Lax Kw’alaams near Prince Rupert throwing initial support behind Eagle Spirit Energy

Calvin Helin and Eagle Spirit Energy are quietly giving Enbridge and Kinder Morgan lessons in how to navigate the tricky shoals of BC First Nations pipeline politics.

Northern Gateway (Enbridge) is often whispered about in the plus-15s of corporate Calgary as “dead pipeline walking.” It may have been approved by the National Energy Board – albeit with 209 conditions – but Harper Government ministers like James Moore have been signalling for months that the Conservatives have done all they can, now the project requires First Nations support, which has not been forthcoming.

Three or four years ago, Kinder Morgan watched carefully as Big Green and its First Nations allies eviscerated Northern Gateway in the public square. And then learned absolutely nothing. Today, Trans Mountain is bogged down with opposition from the cities of Burnaby and Vancouver, and local First Nations are firmly in the “No” camp.

Even the local Board of Trade has serious concerns about the project, which it outlined in a report released in January. If the local business community won’t get behind a $6 billion construction, maybe Kinder Morgan’s not doing it right.

If I was making book on both projects, I’d give Enbridge 3 to 5 against and Kinder Morgan no better than even odds. Both pipeline companies seriously misjudged the BC political environment.

Helin and his Eagle Spirit Energy project have done things very differently. Helin is a member of the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation near Port Rupert on the northern BC coast. He understands the culture, the politics, and he listened to what elders and leaders have been saying ever since the idea of pipelines from Alberta to the West Coast was first raised.

This is a critical point, because the suits in the Calgary C-suites didn’t listen. Not to BC First Nations and not to their staff on the ground.

The message is that resource developers – including pipeline companies – who want to operate on First Nations traditional territory (which includes every square inch of the province) must engage First Nations at the very initial stages of the project and obtain not only their consent, but their participation.

If partnering with First Nations was important when Enbridge and Kinder Morgan were first blue skying around the board tables, it became absolutely critical after last December’s Supreme Court of Canada decision that gave the Tsilhqot’in Nation of central BC aboriginal title to their traditional territory and promptly changed the landscape of Canadian resource development forever.

First Nations can now say, No thank you. And while legal experts bicker over whether the Chilcotin decision, as it’s called, gives First Nations a veto over development projects, the fact they’re debating that point at all indicates just how much power First Nations now have over energy infrastructure.

Helin, who is also a lawyer, saw it coming. He understood that winning legal challenge after legal challenge would eventually give BC First Nations a seat – maybe the most important seat – at the table.

He has spent the last two and a half years talking to northern BC First Nations about an “energy corridor” that would include a 1.1 million bbls/day pipeline and a refinery. He talks about First Nations equity participation, jobs, business opportunities, and perhaps most important of all, world class systems to protect the environment.

Helin says northern chiefs understand the thirst for energy in the developing world and that crude oil will exported from the West Coast to Asia one way or the other. First Nation leaders who support Eagle Spirit Energy are pragmatic and want the best deal they can get that provides economic benefits and protects the environment.

“Given its importance to the national economy we know oil is eventually coming to the B.C. north coast. We sure don’t want bitumen by rail or by Enbridge’s pipeline,” Hereditary House Leader Xaiget (Robert Sankey) said in a March 4 press release.

“We want the input into an environmental protection model that the Eagle Spirit project offers. Our community has huge unemployment problems and, once we are fully satisfied the environment is being adequately protected, we need the opportunities that are not being provided by environmental do-gooders now.”

Comments like that infuriate southern and coastal First Nations. “There isn’t a single First Nation on the coast of BC that supports oil exports,” said Art Sterritt, executive director of the Coastal First Nations.

I interviewed Hereditary Chief Gitxoon (Alex Campbell), who says Sterritt has never met with or talked to his tribe, which is obviously a coastal First Nation. Clearly, there are BC First Nations that support oil exports. And there also a number of northern interior BC First Nations that support it, too.

“He [Sterritt] stands up and speaks for his own. He’s never come and talked to any of us, the hereditary chiefs from Lax Kw’alaams” said Gitxoon.

Gitxoon expects that BC First Nations, or perhaps coastal communities, will eventually get together to discuss crude oil exports, pipelines, and the Eagle Spirit Energy project. But he stresses that the Lax Kw’alaams communities speak for themselves and they won’t be bullied into taking a position. The hereditary chiefs plan to take Helin’s information back to their communities and discuss it with their members.

From that consultation will come a consensus, direction on how to proceed and how the communities can protect the ecosystem of their traditional territories while generating maximum economic benefits for their people.

Calvin Helin knows that process takes time. Lax Kw’alaams members won’t move at the pace of pipeline companies and regulators. But if the members decide to follow through on their leaders’ initial interest, they will be full partners in the Eagle Spirit Energy project.

And that, says Helin, is the difference between a process that respects BC First Nations culture and interests, and the Enbridge and Kinder Morgan approach.

If I was a betting man, I’d like Eagle Spirit Energy’s odd of succeeding a lot more than those of its competitors. Enbridge and Kinder Morgan, take note.

Part 1 of a series. In Part 2, Calvin Helin provides an update on the Eagle Spirit Energy project. It will be published next week.