generalspeaking

Calgary-based TC Energy owns the Coastal GasLink project, a $6.6-billion pipeline under construction to connect northeastern British Columbia natural gas fields with an LNG export facility located in Kitimat, British Columbia. The Coastal GasLink pipeline has the approval of the Wet'suwet'en people in the territory, which has been given property rights in the transaction of gas shipments through a percentage stake in the proceeds. Indigenous tribal people will be employed on the project which was approved by the bands' elected chiefs.

The fly in that ointment was that a handful of 'hereditary' chiefs have rallied in conjunction with anti-energy groups to deny the legality of the contract signed between the elected Wet'suwet'en and TC Energy. They have mounted protests, violent at times that have disrupted transportation across Canada to make their point. The disagreement between 'heritage' Wet'suwet'en chiefs and elected chiefs is unequal; most members of the Wet'suwet'en support their elected chiefs' position, while the 'hereditary' chiefs have brought in outsiders who campaign against the project.

The project's opponents have taken to staging dangerously criminal actions. Yet despite the fact that there have been witness accounts of a violent interaction between unknown anti-pipeline gangs and workers on the project, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who undertook an investigation and assigned no fewer than 40 officers to the case, has months following the violence signalled no success whatever in discovering who was behind the attack.

 

 

On February 17 a group of between 20 and 40 men entered the precincts of a work camp for the Coastal GasLink project. One witness identified as "Trevor" by his employer, testified being surrounded by five figures as he sat in his work truck that night. Coastal GasLink concerned over the possibility of retribution and to protect the employer's "safety and security" gave  him a pseudonym. The intruders to the work site swung axes at the vehicle while someone used a cordless angle grinder to cut through a security gate.

 

"I heard smashes on the back tailgate and when I looked in my mirror I could see one of them was holding an axe." When RCMP officers responded to the attack their progress was impaired by trees having been felled across access roads. Responding police reported taunts and being hit by smoke bombs from the treeline while they attempted to clear the obstructions with chainsaws. "When the police gave chase, it appears as though they might have lulled us into a trap", said RCMP Chief Supt.Warren Brown, of pursuing officers stepping on nail traps.

 

That night saw several millions in damage; a Coastal GasLink excavator was commandeered to destroy trailers and parked equipment. According to the police the attack represented an "amped-up level of violence". Over 500 Coastal GasLink employees in that same work camp were stranded in November 2021 when access roads were blocked by activists who commandeered heavy equipment to trench road surfaces and put up blockades. They made no attempt to conceal their identities or motives.

 

$21 million was spent by the RCMP on policing and blockade clearing in the region. Chief Maureen Luggi issued a statement identifying the actions as contrary to the wishes of "most Wet'suwet'en people" who were among the workers trapped in the Coastal GasLink camp. Three months of 40 dedicated RCMP officers investigating the violent attack at the B.C. work camp, yet there were no leads, no identification, nothing that would lead to an arrest in the violence.  

 

The estimated 40 individuals involved, masked, carrying torches, flare guns and axes who swarmed the GasLink work camp continue to evade responsibility for their dangerous criminal acts despite the promise of a "thorough investigation to identify and apprehend those responsible". This is quite possibly a situation where Wet'suwet'en work crew members recognized other Wet'suwet'en tribal members and for fear of reprisal will not identify them to police for justice to be done. 

A typically intractable problem when it comes to holding Indigenous peoples to account for their law-breaking, when government agencies are instructed to look the other way, when justice is meted out with special consideration to First Peoples' 'entitlements', and no one, in the final analysis, faces justice, not even the federal government which sympathizes with the prospect of leaving energy sources in the ground while at the same time evading responsibilities that will offend some First Nations.

The end result is frustration for the First Nations involved who want no special treatment, only their due, which is a truly entitled inheritance to a reasonable percentage of the exploitation and use of natural resources on land once and still their own, allowing them a measure of self-agency, employment, profit, respect and pride.