Money complicating a simple decision [editorial]

The Yinka Dene Alliance has rejected the financial incentives offered by Enbridge, which wants to cut through their lands to build its $5.5 billion Northern Gateway project. With about a quarter of the lands necessary to accommodate the proposed right-of-way of the project, the rejection of the plan by the alliance is pretty significant. That is if it’s really a rejection, and not part of the negotiation dance.

“We won’t trade the safety of our rivers, lands and fish that are our lifeblood,” said Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik’uz First Nation. Good for Chief Thomas. The package the alliance rejected would have been a lucrative one.
“Enbridge knows it can’t guarantee there will be no oil spills into our rivers,” said Thomas. “Their promises and their money are no good to us.”

The benefit package is based on a 10 per cent equity interest in the pipeline and a trust established with contributions of one per cent of Enbridge’s pre-tax earnings. Enbridge also said it would hire Aboriginal people to fill at least 15 per cent of project’s construction jobs. And it would work with communities on strategies for procurement from Aboriginal businesses.

“We believe these commitments will break new ground by providing an unprecedented level of long-term economic and social benefits to Aboriginal communities in the North,” the company said in a statement.

“It’s an insult to us for [Enbridge] to ask us to borrow money or to get loans or to invest in this pipeline. We don’t see no economic benefits from it,” said Geraldine Thomas-Flurer, co-ordinator of the Yinka Dene Alliance.
“There’s no amount of money that could ever make us say yes to something like this. This is not something that is economically sound. It’s environmentally dangerous,” Thomas-Flurer said.

So, it’s clear. You just can’t put a price on the waters, lands and animal life that would be affected by an oil spill.

To hear Enbridge tell it, the majority of First Nations along the pipeline route support the project. Eight nations have signed up to consider the financial package. But more than 80 Native groups have joined forces with environment organizations and politicians to just say no to the pipeline.

And talk to everyday folk about the plan and they say you just have to look to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to say ‘we don’t want that stuff messing up our waterways.” They want the Enbridge plan scrapped.

The coastal tanker traffic alone is enough to scare the living daylights out of even the most money-hungry of us.

“Quite simply: it’s about the environment, stupid,” said Grand Chief Stewart Phillips when he rejected the project on behalf of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.

But put a few dollars on the table and sometimes it’s not so simple anymore. It’s quite simply, pretty complicated balancing community needs with environmental protection.

Windspeaker