on the consequences of this project is very difficult. It is important, when talking about pipeline projects, to narrow it down to each spread. Between nine and ten spreads are needed to construct this project. Each spread is a significant project in and of itself and requires thousands of labour force members.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: In the second group of witnesses, we’ll have the opportunity to meet with Eagle Spirit Energy Holding Ltd., which you promoted.
[English]
The Chair: I think Mr. Henry wants to respond.
Mr. Henry: Just briefly. That’s an excellent overview of the sector issues that could arise from this bill.
To take a macro perspective, in many respects we are at a crossroads where we can no longer rely on the United States as a market for our oil products. It’s as simple as that. The U.S. has moved from being an importer of our products to being an exporter. When we’re thinking about the future of Canada’s energy sector, we need to be thinking about how to get our products to a global market.
This bill jeopardizes that effort simply because, with a threshold of 12,500 tons, you will not be able to attract the cargo or tanker ships to actually move the product to Asian markets. In many respects, if you want to talk about the economic consequences, the consequence is the perpetuation of the price differential between Canadian and American oil products. That leads to billions in lost value that otherwise could go not only to job creation but to royalties and other supports for the Canadian economy. That is really the issue facing us.
Senator Cormier: The First Nations involved in this pipeline project, did they have conversations with the First Nations on the B.C. coast?
Mr. Campbell: I believe the 35 communities that I’ve referenced in my presentation cover that entire area, what we in the industry call the right-of-way of the project. That runs from Fort McMurray to the coast.
Senator Cormier: Some First Nations on the coast are not for this bill, right?
Mr. Campbell: They are not for this bill, yes. I thought your question was in regard to the specific project.
Senator Cormier: Okay. Eagle Spirit, yes.
Senator Plett: Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentations. I think we’re probably on the same side on this issue.
Mr. Henry, in your brief you note that, while the purpose of Bill C-48 is to manage the risk of oil spills along the northern B.C. coast:
. . . there is no evidence that a moratorium on tankers will be an effective means to achieve these aims.
You go on to note:
The legislation makes no mention of the barges, commercial vessels and other cargo ships that statistically are far more likely to create oil spills than tankers.
I would certainly agree with that. Do you have concerns? I think you do, but what are they? Might the embargo actually increase the risk of environmental damage from spills because there will no longer be any incentive to improve the emergency response systems along the northern B.C. coast?
Mr. Henry: That’s an excellent point. That is something we are hearing from our members as well. Essentially, putting a moratorium like this in place discourages innovation and development of better practices. We are seeing a world trend in oil spills and management of continual improvements in our ability to not only create our tankers but our navigational aids and our emergency response systems. In many respects, if we were to simply put a flat moratorium, we’re not going to see the continued development of those mechanisms. At the same time, I would really like to reiterate that all those mechanisms to aid tankers would also help that commercial vessels, which are actually the most likely culprits in creating spills.
Senator Plett: Mr. Campbell, and Mr. Henry, if you want, my son spent a number of years working on the pipeline. He went on to other areas in the oil and gas industry, so I have heard a lot about this and other projects from him.
You talk about the inconsistencies the government has with their own goals, so I want to talk a little bit about those. I think you would agree that pipelines are probably the safest way of transporting oil, even safer than by ship. Yesterday we had the Premier of Alberta at this committee, and she used the expression “stampede of stupid” in relation to this bill. She has gone and purchased — I don’t know how many — rail cars because Alberta is going to try to make every effort to ship their oil, one way or another. If they have to put it in five-gallon pails and take it out of there, they will find a way of moving their oil. So they will start doing it by rail.
Speaking about safety and the environment, in what order would we have the most environmentally friendly and safest ways of transporting oil to the most environmentally unfriendly and high-risk ways?
Mr. Campbell: From our perspective, as far as environmentally friendly and the safest, pipelines are at the top of the list. From there, you would be looking at rail. We have seen numerous examples of the rail infrastructure recently in Western Canada having significant deficiencies. We have been fortunate enough to not have had catastrophic results from those kinds of deficiencies in Western Canada. Then it would be the transportation by truck.
But on the environmental side, when you get that far down, it’s ludicrous to think that we have the potential infrastructure that can transport it as efficiently and safely as pipelines, yet we are in a climate now where it’s having to be transported by truck and train.
Senator Plett: As far as embargos and moratoria, one of the most catastrophic incidents by rail was the Lac-Mégantic disaster. Of course, there were all kinds of investigations, and they decided that one of the problems was the braking system, so they fixed the braking system. It seems that with shipping oil, we have an oil spill, Exxon Valdez — I don’t know how many years ago — and instead of fixing things we say, “We’d better stop it entirely.”
Just comment briefly on that, and then I’m good, chair.
Mr. Campbell: I would say that the fix was actually quite significant with respect to the Exxon Valdez. As far as the construction of these vessels now since that major —
Senator Plett: Double-hulled.
Mr. Campbell: Absolutely. The level of technology that goes into the construction of these vessels now, the level of technology that goes into the construction of the pipelines, if you’re after environment and safety, those are the key choices.
Senator Plett: Mr. Schumann, did you have something to add?
Steven Schumann, Director, Canadian Government Affairs, International Union of Operating Engineers: Look at the West Coast and the St. Lawrence and the amount of tanker traffic that goes through there into the Port of Montreal. Have we ever heard of or seen a major accident? On the shipping side, they took those accidents quite seriously and adaptations have been made. We adapt over time. Even our pipeline is the most regulated in the world. We have changed how those are built with the structure of the pipeline now. The industries adapt to make it safer.
No one wants an accident. When it does happen, you learn from it. You adapt, and you make it much safer through technology.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a question for Mr. Henry. I’m a little puzzled by one of your arguments. You’re right that it’s not a moratorium but a ban, and you say there is no evidence that it would result in less oil spilled. Mr. Campbell said that there were tankers in the zone. No, the U.S. tankers are going out of the exclusion zone. There have been studies saying they respect the zone. At this time, there are no tankers in the zone we’re talking about.
So the fact that there will be tankers and no moratorium, that means there will be more boats and tankers in the zone. I agree that the risk is low, but the risk exists. You know there have been big oil spills with double-hulled ships around the world — a few very big spills.
When you say there will be less risk, it doesn’t make sense. More boats will result in more risk. Obviously not one risk a day, but risk, and from what I understand, those Aboriginal tribes, the Haida and others, don’t want risk.
Mr. Henry: It’s a good point. Part of this is a clarification. Overall, I think this government has tried to pride itself on evidence-based policy. This is something they have put forward as key to the way they will develop public policy. The point I would make is that when it comes to this ban and the moratorium, this doesn’t seem to be evidence-based. I cannot disagree with you that there is risk. There is risk associated in all of our activities. The risk that is really being posed — and the point I really want to underscore — when we look at some of the most significant oil spills recently, they are coming from commercial vessels. There are different cases. They are losses, generally, of fuel because a ship has run aground or sunk — there are a few cases there. The last notable one was one of the BC Ferries that went down in that region in 2006.
The real point is that when we’re thinking of an evidence-based approach, this moratorium has nothing in place that would actually further the mechanisms to resolve the more significant side of risk, which is from commercial vessels, cargo ships and other barges. My claim that this isn’t informed by the evidence is when you actually look worldwide and in Canadian waters at the profile of where oil spills are likely to come from, they are not from tankers.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: They are from tankers, but less —
Mr. Henry: Less so.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: — but you cannot say they are not from tankers. There have been big accidents.
Mr. Henry: I can’t say there is no risk. This becomes a question of doing a cost-benefit analysis and thinking about proportionality. Is the risk posed from this particular type of traffic, which is singled out by this bill, enough to actually warrant a moratorium? And our answer would be “no.” The credible and evidence-based response to this would be to look at the mitigation measures we have, look at the frequency of traffic that will take place if tankers were allowed in the area and go from there.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Okay. You know that the channel where the tankers would pass is called the Dixon Entrance, and it’s about 40 kilometres wide, which means tankers would be about 20 kilometres away from the Haida Nation. That is not that far. If there is a spill, their whole fishery could be affected. So I would like to hear you on the risk.
Mr. Henry: From what we have heard and where we would kind of take this, one way to manage this would be to put in place the protected sensitive sea area. This is a practice that has been used in a number of sensitive areas across the world. Taking a quick look at the actual guidelines for the identification and designation of a particularly sensitive sea area, we would more than qualify six times over. In section 4 you have to hit one of those boxes. In my cursory look, we would be likely to hit six when it comes to northern B.C. That is one mechanism at play.
The next question is, again, if it is that narrow a channel, you’re talking about close proximity and there is a potential there for any kind of risk of running aground or a collision with an object in the sea, then an option at our disposal would be to use barges and the Canadian Marine Pilots Association to effectively guide those tankers out of that region without having those collisions.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Just a small supplementary for Mr. Campbell. You said with Eagle Spirit that you would promote local employment. Do you have figures for us in terms of percentages? How many of those jobs would be reserved for Aboriginal workers on the construction of the pipeline?
Mr. Campbell: Currently we have what is termed a memorandum of agreement that allows the four trades and the Eagle Spirit to get together and develop what I have referred to as the project labour agreement. That arrangement needs to be negotiated between the parties. That document would set out those particular figures, but we are not at the point where we have started putting together that project labour agreement.
With respect to the International Union of Operating Engineers and our experience throughout all of Canada, we have had significant involvement in our projects and have policies with our signatory contractors to allow for involvement in projects like the Line 3 project going through Manitoba.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I was just looking for a figure on it.
Mr. Campbell: In the neighbourhood of 18 per cent through the Line 3 project.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you.
Senator Plett: A very quick supplementary question. The senator was asking about risk, and you agreed that there is some risk. In your opinion, is there a larger risk with oil tanker traffic on the West Coast than there is on the St. Lawrence or the East Coast?
Mr. Henry: No.
Senator Plett: Thank you.
Senator Seidman: Thank you for your presentations. I would like to continue with you, Mr. Henry, and pursue one of your recommendations.
You say Bill C-48 should not be passed into law, and instead that the Transport and Communications Committee should recognize other best marine shipping practices and consult with marine pilot and shippers’ associations to develop a strategy to guide tankers to open waters. Then you go on to say that the government should look to other international best practices that have been used to manage commercial marine traffic with sensitive ocean ecology. First of all, I would like to ask you, you’re asking the committee to do that, has the government not consulted the marine pilot and shippers’ associations?
Mr. Henry: It’s a good question. From my understanding, they have not.
In fact, this is our other point on this bill. We’re not really clear where the consultation came from on this at all. In fact, many of our members from industry who are directly impacted by this bill feel as if the bill itself was somewhat pre-cooked without making those necessary engagements that would make it evidence-based policy.
Senator Seidman: Okay. If we consulted the marine pilot and shippers’ associations, and if we looked to other international best practices, what would we find?
Mr. Henry: Another good question. One thing that really stands out for me on this and from the work I have done in consultation before putting together the submission is that we do have a pretty strong resource with our Marine Pilots’ Association of Canada. These generally are pilots who have already gone through 20 years of industry experience, so they have 20 years of experience on the sea before they are actually eligible to become and train as a marine pilot.
By the time they are in this role, they usually have 25 years of experience in doing navigational aids. The main contribution there is, if there are concerns about Dixon Entrance, concerns about that risk of navigable waters and getting to open waters in the most risk-free manner, that pilot association performs an excellent guiding role and generally has an outstanding safety record when it comes to carrying out this work. Looking at them and consulting them on what they think would be feasible for the region would be a necessary first step.
Senator Seidman: The international best practices that you refer to here, could you give us an example of what that might be?
Mr. Henry: There is a number of things that would be at our disposal. There are oil tankers all over the world, every day, going to ports. Some of these ports are far more complicated and difficult than the ports in question on the northern B.C. coast. As a result, I think we need to think about Canadian expertise and why it is that we doubt ourselves in this capacity.
I would say there are definitely things to consider in terms of navigational aids and the practices that surround that, and again noise-cancelling innovations to make sure that marine life isn’t unduly impacted. The biggest thing I would point out — and we make reference to it in another recommendation — is the protected sensitive sea areas. This is a necessary compromise. This is a way to designate much of that northern B.C. coast as a protected area to make sure its ecology is preserved, and at the same time creating a corridor that would allow for persistent and non-persistent oil tankers to travel through.
Just as a quick glimpse of where these designated zones or projected areas have been used, they have been used in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, they have been used in the Wadden Sea in Denmark, and the Paracas National Reserve in Peru, the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, and I could go on. There are numerous examples of using these protected safe sea areas to manage both the need for marine traffic and preserve their ecology.
Senator Manning: There has been a lot of discussion on protective sensitive sea areas. You just answered that question. We know the bill is asking for a ban or a moratorium. I would like you to expand, for those who are listening, on exactly what falls under the protected sensitive sea area. What exactly is that, first of all?
On the other side of that, I want to go back to Senator Plett’s question about the risks on the West Coast versus the East Coast. I’m from the East Coast, from Newfoundland and Labrador. I sit in my living room and I watch oil tankers. I live next to the second-largest seabird colony in North America. We have on average, in a good year, 500 to 600 icebergs. Would you consider that the East Coast would be a higher risk than the B.C. coast?
Mr. Henry: I could definitely say that I think the risks are different in terms of icebergs versus navigational areas, but I can’t see that the risk on the northern B.C. coast would be greater than those you could face on the Atlantic coast.
Senator Manning: What about the protected sensitive sea areas? Give us an idea of what exactly that entails.
Mr. Henry: There is a whole process on how you go about introducing one. It would require the Government of Canada to make an application. Ultimately, these were introduced specifically to try to manage the development of tanker traffic in particular locations. I think the understanding of this is that there are particular marine restrictions and particular guidelines that are put in place. These are generally tailored to the specific protected area in question. As a result, those are ways in which you can mitigate the impact to their ecology and create a buffer zone in which you would still allow for tanker traffic to move though.
Senator Manning: I know in Newfoundland and Labrador and Placentia Bay, as an example, we have a corridor where tankers travel back and forth. When they reach a certain point there are tug boats. Would a sensitive sea area include the establishment of a corridor?
Mr. Henry: You could do that, yes.
Senator Gagné: Thank you. I was just wondering, pertaining to the protected sensitive sea areas. You mentioned the Galapagos, was that actually in effect after the tanker Jessica oil spill? Was it subsequent to that spill that they designated it as a protected sea area?
Mr. Henry: It’s a great question. I can’t answer you with confidence because I don’t know that specifically about the case. What I do know is that this mechanism was designed largely as a resolution that came out of the international conference on tanker safety.
Senator Gagné: I was just trying to find the answer, but I couldn’t find it so that’s why I’m asking. There was a spill that devastated the area in 2001. It has been awhile, so I am not sure if it’s before or after.
Mr. Henry: I’m not sure.
Senator Gagné: Bill C-48 singles out a very clear policy choice about where crude oil can be exported on the B.C. coast. Actually, we’re going to ship only from the south coast. If Canada restricts the options for export, it will add costs and could complicate the development of our oil resources. Is that cost worth the benefit relative to the risk?
There was an assessment done. There was an analysis completed by the Coastal First Nations that identified that the cost of one spill could exceed the benefits derived to the community over the project’s lifetime. I’d like your view on that.
Mr. Schumann: There is always that question of the risk of an accident. My question is then: Do we create a bubble for all exports? Now you want to move tanker traffic down to the south. Well, what if there’s an accident down there? What about the orca pods? Will they be affected? Is that a risk? Where do you draw the line on risk?
You have to test the cost assessment. One accident you can never justify; it’s one accident. It will be a horrible thing. We have things in place to mitigate it as quickly as we can to deal with it, and we have safeguards. You can add more safeguards, like protection zones. You never want an accident but what stops an accident happening here? If there’s an accident in the north of the St. Lawrence, what about the belugas? Off the coast of Newfoundland, if there’s an accident there, what happens to the fishing and the migratory birds?
Senator Gagné: What happens to the livelihood of all the Indigenous communities?
Mr. Schumann: Agreed, but back to what you said earlier, although the ships from Alaska aren’t in that zone, outside the zone, if there’s a tanker spill, it will still affect them. It will. There is always a risk. The question is: Where do you draw a line on that risk? You’ve drawn a line on one particular part of Canada. What about Churchill, Manitoba, with the ice going down there? People talk about shipping out through the Hudson Bay. Are we going to stop that from happening in the future?
I can’t fully answer your question, but where do you draw the line? If you close it in one area, what about other areas? Do you shut down Churchill or outside the Port of Vancouver? And what about the northern St. Lawrence? It keeps going and going? The question is, where is that fine line drawn? I can’t answer that fully, but those are things that must be fully considered. I don’t think that this bill has fully considered that.
Senator Dasko: I have a question about the existing moratorium on tanker traffic.
If this bill doesn’t go ahead, what is your view of that moratorium? Does it die? What happens to it? How does that work? Sorry, I mean the exclusion zone. Does the existing voluntary exclusion zone disappear? What happens to it if there’s no bill? What happens to that zone?
Mr. Schumann: I can’t answer that.
Senator Dasko: It dies, right? I’m just asking.
Mr. Henry: I don’t think we could answer.
Senator Dasko: So, you’re not sure what happens to it?
Mr. Schumann: No.
Mr. Henry: No.
Senator Dasko: I have a question for Mr. Henry. We often talk about how the economy and the environment are not supposed to be at loggerheads with each other, and if we develop and we can do both it all sounds terrific . Yet, here we are, where it’s clearly a choice of economic development versus the others.
You are the Director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy at a business organization, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Are most of the issues you deal with like this sort of one or the other? You work in this area.
Mr. Henry: It’s a good question. I think this is part of the question about whether we can actually make it so we are not at loggerheads. It comes back to that question of risk: how we manage risk, how we manage development and how, at the same time, we ensure we have strong environmental stewardship.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce is committed to that honour principle. We have members from all kinds of sectors who have very different projects and who carry on different types of development. In many respects you might be surprised at some of the members who are actually engaged in environmental stewardship on a daily basis and on a pretty important basis.
Circling back to the question of risk and how we evaluate that, no one wants a risk-free food system. That means we don’t eat. I think that in many respects you can’t guarantee it.
This is where we’re coming from on this point. Broadly, the way this bill is currently designed, it seems to exacerbate the risks without fully measuring them, understanding them and deciding what measures are in place. I don’t think it is necessarily the case that we are talking about economic development solely at the expense of local ecology. All the measures, the innovation and new technologies we’ve tried to outline today are an attempt to strike that balance. This is the balance between making sure the local ecology is preserved, the risks to that ecology are the lowest in the world and, at the same time, carrying on with economic development, which is necessary to most of those communities in that region.
Mr. Schumann: More than the economy itself, here are a bunch of First Nation bands that are going to own a pipeline project, a corridor. Opportunities for employment will be immense for them for life-earning jobs. This is also for future jobs down the road, where people need the necessary skills and training to work on these projects. It’s not just the economy here and now. This will have a lasting impact on our membership and on the people who are highly skilled to work on these projects. These people want to stay in Canada. We have members now who have gone down to the United States to work because good projects are running out.
Eagle Spirit is an opportunity for the First Nations in that corridor to control their destiny in many ways. This is something we’ve never seen in Canada. This is almost a nation-building project if they are allowed to go ahead and build this. The lasting impact on our economy, the livelihood of people and what it means is a huge question that can’t be taken lightly.
The Chair: I’d like to finish by quarter to the hour, so snap to it.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: First, thank you for joining us today. My first question is for Mr. Campbell and Mr. Henry. Can the Eagle Spirit pipeline be completed if Bill C-49 is passed as it stands?
Mr. Henry: No.
Mr. Schumann: No.
Senator Boisvenu: Is it realistic to believe that the project can be carried out if its ultimate objective is in the Vancouver bay?
Mr. Henry: No.
Mr. Schumann: No.
Senator Boisvenu: I want you to explain, in two minutes, what this means for positions such as engineers and architects, and for all professional positions in the oil industry. How does this project contribute to job creation?
[English]
Mr. Campbell: In numbers?
Senator Boisvenu: In the long term.
Mr. Campbell: I think the best way to look at projects of this nature is with all of those other benefits that come with them. What I mean by that is a large pipeline begets smaller pipelines. Job creation to be able to supply the resources and shipping on these larger pipelines and the upstream work that takes place in regions like Fort McMurray means the consequences and benefits of projects of this scale are difficult to put actual numbers to.
That’s what we have to keep in mind when you talk about a project and whether that particular project goes ahead. You’re looking at it with blinders on if you’re just thinking the consequences of that particular project not going ahead are a set number of jobs when in reality, if that project were to go ahead, the indirect jobs associated with our resource industry in the province of Alberta are far greater than just those that are directly related to a specific pipeline project.
Senator Busson: I have two questions, and one is for my friends on the pipeline project.
A number of colleagues in the room and I were at a Fisheries Committee meeting yesterday dealing with another important bill. And the mayor of Lax Kw’alaams talked to us about the plight of his community and the community of Metlakatla, which is part of Grassy Point. He said the people in his community were starving. I don’t think they were starving, but they were desperate. He was quite emotional about the economic plight of the people in his community.
I’m from British Columbia, and my husband and I spend a lot of time around Prince Rupert. One of the things that struck me, coming from another small town in British Columbia, is the number of young people who are aimlessly walking up and down the street in Prince Rupert.
The jobs that you talk about for this pipeline, are they entry level? Would they be jobs for which you could hire kids off the street, kids who wouldn’t have to go away to trades school in order to be useful in that industry? How do you hire locally?
Mr. Campbell: The advantage of these initiatives — and this is not something new to the Eagle Spirit project — that are taken when you involve unionized labour is you get the benefit of the unionized training centres that are spread out provincially throughout this country. We want the entrants to be successful.
To answer your question, no, they’re not jobs you can just walk into, but we take the necessary steps on the front end to ensure they get that orientation and that level of training. It quickly tells those people providing the training where that skill set may best be placed. The last thing we want is a young Indigenous person to come on one of these projects and be set up for failure.
So we want to, on the front end, have already made a decision with respect to the skill set and where it may best fit for that individual to succeed.
That’s a big part of it. It’s not simply a matter of saying, “Here is your hard hat and your boots and you’re going to work.” This is risky; this is construction. There’s risk involved in going to work on a construction project. We ensure that safety training is provided to all individuals and then, again, the level of training.
Mr. Schumann: There are spin-off jobs, and Patrick has touched on that. Within the communities themselves, they are going to need workers to help with deliveries and other things. The spin-off jobs can be tremendous. If you look at previous projects — and we can give you some listings — through project labour agreements and community benefit agreements, the spin-offs have been tremendous. There are opportunities.
Mr. Henry: Just very quickly, it’s that consideration of the value chain throughout. Ports alone in Canada yield about $30 billion annually. So if there’s more activity in the port in Prince Rupert, that’s a job site. In addition, when it comes to procurement, at the moment Suncor procures 10 times as much from Indigenous communities as the federal government.
So these projects create those opportunities too, and allow for Indigenous businesses to take root. It’s not simply a matter of working on the pipeline. It’s a matter of creating economic opportunities for long-standing, sustainable businesses that are Indigenous-run.
Senator McCoy: I imagine your members were active on the Northern Gateway pipeline.
We had the evidence of the Aboriginal Equity Partners here, and they put on the record that their 31 communities were going to own one third of the equity in that pipeline, which would be, presumably, roughly equal to the Eagle Spirit project. They were going to get $2 billion a year, and they figured out that was $18,000 a year per family in their communities.
Maybe that gives you some idea, Senator Cormier, of what a third of a pipeline that size would bring. What it doesn’t do is talk about the construction jobs. But I think that we could ask you, perhaps, to go into the evidence in front of the NEB, because there would be cost-benefit analyses for the Northern Gateway and the TMX. Just as you said a moment ago, there have been previous examples. You could probably point us in the right direction as to what was typical in projects of this kind. That could be a big help.
There are 35 communities here that would be getting, presumably, $54,000 for each family for owning the Eagle Spirit pipeline — that’s pure speculation — as opposed to 10 communities that are not getting the risks that they suffer every day looked at properly by the governments. It doesn’t seem like a good deal, senator.
The Chair: Do you have comments?
Mr. Schumann: If you want, we can look and see what we can find and send it to the committee.
The Chair: You don’t have to answer this, but it’s going to be a more politically charged question.
A pipeline is the future. In other words, people who decide to build a pipeline today aren’t building the pipeline just for today; they’re building it for the future.
Is this blockade of tanker traffic a step to prevent future development of oil sands in Fort McMurray and northern Alberta?
Mr. Campbell: It could be exported out of that region, absolutely.
Mr. Henry: With the threshold that’s currently placed, we’d still be in the world where we could only realistically export to the United States, so as a result, yes, it’s huge.
The Chair: Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you for attending the meeting and appearing here this evening.
For our second panel this evening, we’re pleased to welcome, from Eagle Spirit Energy Holding Ltd., Mr. Calvin Helin, Chairman and President; and from the Eagle Spirit Chiefs Council Group, Mr. Kenneth Brown, Spokesperson. Thank you both for participating and coming before us.
Calvin Helin, Chairman and President, Eagle Spirit Energy Holding Ltd.: [Indigenous lanuage spoken].Thank you for the opportunity to present here today. I’ll be seeking to follow the advice of the famous Apache chief Cochise, who, when someone was about to get up to speak, said, “You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts.” I’m going to be speaking straight, and it’s up to you to tell me whether or not the second part is true.
I am from Lax Kw’alaams. I was brought up there. My dad is hereditary chief. One of the presenters referred to my brother, who is the chief or the mayor of our community. We have a detailed knowledge of what’s going on on the ground there.
Eagle Spirit is a project that currently involves 35 First Nations. There will probably be more signing on. It will be 85 per cent owned by First Nations. It will be completely private sector financed. We’re talking about a multi-pipeline corridor that has the value potential of between $200 to $400 billion.
We got involved in this project in the first place for a couple of reasons. First, as has already been alluded to by our partners in the labour industry, it has to do with having meaningful employment. One chief from B.C. said that the best social program is a job. The problem with First Nations across Canada is that there’s 25 per cent unemployment in the working-age population on reserves.
When you compare that to the Great Depression, which at its highest point had 25 per cent unemployment, you start to get an understanding of how desperate things are in communities. When you go further north to where we are, we’re talking about 90 per cent unemployment. The First Nations from those communities get a bit hot under the collar when they see what they view as potential policy that may take food off their tables being motivated by rich people with ideas about how to save the environment and the territories where they’ve been living for 10,000 years.
The question that many of them are asking is why this is being proposed for that particular part of Canada. Would such a proposal ever be made in Quebec, where there are 82,000 metric tonnes of oil being shipped per year? Why isn’t it being proposed for Vancouver?
As part of my study, I’ve included an exhaustive study done by the federal government to examine the safest ports on the B.C. coast. In that study, the conclusion was the riskiest port to ship oil out of on the entire B.C. coast was where the Trans Mountain pipeline is shipping its oil to. It had a risk profile, if you look at the document, of 27 to 28. Where we’ll be shipping from, Grassy Point, was considered the safest place. It had a risk profile of one to two. We sat in on the discussion and heard reference to evidence-based decision-making. Whatever happened to that study? What’s motivating this in the first place?
When we look at the things that are taking place throughout our territory, the communities are saying they would like the opportunity to generate their own-source revenue. It’s clear, from the history of colonization of Indigenous people, that various colonial powers throughout the world — and the English were masters at it — marginalized the local population by moving them off their traditional territories, undermining their governance structures and their cultures and making them completely dependent on the government.
It’s a situation of debt slavery that our people are trying to get out of. All we need is to have access to the kinds of decisions that we feel are in our best interests.
A lot of First Nations feel that this government, in particular, is trying to pick winners and losers amongst First Nations. In reference to speaking about First Nations groups who oppose or are supportive of this bill, some of them are hundreds of kilometres away from our area. That’s like saying B.C. should have the power to decide what goes on in Quebec. It doesn’t make any common sense at all.
Are the beluga whales in the St. Lawrence Seaway worth less than the orcas out on the coast? To be talking about all these details about the environmental impacts when, at the same time, this government is proposing to ship oil out of one of the riskiest ports on the West Coast, is absurd. It does not make any sense whatsoever, given the fact that the Salish Sea is under consideration, I understand, to be designated as a World Heritage Site.
The first point I’d like to make is there was literally no meaningful consultation. The government lined up groups that were opposed to this, and they’re saying those represent the entire people on the coast. Well, they’re not.
Ken, my associate, will be speaking specifically to some of the measures that the First Nations are going to take, but what we’ve looked at — and what we’re going to be forced to do if this ban goes into effect — is we will put our port in Hyder, Alaska and ship our oil out of the same Dixon Entrance area under an American flag, and the Canadian government can deal with the U.S. government, because the U.S. claims those waters. That’s why there really isn’t a moratorium in northern B.C., because the Canadian government would have to deal with the U.S. government. Robert Hage just released an article this week discussing that whole matter. I think the publication was Policy Options.
In our territory, a bunch of environmentalists got together from various places around the world. They decided they were going to make the Great Bear Rainforest — no one ever came to our community, not once. There was no consultation whatsoever in establishing the Great Bear Rainforest. When my uncle, in his traditional territory, gave up a huge piece of his territory to establish the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary, there was no consultation.
One of the environmentalists Tzeporah Berman said in her autobiography that she came up with the name “Great Bear Rainforest” while sitting in a cheap Italian restaurant in San Francisco. When that got back to the nine chiefs of our community, they were completely outraged. Then to have one of the environmental publications publish a picture and a story about the architects of the Great Bear Rainforest that included no Indigenous people, it’s absurd.
What we’re here to say is that as Canadians, does it make any sense that we find it’s perfectly okay to have ships coming into the eastern coast from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, when we have one of the most regulated industries in the world and when we are now shipping our gas and our oil down to the Gulf at a CO2 cost that is five times what we are actually proposing through our project?
We have spent four or five years proposing protections of the coastline that would exceed the very minimal standards that Canada is now proposing for the Oceans Protection Plan. We will voluntarily comply with that.
So the bottom line is that the groups we’re working with are basically telling us that they need something. There are risks to everything, but we all understand that, and yet we will jump on a plane. Hopefully it’s not a 737 MAX.
We feel there are measures in place to protect the coast. In fact, you now have tankers running right by Haida Gwaii every day outside their Voluntary Tanker Exclusion Zone. If one of them ever foundered, we wouldn’t have the resources in place to do anything with it. The kind of ocean protection system that we’re talking about is a spill prevention program, not a spill recovery operation.
I would encourage you to look through the brief that I prepared because I don’t have time to go through all of this. Wrapping up, I just learned in travelling throughout Western Canada that it’s not just Alberta that is ticked off with the kinds of policies that are being put forward by this government. In fact, I have been working with 300 First Nations, and we’re working with the three Western provinces and the two northern territories to sign a natural resources accord.
We don’t understand what kind of economy this government thinks we have in the West and the northern part of Canada. We have a natural resources economy, and Canada is one of the best examples in the world of responsible resource development. We will be signing an accord between those entities, essentially laying out responsible resource development the way we think it should be done.
We think that Bill C-48 should be rejected in its entirety. It’s probably, as a lawyer, just on the surface of it, in breach of Charter rights by singling out a single area in Canada which creates economic harm and it doesn’t anywhere else in the nation.
We think this can be done in a way that creates huge amounts of employment and economic opportunity, not just for Indigenous people but for all Canadians. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Helin.
Kenneth Brown, Spokesperson, Eagle Spirit Chiefs Council Group: Thank you to everybody for giving me a chance to come speak today on a matter very critical to the coalition of First Nation communities that will be participating in the Eagle Spirit project that Calvin has been working on for the last five years.
Brevity isn’t one of my strengths, unfortunately, but I’ll try to be as succinct as I can about the issues at play. There are a lot of them.
I don’t think it comes as any surprise to anybody here that the chiefs coalition categorically and unequivocally reject the merits of Bill C-48. There is a myriad of reasons why we reject the bill, both in substance and in its attempt at implementation. The crux of the matter for the communities is that it serves as a pretty significant impediment to the coalition bands being able to achieve self-sufficiency, self-reliance and economic independence through resource development.
I think that the imposition of Bill C-48 in many respects has also served to reinforce, I would say, some informed perspectives from First Nation elders and First Nation communities about the mendacious nature of our country’s commitments and promises to First Nations peoples that haven’t been honoured since antiquity. This is just another recycled example. So I’ll drill into four or five examples, and I’ll try to be as expeditious as I can.
First and foremost, the imposition of Bill C-48 is literally antithetical to the constitutionally protected rights that the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation has within their traditional territory. As everybody in this room knows, you cannot legislate away Aboriginal rights and title by simple legislation. That’s just an inescapable fact.
Second, the Nisga’a First Nation is one of the coalition members of this group. There was a trilateral agreement in place between the federal government, the provincial government and the Nisga’a First Nation that gave them jurisdictional authority over their lands. They can govern as they deem fit and make rules and regulations, policies, procedures and carry out resource development, whatever they want. They are sovereign. I think this really flies in the face of that treaty in many respects.
Third, we could talk about the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Chair: Could you just slow down a bit? The interpreters are having a hard time keeping up with you and interpreting into French.
Mr. Brown: I’m happy to slow it down. I was worried we were going to be pedantic about the seven-minute timeline, but I’ll slow it down.
The Chair: Do your best.
Mr. Brown: I can slow down. I’m happy to do it. Just trying to consolidate a lot of material.
The Chair: And we are very interested in hearing it, Mr. Brown.
Mr. Brown: I’ll slow it down and go with the third point, which is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Ostensibly the country supports that declaration. Ostensibly our Prime Minister supports that declaration. It’s our view that Bill C-48 in no way, shape or form harmonizes with the principles of that declaration.
Pivoting to reconciliation, which is I think another example. Bill C-48 in no way comports or aligns with the spirit and intent of the reconciliation agenda that for many First Nations has been offered as a panacea to First Nation inequities in this country. So I think those are four substantive examples.
Pivoting to marine tanker safety. I’m sure that you have heard these narratives so often. I apologize if I’m recycling stuff that you have heard. You are probably getting tired of hearing the same things. From the 35 First Nation coalition perspective, there is no empirical evidence or data to justify such an authoritarian policy prescription overreach by this federal government. As everybody here knows — and it has been said numerous times — there are ubiquitous amounts of oil tanker traffic on the eastern and the western seaboard. It’s incredibly offensive to the participating First Nation communities. They feel minimized and marginalized because it’s almost as if there is no recognition by the federal government that these First Nation communities have immense discernment and wisdom with respect to ecology and sustainability.
Ecology and sustainability are paramount tenets to any project that this coalition is going to participate in. The notion that ecological sustainability and economic development are mutually exclusive does not carry any weight with me. I’m privy to projects. I have seen what happens in the communities. It doesn’t carry any weight. It’s a matter of fact; it’s not true.
I provided you with some context on specific issues. I think it’s important because sometimes — and I say this with great respect to everyone here — you can be in a bit of a bubble when you live in a wonderful city like Ottawa. You’re at the epicentre of all the power structure.
If you look at what is happening in First Nation communities, I think it’s important for me to express this to you so that you can understand the urgency of the coalition of First Nation bands that want to move this project forward. You have exponentially higher rates of drug and alcohol addiction, exponentially higher rates of suicide, disproportionate levels of unemployment, illiteracy rates through the roof.
It is no secret to anyone here that you have a deteriorating and often failing housing situation and infrastructure. I read recently in a Maclean’s magazine article — it was an older one from 2016 — how infant mortality rates in First Nation communities are worse than Russia, and that the country of Sudan actually has better employment rates than First Nation reserves. I think everybody here would acknowledge and agree that’s a moral stain on the ethos of this country. Literally.
So the $200 billion question is: What is the solution? Is it more empty promises? Is it more platitudes? Is it more grand ceremonies, maybe more buzz words? More flag-raising, more apologies? Or one of my favourites that have become cliché, more heavy doses of welfare by central planners in Ottawa?
I’m not trying to sound facetious or cynical, but those clichés that I have laid out literally have been a lot of the solutions. I don’t want to malign or impugn everybody working in government or everybody working in industry. There are also great examples of partnerships in this country where industry and First Nations have been able to cultivate real meaningful relationships and work in cooperation with government to get things done. So I think that’s the example.
It’s an incontrovertible fact that it’s those examples that transform the country. I can get into a multitude of reasons why from my personal experience, but I don’t want to continue and filibuster and talk forever, so I’ll pivot.
If I have a little more time, I would like to touch on one more issue. Is it okay?
The Chair: One more. Yes.
Mr. Brown: The issue is the fascinating work that Vivian Krause has done. She puts together a compelling case. I’m sure you’re privy to the material that she has disseminated to everybody. She has basically been able to bring transparency around the fact that you have a choir of NGO smear merchants who are being well funded out of the United States as well as offshore money. It’s being funnelled into these NGOs. They are essentially fomenting opposition, galvanizing the left, buying ink by the barrel and disseminating disinformation and fabrications and passing it off as fact, with the end game of isolating our most valuable resource in this country, which is Alberta oil.
What is more frightening to us is that we have a power structure of intellectuals, bureaucrats and politicians that seem to be more aligned with the value systems of the NGOs than maybe some of the voters and First Nations in this country.
That kind of complicit behaviour is incredibly frustrating for our First Nation communities that are living in perpetual poverty and can’t eat apologies. So, if what Vivian Krause has done in terms of her due diligence and research on this is true, it’s unethical, immoral and unconscionable. It probably needs political redress, because what is happening right now is the East and the West, there is tremendous discord there.
I don’t know if people realize how serious it is. But there are legitimate people within the establishment of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and I’m hearing it as well as the Yukon — what I’m saying is not hyperbolic — people believe they are not getting anything out of Confederation anymore. We have a bunch of elitists on the East Coast determining the value system for the West Coast.
I have said quite a bit already. I’ll probably leave it at that and open it for feedback or questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much to both of you. Mr. Brown, I don’t live in Ottawa, I live in Saskatoon. Proud to live very close to the Dakota reserve where good partnerships with the community have built a very high employment rate and a low unemployment rate. That’s also good. We are also the home of Cameco which has, with partnerships, done the same thing with many reserves in northern Saskatchewan. We, of course, want the same for all of you as well. That’s my point of view. Not everybody’s point of view on this committee, but that’s mine.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony. I would like first to know the financing. You said you have been working five years on Eagle Spirit. At what point are you now? How is it financed? You said private funds. Is it a public company? Do we know where they come from? What information can you give me on that?
Mr. Helin: We have various sources of financing. We are just sifting through the various opportunities. We have just secured our seed capital. We will be setting up offices in Vancouver and Calgary. We will be bringing on a senior executive team of the most senior executives from the oil patch, LNG industry, engineering and finance who want to work on this project because they believe it’s a legacy project for Canada.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I want you to explain to me in more detail what you meant when you said that some of the tribes, who I suppose are for the moratorium, are living so far away that it’s like people living in another province deciding. Are you talking here about the Heiltsuk or the Kitasoo? Explain that to me, because obviously you have —
Mr. Helin: I am talking exactly about those groups. They are not anywhere near where this project is.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: What is the distance?
Mr. Helin: Heiltsuk are probably 300 kilometres away.
To get to the nub of your question, just like a province has jurisdiction within its provincial boundaries, tribes have jurisdiction within their traditional territories. I could be opposed to something a tribe is doing in Quebec and that tribe can tell me to go and pound sand. I don’t have any rights to say anything in their territory. I have an opinion, just like everybody else, but they have the legal power to decide what goes on in their own traditional territory.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: So you would say that for all the tribes that are for the ban?
Mr. Helin: I don’t know who all the tribes are for the ban.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: About 10, I was told.
Mr. Helin: That’s a huge territory. You’re talking about half of B.C.’s coast where you’re proposing a ban of one of the most important commodities, not just to the economy of Canada but in the world. We sat in for part of the last discussion, and the Haida leadership is against this but they don’t have any rights in our traditional territory. If we have to run our pipeline to Hyder, Alaska, Canada won’t have any say in what happens, and the Americans can oil ship right out Dixon Entrance, and we’ve just transported billions of dollars worth of infrastructure, and maybe 500 or 600 jobs in the port into the hands of the Americans for no good reason.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you, sir.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: First, thank you for joining us this evening and for making the trip to meet with us.
Mr. Helin, I’m from northern Quebec. I fully understand your comments. I and many people from Abitibi and the North have observed that the Cree people have been taking charge of their economic development as part of an agreement with the Government of Quebec. They have created a great deal of infrastructure that makes them stand out from other Indigenous communities in Quebec today. I completely understand your frustration at seeing your progress towards self-sufficiency halted because of a bill on which you weren’t consulted.
Mr. Brown and Mr. Helin, I’m seeking your great wisdom. How can we reconcile Indigenous communities that support economic development and the pipeline with the communities that do not? How can we reconcile the differences with these people, who are your brothers and sisters, within the communities? How can we create a consensus that will ensure that both groups can achieve their objectives, not necessarily through a bill, but by reaching a consensus internally in order to come up with something constructive?
[English]
Mr. Helin: You’ll never get a consensus on anything. Just like asking for consensus across the provinces, how likely is that? People have different interests that are dictated by their own circumstances and their geographical areas, so it would be very difficult to do. But when you have the key industrial part of northern British Columbia, which is basically in the traditional territory of the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation and their nine tribes, it’s like somebody distant from them saying, “We don’t want this to happen, so you can’t do it.”
The only traffic will be through that part of B.C. anyway. It won’t impact those people so far south. These are huge areas. Coming from Quebec, you know how big that coastline is. It just seems totally unprecedented that this would be imposed on that part of the coast when, on the southern part of the coast, by the government’s own study, it’s proposing to ship bitumen out of the worst port on the coast for risks, whereas we’re going to be shipping an upgraded bitumen, a far safer product, with a much higher level of environmental protection that we will voluntarily comply with beyond the standards of the Canadian government under the Oceans Protection Plan.
Mr. Brown: I don’t know what else I can add to that, other than consensus is always difficult, as you all know. This notion that First Nations communities are monolithic in nature is a narrative that gets recycled far too often. It’s not true. You have some First Nations communities that are aggressively pursuing economic development opportunities, and some that want the federal government to do more. There is a divergence there.
Let’s not underscore the miracle that is taking place here. That’s what Calvin has been able to do. He is an absolute thoroughbred and a champion working with 35 First Nations that unequivocally and categorically support the project. I challenge anybody in the room to find any other coalition like this anywhere else in the country. These are 35 First Nation communities all along the corridor. It’s pretty impressive.
Like Calvin said, with great respect to those other First Nations in the mid-coast, I have great respect for what they are trying to do. I know they are heavy into aquaculture and they do forestry. There are some good people there. I don’t know them personally, but I’ve heard good things. I have nothing but respect for them, but I don’t think the answer is to unilaterally come with your own coalition to Ottawa and plead your case. It might be more beneficial to come and talk to the coalition and say, “Hey, here are our concerns, this is how we would like to address them and maybe we can find common ground.” That’s my perspective.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Thank you.
Senator Cormier: I want to better understand your pipeline project. First, I want to say that I fully agree with your arguments concerning economic development. We’ve been hearing basically the same arguments from the West Coast First Nations that support the project. Everyone wants to earn a living from their job. This argument is being made on both sides.
In your brief to the House of Commons, you said that a shipping channel would improve navigation safety at this time, while preserving most of the area covered by the tanker moratorium. What ships would be allowed or prohibited in this area? How would this channel improve navigation safety at this time? Could you explain, so that I understand it correctly, the recommendation to establish a tanker traffic separation scheme for the Dixon entrance, like the scheme for the Strait of Juan de Fuca? I want to understand this aspect to have a better idea of your project.
[English]
Mr. Helin: Thank you very much for the question. In the Juan de Fuca, they have a traffic separation scheme where boats going one way go on one side, just like rules of the road. That’s been proposed, I believe, by the various shipping interests.
What we’re proposing is something quite different from what is being allowed under the Oceans Protection Plan. From our point of view, the Oceans Protection Plan is a minimal requirement. When we were researching for the communities the most advanced model for protecting the ocean, we ended up looking at the model in Alaska. After the Exxon Valdez spill, they had to get serious about putting in place one of the most stringent ocean protection processes and programs in the world.
What they did is they went throughout the world and adopted all of the best practices. When you fully understand it, what they are doing is to integrate all of the local communities into the program and all of their fishing boats. There is annual training. The whole thing is run like a crack military program. All along the shipping route they have located all of the assets in the event of a spill. You would have huge numbers of people who would be out on barges with equipment.
In the 25 or so years there has never been a spill, but all those people are out there all the time with all of the equipment. It’s done under a specific command structure so that there is no confusion about when a spill takes place. They are right there on site with the equipment and trained people. The tugs escort the ships about 70 kilometres offshore. They are far away from the shore. The only time a ship is a threat to the environment is when it is close to the shore and it might hit the shoreline.
They have a program in place up there which is probably the highest standard in the world. That’s what we would seek to adopt.
Senator Manning: Thank you to our guests.
I applaud the efforts in bringing 35 First Nations together in a coalition. To be honest, we could learn a few lessons here in Ottawa on how to bring 35 groups of anything together and agree on something.
About 10 different First Nations groups are in support of this bill. Have you had consultations and discussions with those groups in regard to the pipeline development?
Mr. Brown: The epiphany came when she made reference to these mid-coast bands. I thought the old way would have been everybody would come together and address the issues and see if they could find some meaningful compromise instead of the balkanized approach that takes place.
I can’t speak for Calvin, but he is probably the most reasonable person I know. If the mid-coast would like to sit down and go over all of the specific rules and regulations, and all the other things that they’re trying to do to mitigate things and make it safe, he’d welcome that.
Mr. Helin: Sure. If they wanted to have a tanker ban in their territory, they can have it, but we don’t want one in our territory. There’s commerce to be done. We don’t have any problem consulting with anybody. If they want to meet with us, we’d be very happy to meet with them.
Senator Manning: I don’t support the bill, but I do support the consultation process, even though you are not happy or pleased with the consultation process. I’m talking about the consultation with the groups that have a difference of opinion on this. Have you had any discussion with them at any time? Has there been any approach to them? Are they hell-bent on what they believe? If there are at least conversation and consultation — I don’t know that area; I’m from Newfoundland and Labrador so I’m a long way away — there may be a compromise. Have there been efforts on anybody’s side?
Mr. Helin: We haven’t met with them because what we’re doing, in our view, doesn’t impact their territory. It’s like asking, again, Quebec to consult with B.C. on something that it wants to do. Why would you do that? We don’t have any problem meeting with them and providing information or anything like that.
This bill casts the net so wide that it’s like saying if you want to build a highway in St. John’s, you’ve got to ask every other province in Canada. That’s kind of the tenor of your question. It’s just not reasonable.
Senator Dasko: I had a bit of an extension of the same question. With respect to the other First Nations, I’m going to read a couple of sentences with respect to the description of it. Bill C-48 has been requested by the coastal First Nation communities, who seek to protect their waters and salmon rivers for their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In more ways than one, these waters are the lifeblood and they create jobs and put food on the table. That is a statement from the sponsor of the bill, Senator Jaffer.
We, of course, had Káwázil Chief Marilyn Sletthere; hereditary chief of the Haida Gwaii, George Young was here; and Jason Alsop, President of the Haida Nation came to this panel. They made the case that this was very much their — I’m not going to use the word “territory” because I don’t know if they used that word — livelihood. The vibrate fisheries are their livelihood, and that’s the argument they made to us.
Mr. Helin: Let me ask this question in reverse, then. Have they consulted all the First Nations all around the B.C. coast in the Salish land and sea and out on the West Coast of Vancouver Island on what they’re proposing?
Senator Dasko: You mean with respect to this bill?
Mr. Helin: No, with respect to the pipeline they’re proposing there. You’re asking us why we’re not doing this. Has the government done it? Of course, it hasn’t.
Senator Dasko: I’m not defending the government.
Mr. Helin: They’re so far away. What I’m trying to tell you —
Senator Dasko: I’m saying they made a representation that was in some ways similar to the things you are saying about the importance of young people. They are looking to build and rebuild the fishery and they are looking for jobs for their young people, too. Actually, that has been put forward as the number one impetus for the bill. It’s actually not East Coast. Senator Manning is the only from the East Coast here, but they’re not East Coast environmentalists, or whoever. It seems to be where it’s coming from.
Mr. Brown: I’d like go back to Calvin’s original point. Respectfully, they are 300 kilometres south. That’s a pretty significant distance. Are we going to have the same conversation with every First Nation up and down every coast in Canada? Is it sacrosanct to have oil tankers on the West Coast but not on the East Coast? Tankers are leaving from Prince William Sound, Exxon Valdez going all the way down the coast. There was a position here asserting something different. Lloyd Jones, a hereditary chief at Haida Gwaii supports this project but did some due diligence and said that there are 280 tankers going 12 kilometres off the coast of Haida Gwaii every year.
This notion that there’s no tanker traffic is preposterous. I’ll go one step further. When you talk about Bill C-48, it’s a crescendo to a macro energy policy taking place. It’s an extension of Bill C-69. It’s abundantly clear that we’re seeing an overwhelming number of impediments to our most valuable resource, which ultimately feeds into the sovereignty of our economy.
In America right now, with the Permian Basin expansion, they’ve got seven pipelines under construction: three that will be complete by the end of 2019, three by the end of 2021 and an additional one by the end of 2022. In those seven pipelines, there they are going to be moving 5 million barrels of oil every year. What do we have going on here in Canada? Canada Action, I think a group out of Quebec called Desjardins, a financial group, estimated that between 2008 and 2020, an estimated $92 billion was left off the table because we continue to perpetuate this monopoly that America has on our subsidized oil.
These are difficult decisions that need to be made. We’ve got veterans who are suffering and First Nation communities that are despondent and broke. I could keep going on about macroeconomics. I won’t go there though, because I don’t want to deviate.
Senator Dasko: You suggested there was a violation of Charter rights. Have you read the government’s Charter statement on the bill? I’d like your thoughts on it.
Mr. Helin: I haven’t. I’m just thinking out loud as a lawyer. I’m a recovering lawyer and a failed commercial fisherman, so maybe I wasn’t too good at it.
Senator Plett: I have a brief comment and then a couple of questions.
Mr. Brown, I think there are those around this table who understands the urgency that you refer to. Most of us — probably not all of us around this table — do not live in Ottawa. I’m from Landmark, Manitoba, a community of 1,500. I have spent most of my adult life working in Aboriginal communities in northwestern Ontario, northern Manitoba and many parts of northern Saskatchewan. We see and feel the pain there. Many of us are opposed to this bill and will do everything we can to fight it. So we do not all live in a bubble.
Mr. Helin, you talked about 90 per cent unemployment rate. If Bill C-48 does not pass and you can build your pipeline the way you want and not have to deal with the Americans — I don’t know what change that would have on your unemployment condition — how much unemployment would your communities have if you could build this pipeline?
Mr. Helin: The first thing that is important to anybody, and I’ve written a couple of books about the dependency trap that First Nations and other parts of society are into — I’ll get around to answering your question. It took me two books to figure out why welfare doesn’t work. I asked myself why it is that when you look at any population where a large part of that population is on welfare, whether it’s in an inner city or a reserve or anywhere, there are so many social problems and so much dysfunction.
Finally, I figured out that it was basically what my grandmother was telling me when I was a little kid and moping around the house. She would say, “Go outside and do something useful and you’ll feel better about yourself.” When you get a welfare cheque, everybody in your family knows you didn’t do anything for it. So when you work for what you get, it’s written in our DNA as people as the only way that we can validate our sense of self-worth.
With this project there will be thousands of jobs. For example, one of the things we’re looking at is setting up a rolling mill and rolling our own pipe in the Prince Rupert area. We will import sheets of steel. That alone could potentially employ 5,000 to 10,000 people on a very long-term basis.
If you understand the environmental model which we’ve created to be able to do what we’re planning to do, because the dictates of the chiefs were to build the most robust environmental model ever for such a project, we will be able to, for example, take upgraded crude oil directly from the geologic structure very efficiently with new technology. This will leave all of the asphaltenes in the ground. It eliminates tailings ponds, which is one of the knocks against the oil sands. We will be able to ship that directly out through heated pipeline to customers who have a very high demand and will pay near Brent Crude pricing for that product because the world is now setting up these high conversion refineries.
As well, with this process, one of the other knocks against the oil sands is that it uses a lot of water. This process recirculates the water. Shipping 2 million barrels a day for a year, we could reduce the current amount of CO2 going into the air by about a seventh of Canada’s entire output. That process alone would create a huge number of jobs. The First Nations would be looking after various sections of the pipeline corridor all the way along the route, so there would be a lot of training.
We’re very happy to be working with the labour unions of Canada to be able to establish the best training. For LNG export, we’re planning to use renewable energy. So when you’re shipping LNG and you use LNG to fire electrical generators to cool the LNG, it requires huge amounts of energy and you’re putting CO2 into the air. When you do it with renewable energy, the amount of CO2 that we do not put into the atmosphere is an enormous saving. We’re going to spike the LNG with the natural gas liquids: the propane and the ethane.
On a pipeline that is shipping about 6 billion cubic metres of gas per day, we’re going to ship about 2 billion of natural gas liquids. That will go out to the coast and it will go to a dehydrogenation petrochemical feedstock plant.
Right now we’re given those products away in Canada. In that plant on the coast, you can upgrade those molecules to very high-value olefinic molecules for use in plastics, which will return $5 billion more for the producer just on one product, and that will create maybe 3,000 to 5,000 jobs.
Senator Plett: I think you’ve given me a pretty good idea of what it will do to your unemployment.
I have one very brief question, if I could. Before I do, gentlemen, let’s be under no illusions: Bill C-48 is going to pass. Some of us will do our level best, but it will pass. I know there will be those in this room who will be upset that I make these comments, but it will. If it doesn’t pass the Senate, then the house will not accept what we do. They have decided this will pass.
Mr. Helin, when this bill passes — and we’ll do our level best — it’s not a bill that’s amendable. It clearly isn’t; it’s either yea or nay. I was going to ask the question that Senator Dasko somewhat pre-empted. If you see that this legislation violates Charter rights, are you going to go to the Supreme Court and challenge this when it becomes law?
Mr. Helin: There are two kinds of rights. There are Aboriginal rights, which are Constitution rights, and I was referring to lower Charter rights based on equality.
There was no consultation whatsoever. It doesn’t have a hope in hell of surviving. I can tell you that from square one. Lax Kw’alaams has already filed a writ. You’ll have 35 other nations filing a writ the day this becomes law.
Senator Plett: We’ll stand with you.
Senator Busson: I am a little bit more optimistic than my colleague across the table. That’s why you’re here and that’s why we’re asking questions.
I’m from British Columbia, so I understand a little bit about the coast. I think it might be helpful to my colleagues and me if you could possibly supply a map of the area that you’re talking about from the Nisga’a traditional territory and the traditional territory of the Lax Kw’alaams and how that whole corridor would look from your perspective.
I think people are getting somehow a little confused about the different peoples in the area and what their jurisdiction is. I think it would be most helpful if you could show the corridor and what tribes support you and the fact that in that corridor there are no tribes that don’t support what you do.
I know we’re late, and I respect our chair’s need to get this done but, just for clarification, there has to have been some talk about a corridor from either Grassy Point, Prince Rupert or Kitimat straight across through Dixon Entrance out to the edge of the moratorium. Would you have any room for that in your deliberations or in your view of where you might go from here?
Mr. Helin: Thank you for the question. You’ve asked for a map. There’s one in my submission. It shows the traditional territory of the nine tribes of Lax Kw’alaams.
As to your second question, we’d like to see the bill completely done away with for the simple reason that it is discriminatory. It discriminates against an area of Canada when this has never been proposed anywhere else in Canada. Failing that, a transit corridor that would allow us to ship upgraded bitumen would be fine.
The Chair: Senator McCoy, do you have a short question?
Senator McCoy: At what stage is your lawsuit? You’ve clearly already launched a claim in the courts, and it was a year ago that you launched it. How far along are you?
Mr. Helin: The writ was filed by the Lax Kw’alaams First Nations. There’s really nothing that can be done until and if this becomes law. Then they will take immediate action on it.
Senator McCoy: The description of Eagle Spirit, I was equating it in my head to a twin of the Northern Gateway, but it’s much more than the Northern Gateway.
We had evidence here from the Aboriginal Equity Partners who had a one-third interest in the Northern Gateway who told us that there was going to be $400 million contributed to marine safety as a result of that particular project.
Would it be fair for me to extrapolate from that a similar or greater contribution? You say what you are planning would follow one of the best marine protection and prevention regimes in the world, and that’s Alaska.
Mr. Helin: Thank you for the question. Because this has never been done before, the way everybody thinks about this is as a “them and us,” but the “them” and the “us” are the First Nations. This is their corridor.
The amount of money spent on marine protection may even be five to ten times the amount you’ve quoted.
Senator McCoy: That may be the common ground between you and the coastal communities, from what I’ve heard. I’m also more optimistic. I’m from Alberta, however, so you know clearly where I’m sitting on this bill.
The Chair: Thank you, senator.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for your testimony today. It was a great conversation. We enjoyed it very much.
(The committee continued in camera.)