JOINT REVIEW PANEL FOR THE ENBRIDGE NORTHERN GATEWAY PROJECT COMMISSION D’EXAMEN CONJOINT DU PROJET ENBRIDGE NORTHERN GATEWAY
Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Ordonnance d’audience OH-4-2011
Northern Gateway Pipelines Inc. Enbridge Northern Gateway Project Application of 27 May 2010
Demande de Northern Gateway Pipelines Inc. du 27 mai 2010 relative au projet Enbridge Northern Gateway
VOLUME 57
Hearing held at Audience tenue à
Skidegate Community Hall 102 Front Street Skidegate, British Columbia
June 14, 2012 Le 14 juin 2012
International Reporting Inc. Ottawa, Ontario (613) 748-6043
© Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada 2012 © Sa Majesté du Chef du Canada 2012 as represented by the Minister of the Environment représentée par le Ministre de l’Environnement et and the National Energy Board l’Office national de l’énergie
This publication is the recorded verbatim transcript Cette publication est un compte rendu textuel des and, as such, is taped and transcribed in either of the délibérations et, en tant que tel, est enregistrée et official languages, depending on the languages transcrite dans l’une ou l’autre des deux langues spoken by the participant at the public hearing. officielles, compte tenu de la langue utilisée par le participant à l’audience publique.
Printed in Canada Imprimé au Canada
HEARING /AUDIENCE OH-4-2011
IN THE MATTER OF an application filed by the Northern Gateway Pipelines Limited Partnership for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity pursuant to section 52 of the National Energy Board Act, for authorization to construct and operate the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project.
HEARING LOCATION/LIEU DE L'AUDIENCE
Hearing held in Skidegate (British Columbia), Thursday, June 14, 2012 Audience tenue à Skidegate (Colombie-Britannique), jeudi, le 14 juin 2012
JOINT REVIEW PANEL/LA COMMISSION D’EXAMEN CONJOINT
S. Leggett Chairperson/Présidente
K. Bateman Member/Membre
H. Matthews Member/Membre
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011
ORAL STATEMENTS/EXPOSÉS ORAUX
Teighan Bolt-Overton Jess Fairweather Russell Fleming Catherine Garrett Brandon Gibbard Recebba Holte Sarah Peerless Susan Brown Carl Coffey Ceitlynn Epners Kevin Gibson Alexander MacDonald Keith Moore Kelsey Pelton Robert Prudhomme Karl Puls Heidi Richardson Mariken Van Gurp Barbara Wilson
Paige Atwell Ian Benoit John Broadhead Sue Brown Jenn Dolen Fran Fowler Joel Lagasse Anne Mountifield Michael Muller Robert Olsen Lea Olsen Laura Pattison Evelyn von Almassy April Churchill Chief Lonnie Young Roy Jones Jr. Chief Ronald Wilson Chief Ken Edgars Chief Russ Jones Chief Frank Collison Chief Allan Wilson Sean O'Neail
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011
TABLE OF CONTENTS/TABLE DES MATIÈRES (i)
Description Paragraph No./No. de paragraphe
Opening remarks by the Chairperson 6667 Opening prayer by Ms. Diane Brown 6671 Opening remarks by the Chairperson (continued) 6673
Oral statement by Alexander MacDonald 6687 Oral statement by Barbara Wilson 6712 Oral statement by Heidi Richardson 6729 Oral statement by Kelsey Pelton 6744 Oral statement by Susan Brown 6757 Oral statement by Ceitlynn Epners 6794 Oral statement by Carl Coffey 6814 Oral statement by Brandon Gibbard 6843 Oral statement by Keith Moore 6861 Oral statement by Mariken Van Gurp 6905 Oral statement by Catherine Garrett 6935 Oral statement by Sarah Peerless 6949 Oral statement by Russell Fleming 6972 Oral statement by Rebecca Holte 6996 Oral statement by Jessica Fairweather 7009 Oral statement by Teighan Bolt-Overton 7026 Oral statement by Karl Puls 7033 Oral statement by Kevin Gibson 7082 Oral statement by Evelyn von Almassy 7107 Oral statement by Fran Fowler 7132 Oral statement by Ian Benoit 7162 Oral statement by John Broadhead 7188 Oral statement by Jenn Dolen 7216 Oral statement by Paige Atwell 7228 Oral statement by Laura Pattison 7240 Oral statement by Joel Lagasse 7268 Oral statement by Michael Muller 7302 Oral statement by Lea Olson 7316 Oral statement by Anne Mountifield 7330 Oral statement by Robert Olsen 7357 Oral statement by Sean O’Neail 7380 Oral statement by Sue Brown 7406
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011
TABLE OF CONTENTS/TABLE DES MATIÈRES (ii)
Description Paragraph No./No. de paragraphe
Oral statement by April Churchill 7430 Oral statement by Chief Lonnie Young 7467 Oral statement by Chief Frank Collison 7480 Oral statement by Ronald Wilson 7499 Oral statement by Chief Russ Jones 7511 Oral statement by Chief Ken Edgars 7544 Oral statement by Chief Allan Wilson 7566
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011
LIST OF EXHIBITS/LISTE DES PIÈCES (i)
No. Description Paragraph No./No. de paragraphe
Ruling No. 55 Ruling of the JRP on the motion brought forward by Ms. Churchill, requesting the Panel to reconsider the decision not to allow the Haida Children’s Dance Group to perform 6674
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Opening remarks
--- Upon commencing at 9:02 a.m./L’audience débute à 9h02
6667. THE CHAIRPERSON: If we could get everyone to take their seats, we’ll get ready to get underway shortly.
--- (A short pause/Courte pause)
6668. THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning, everyone.
6669. Ms. Brown, I understand that you’re going to open the session this morning with a prayer for us.
6670. Thank you.
--- (Opening prayer/Prière d’ouverture)
6671. MS. DIANE BROWN: I’d like to ask us all to come together in our minds, in our hearts as we give thanks for today.
6672. (Speaking in native language). Amen.
6673. THE CHAIRPERSON: Honoured Chiefs, distinguished Elders, ladies held in high esteem, thank you for your welcome into the community yesterday and for the continuation of these community hearings to hear oral statements.
6674. Before we get underway with the oral statements we have a preliminary matter that we’d like to deal with. Last night we received a Notice of Motion and we’d like to issue our ruling on that Notice of Motion. This will be Ruling 55, for the record.
--- RULING NO./DÉCISION No. 55:
Ruling of the JRP on the motion brought forward by Ms. Churchill, requesting the Panel to reconsider the decision not to allow the Haida Children’s Dance Group to perform
6675. THE CHAIRPERSON: On June 13th, 2012 the Panel received a written motion from Ms. Churchill, Vice-President of the Haida Nation, requesting that the Panel reconsider its decision not to allow the Haida Children’s Dance Group to perform during Ms. Cross’ oral statement time slot last evening.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Opening remarks
6676. As outlined in the Hearing Order and subsequent procedural directions, notably Procedural Directions Number 5 and 6, oral statements in this process are an opportunity for registered participants to orally provide their personal knowledge and views about the proposed project within a 10-minute timeframe.
6677. Prior to the oral statement portion of the community hearings the Panel heard extensive oral evidence, including from this community which included Aboriginal traditional knowledge. This portion of the community hearing is to collect oral statements. It is not the appropriate stage in the proceedings for this type of presentation.
6678. The opportunity remains for Ms. Churchill, on behalf of the Haida Nation, to request by Notice of Motion, that a video recording of the dance be submitted for consideration as late oral evidence.
6679. And as always, we have our staff with us and we have Ms. Margaret McQuiston, one of our Process Advisors, at the back of the room. Margaret, if you could just raise your hand again. And so if there’s any -- if you need any further guidance on how you might approach -- how the Haida Nation might approach this Notice of Motion, Ms. McQuiston would be the person to speak with.
6680. So we will continue on now with the oral statements. As I mentioned, this is a continuation of the Skidegate community hearings that started yesterday. Oral statements are an opportunity for participants to provide their personal knowledge and views about the proposed project to the Panel. And when people signed in to present their oral statements you would have been shown a couple of maps at the desk. One of them is projected on the screen here and there is the other that you’ve seen.
6681. If it’s helpful to you during your oral statements to refer to either of these two maps, please let us know and we’ll make sure that we pull up the right one for you.
6682. The timeframe for each oral statement is a maximum of 10 minutes. We do this to be fair and to make sure that we can hear from all the participants who are scheduled to speak with us today.
6683. There’s a box on the table here and at the seven-minute timeframe of your
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux oral statement there will be a light and an audible sound and then at the 10 minutes there will be another light and another audible sound and that’s how you’ll know where you are in your timeframe of your oral statement.
6684. So we are here to listen to the oral statements today and we have a full agenda, so we will go into listening mode. And I will just confirm that everybody who’s registered to present an oral statement had been previously sworn or affirmed by the Panel Secretariat staff.
6685. So, Mr. MacDonald, if you could lead us off with your oral statement.
6686. Thank you.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. ALEXANDER MacDONALD:
6687. MR. ALEXANDER MacDONALD: Good morning. I’m really grateful to see you all here, back again. Welcome back to Haida Gwaii. I pray that you enjoy yourselves here. I’m also grateful for all of us here that are speaking up and appearing, ready to let their voices be heard.
6688. First and foremost, I want to state that I’m here in opposition to the pipeline and the idea of tankers plying these waters. It’s unlikely that I will require the full 10 minutes to state my piece, but nonetheless I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak.
6689. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would say, what I will say, and I was going to make a -- I’m sure a very eloquent and delightful speech for you all, but I’ve decided instead to just really voice my concerns, not just about the pipeline but also the process or more specifically on what the process is based.
6690. I understand the question is, is the pipeline in the public interest? And I would note that the basis for that decision is going to come from considering the public as a whole, as in all of Canada. And I guess that the people that are directly affected by the pipeline in a potentially adverse way that live along the route or along these waters constitute a very small fraction of the Canadian public.
6691. And I’m guessing, not even a tenth, and if half the people of Canada oppose this project, and the 10 percent of the people along here that oppose it also, based on the current way the government runs, we know that less than 40 percent of
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux the public vote constitutes a majority. And so I think that we here are kind of hooped as the ones who would stand in opposition. Nonetheless, we stand and, yeah us.
6692. I’m deeply concerned about the attitudes of the government. It seems that there is an increasingly adversarial role between economy and environment. This, I believe, is fundamentally wrong, that in fact the environment will support the economy and the way that it has been doing so has been very short-sighted. We’ve seen that in virtually every expression of resource extraction in the industrialized world, whether it’s the fishing on the west coast, mining interests. The list goes on and on -- the forestry.
6693. It’s incredible that we could continue along this path as long as we have, and yet we continue on it still. I shake my head. And I recognize the people that are making the decisions are very intelligent, highly intelligent. So it’s not a question of the people being wrong. I think it is the basis for which they are making their decision is so profoundly flawed that there need be a paradigm shift in the way that the system works, the expression of value that we place on the environment and on our natural resources.
6694. I’m not one to say that we can live and not kill -- not damage the environment, I understand that there is a trade-off that need be made. I’m just saying that the bar is -- where it’s placed is ridiculous. That there need be far more consideration, for what sadly are considered esoteric values to nature and the environment.
6695. There is healing in the earth that people need. And as we see more and more people getting confused and suffering and imbibing in deadly and very destructive behaviours, that -- it’s a symptom of people that are becoming increasingly lost; a society that is on the wrong track. And for any of us who have gone out and sat in the forest or on a mountaintop or on the beach, we know the healing that is accessible through the land, through nature.
6696. The people that are catching the fish and cutting the trees, there’s no lack of love for the resources. But there is a sense of desperation and confusion that they love to be out there; they love to participate; they love to provide for their families and it seems the options are rather limited.
6697. And they’re limited because we have in this country -- I know this is a politically incorrect term -- but we have a third world mentality of shipping out our resources raw and buying them back value-added. Again we’ve seen this over and
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux over again in the way we’ve done business, and I think that that too need be changed.
6698. The government carries on as business as usual which makes sense because, you know, we’re all still living and breathing and we have a very high standard of life. We’re so wealthy, so blessed in this country that, you know, how bad can it really be, how far astray can we really be going.
6699. But I believe that the situation is increasingly dire and that the lifestyles that we are enjoying will diminish at an exponential rate should we continue on the path of exploitation with no real concern for the future generations, for my children’s children.
6700. It’s hard to find a big tree anymore without going into really remote places. Look at the fleet down in Charlotte, the fishing fleet, there’s so few boats there compared to what there used to be. I hear neighbours talking that are loggers, that are suffering and they’re laid off again, and they’re waiting again, and they’re always hanging on and hanging by their fingernails.
6701. And the paradox is staggering that we live in such great wealth and such abundance, in truly one of the most magnificent places on earth and yet the people that are here on the ground doing the work are suffering and afraid and becoming increasingly sick as a result of the lifestyle that the whole industrialized system perpetuates.
6702. So I guess I better wind down here and just say that I believe you people are going to go back and say that there’s a lot of opposition to this pipeline, and the people are concerned, and I thank you for that. And I believe that it’s true, there’s a lot of opposition.
6703. That said, you know, I’ve been watching this for a long time, not just this but like NAFTA, the elections, all the stuff that’s gone on and you’re going to make your report, and the government is going to do what they’re going to do. Harper’s already said that he is going to go ahead with this pipeline.
6704. So I want to commit to non-violent protest of this as it continues. I also wish to commit to being civilly disobedient, to stop the tankers from flowing, and whatever else I can conceive of doing. And in those commitments I do also commit to put myself in harm’s way, and I guess I’ll call that good.
6705. Thank you.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6706. THE CHAIRPERSON: I just wanted to let people know that we’re here to hear your personal views and knowledge about the project but not to receive threats.
6707. And so I would ask everybody as they prepare their oral statements to keep in mind the fact that we’re looking for the relevant information of your knowledge and views about the project in these oral statements, and that it’s an inappropriate time and use of this Panel’s time to start talking about things like civil disobedience and threats.
6708. So I would ask everybody to bear that in mind as they prepare and present their oral statements. Thank you.
6709. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay, good morning, everyone. Good morning Chiefs, matriarchs, and thank you for the opening prayer. That’s great. Thank you.
6710. Please, Ms. Wilson, would you like to present to the Panel.
6711. Thank you.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. BARBARA WILSON:
6712. MS. BARBARA WILSON: (Speaking in native language) Barbara Wilson. Dear friends, my Haida name is Kii'iljus. My white name is Barbara Wilson.
6713. My ancestors come from K'uuna Llnagaay in Kincolith to Kanacolith after the last big smallpox epidemic. K'uuna Llnagaay is Gamsiiwah and Kincolith is Kamshua Inlet. Hadacolith is Skidegate Inlet, as it's known today. We trace our lineage to Jila Kuns and Nangkilslas. We have lived on our islands and gathered from our seas since it was neither light or dark.
6714. Today, I work for Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, national marine protected area and Haida heritage site, and I want to say right up front that I am not representing my employer as I speak, I am representing myself.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 6715. In my lifetime, we have gone from not being recognized as Canadians, not being able to vote. When the Indian Act was imposed on our ancestors, and thereby us, we became wards of the government. Even now, we still have the hangover from residential schools, diseases, churches, and laws that were imposed on our lands and waters.
6716. In spite of all those things, our ancestors, and now our Elders and our young people have, in one way or another, stood firm on who owns these lands and waters. As owners, we have worked to protect and use these things with respect and thinking about what we will leave as our legacy for future generations.
6717. From the time when reserves were put in, the old villages and other harvesting areas, our ancestors, and now this generation, have the responsibility to protect our lands and waters. This connection is what makes us who we are.
6718. I came home to stay in 1970, after residential school, and working in several of the big cities of Canada. The things I have to say will reflect some of my experiences in the past 23 years.
6719. I have learned that our relationship and life on Haida Gwaii and our relationship with other coastal nations hasn't always been one of turmoil, but we have had peace treaties with most of the coastal communities and nations, ensuring safety, access to food, and the ability to trade with ease.
6720. Contrary to what other people say, we have traded freely and have prospered in many ways. My ancestors have told me that at one time our population was over 30,000. And with the various things that I have researched, I have come to realize that there have been many things that have undermined the population of our lands; it wasn't just two epidemics, it was several. And so as I look at how we are as a small nation I realize that we may be small in numbers but our energy is very large, and for that, I am thankful.
6721. I have been privileged to live out on the land, to travel our waters, and to get to know who I am in the context of the waters and the lands. This connection has been part of making me whole once more. I am honoured that I have been involved with the passing of information to our young people, who work as staff of the Haida Gwaii Watchmen Program, the Gwaii Haanas staff, and with visitors, students, and locals.
6722. In my work I have flown over or watched from the boats, pods of white-
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux sided dolphins, wall-to-wall orcas in Darwin Sound, counted sea lions on rocky islets, watched the humpback whales as they bubble fished and breached in Wampress Sound area. These waters, shorelines, and lands have supported our ancestors for thousands of years. I am aware that some place names and stories come from times when the ocean water was 140 metres lower, which is about 455 feet lower than today.
6723. When I think of all these things, and I think of the kinds of decisions that are going to be made, I have concern of what our legacy will be for our children. I have concern that they will not be able to experience these beautiful waters and the lands that our ancestors have passed on to us.
6724. In my estimation, I cannot see the value of importing to the east coast from across the waters and taking our oil from Alberta and transferring it across the Pacific Ocean. Something is terribly wrong with the way we do things.
6725. My vision is to have clean water, oil-free lands and waters, oceans, beaches, and food here on Haida Gwaii and along the northwest coast of North America.
6726. I do not feel the proposal is in our Canadian interest. I am opposed to a pipeline from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia, and to tankers, which would take the tar sands to other countries. I see no value in exporting it at all.
6727. Haawa.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6728. MEMBER BATEMAN: Good morning, Ms. Richardson. I see that you and a young friend are here. Are you both high school students? Well, we're happy to have you here. Please begin and deliver your oral statement.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. HEIDI RICHARDSON:
6729. MS. HEIDI RICHARDSON: Hello, good morning.
6730. My name is Heidi Richardson, and I live in Tlell, B.C. I have been born and raised on Haida Gwaii. My family settled down here on these islands in 1919. I'm a sixth generation islander, and I'm very proud to say that.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 6731. My family proudly owns and operates Richardson Ranch. My family has grown up working the land and raising cattle as a way of income. We have raised purebred polled Herefords since the 1980s. We strive for excellence in our herd and we do so with an environment around us.
6732. The Tlell River runs right through our land. It is a tourist and local fishing attraction. It is one of the main sources for drinking water for our cows. Our own drinking wells are also very close near the river. The grazing fields around the ranch also benefit from this river during high tides, as it gives it extra nutrients from the ocean water that comes up the river.
6733. We cut and pack away this grass every summer to feed our cows and horses during the winter. If we did not have our healthy ocean helping our fields, we would not be able to support our livelihood.
6734. The idea of having a pipeline crossing B.C., and then that oil being shipped in tankers near Haida Gwaii is just too scary to think about. If one of those oil tankers crashed anywhere in the waters around Haida Gwaii it will affect so many people that depend on the ocean. That crash will not only affect people on Haida Gwaii, but all over the west coast of North America. Many people depend on the ocean to fulfill their daily necessities.
6735. As I said, I was born and raised here and I'm 17 years old. I go to the high school here and I have graduated from high school this year. I'll be going across Canada, to Nova Scotia, next year, to study at Dalhousie University, and I'm going to miss my island so much. As a graduation present, my auntie gave me a silver bracelet made by Garner Moody and it has three main symbols that all depend on the ocean. It has a geoduck, a Sluggo -- river otter, and a sea urchin. They need the ocean to survive and if any oil would get into their environment it would not benefit them in any way.
6736. I could just imagine the oil creeping its way up the river towards the grazing fields, and animals eating the grass that is contaminated. They would all get sick from drinking water that has oil in it and the grass that has oil on it.
6737. The geese that migrate year round, the river otters that live in Flow River, the deer that also drink the water, plus all the other animals that benefit from this key river would be affected if an oil spill would ever happen.
6738. We would have to rely on our pastures away from any water resources at
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux the ranch, buy hay from the -- from off island which is very costly due to the high ferry amount that it costs to come over. It’s crazy.
6739. But that is still not enough to maintain our life of ranching on Haida Gwaii. My family has been through many changes in their lifetime, and I will not be one to sit on the sidelines watching this pipeline corrupting my family’s livelihood. Healthy land equals a healthy life.
6740. Clean oceans equal a clean resource. Oil poisons our land, our water, and our bodies. Our oceans do not need any foreign oils crossing or going into it. I want clean water for the future and the pipeline is no risk that anyone should ever take in their lifetime and I oppose Enbridge and pipeline affects my family in so many ways that it should not happen.
6741. So thank you very much for listening.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6742. THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning, Ms. Pelton. Did you recently graduate as well from high school? That’s a big achievement. Congratulations to both of you.
6743. Ms. Pelton, please proceed with your oral statement when you’re ready.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. KELSEY PELTON:
6744. MS. KELSEY PELTON: My name is Kelsey Pelton and I am 18 years old. I have lived on Haida Gwaii my entire life and plan to do so for the rest of it. I am -- I am opposed to the proposed pipeline because I believe that the risk of an oil spill is far too high. I don’t think that any amount of money is worth our lifestyle.
6745. I have chosen to speak today because of the small chance I can say something that will have an impact on you.
6746. The proposed pipeline and tanker route will not only damage the ocean, it would damage the forests, all the creatures, and the people of the coast. To me this project doesn’t make any sense. It promises jobs to B.C. residents, but I doubt that these new jobs will outweigh the jobs that will be taken away from fishermen, deckhands, the watchmen, Parks Canada, the Kaay staff, the marine biologists. This project has zero benefits for any of us.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
6747. As Haida people, we believe that everything is connected. This is not a myth, this is a fact. By damaging our ocean our entire culture will crumble. The language, the food, the ceremonies, and the teaching and learning of traditions will disappear if our ocean were ever polluted.
6748. Throughout my life I have gathered food, camped, and had many adventures on Haida Gwaii. My family and I gather traditional foods with the seasons. We travel to North Beach to catch crab, and Copper Bay to catch sockeye. We pick berries in our backyard and dig for clams on the beach. We eat food from the ocean every day. I don’t know what we would do without it, and I don’t want to find out.
6749. Everyone has his or her own personal connection with the ocean. Some love it for its beauty, some love sailing on it, some love the creatures that live in it, some love floating on it, and some love leaping into it, but the bottom line is that everyone loves it. It doesn’t matter why, but it matters what we do about it. When you love something you have to take care of it.
6750. Haida Gwaii is a special place. If you have visited, moved here, lived here forever, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Haida Gwaii is unique and pristine. There are no words that can explain this. The essence of Haida Gwaii can’t be captured in words; it’s purely a feeling and a sense of being.
6751. Throughout elementary and high school I’ve had the privilege to take Haida language classes. There are many Haida phrases about fishing, preparing, preserving, and sharing our food from the ocean. There are ancient stories about the sea. (Speaking in native language) that tells the stories of the flood. All of these things show that the importance of our ocean is still as strong today as it was thousands of years ago.
6752. There is no other way to put it other than that we rely heavily on our oceans, but more importantly, our ocean is relying on us. It relies on us to take care of it in the same way that it’s taking care of us. Our ocean has taken care of us for thousands of years and now it’s our turn. This is me trying to take care of my oceans.
6753. And finally, in the words of my eight-year-old brother, “We have all the fish in the world”.
6754. Thank you.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6755. THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much to each of you for taking the time to prepare and to come and present your oral statements to us today.
--- (A short pause/Courte pause)
6756. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay, good morning. Our next group of speakers -- or presenters -- we’ll start off with Ms. -- Ms. Brown, please.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. SUSAN BROWN:
6757. MS. SUSAN BROWN: Members of the Panel, this has been my experience with the amount of protection government regulation and experts have given us in the past:
6758. I have lived on Haida Gwaii for 40 years; I came here with the desire to build a boat. In the fall of 1974 this desire took me to Skincuttle Inlet, about 70 miles south of Sandspit, in the middle of what is now Gwaii Haanas. At that time the area was not protected. It was wild and very isolated. No electricity, no amenities, no people.
6759. My partner and I settled in and started to build our boat. We thought it would take a couple of years. It took eight. Part of our dreams was living from the land. In the past, the Haida lived in over 20 villages in Skincuttle, the ocean had supported a lot of people. How hard could it be?
6760. During those years we learned much about how to live in the wild. We had brought staples, but the ocean provided so much; fish, abalone, seaweed, scallops, clams, cockles, urchin, shrimp. I believe I have eaten just about everything the ocean has to offer. I also had a garden and worked on a halibut boat. I learned we are not separate from our environment, what we do to it, we do to ourselves.
6761. Being on a fish boat gave the ability to explore a lot of South Moresby. In the last 40 years I have had the privilege to circumnavigate this amazing archipelago. You have no idea how beautiful this place is. I wish you would take the time to see.
6762. We were not always alone in our wilderness paradise. In the summer there were locals and tourists. In the winter the fishery’s boat, The Arrowpost,
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux regularly stopped to check on us, and the Haida who took us under their wing, including us in their celebrations and protecting us when the government tried to kick us off the land before the boat was finished. Yes, we were squatting. We did not own the land we lived on, but we loved and respected our home nonetheless.
6763. The eight years I lived in Skincuttle gave me an opportunity to see nature and how it is impacted by humans. While down there I met The Birdman, Wayne Campbell, from the museum in Victoria. He set me up as an official bird watcher and asked me to send him reports when I could.
6764. Spring was a time for the most amazing spectacles. When the herring come in to spawn, every creature on land and sea comes in to feast. I once saw a flock of loons so big it sounded like a traffic jam in Vancouver. I was told loons don’t normally flock like that, or at least no one has ever been there to witness it; I was.
6765. Hundreds -- no thousands of seabirds coming to feed, whales, sea lions, seals, salmon, even bears arrive in anticipation of the end of winter hunger and the beginning of summer’s abundance.
6766. We once paddled over a herring ball at night. It was like flying over a giant disco ball lit up by the phosphorescence in the ocean. We saw 100 eagles all take off at the same time in the confined space of Burnaby Narrows.
6767. Huge grey whales navigating those same narrows at high tide; islands of seabirds in their mating plumage calling out to each other and the sound carrying for miles over the quiet water. I often try to imagine what it was like when the Haida lived there.
6768. And then, the fishing industry arrives; hungry for the money the herring fishery offers. The idea is to catch the herring before they spawn, as it is the eggs within the female fish that are so valuable.
6769. While the fishery is on, the fish do what is called the panic spawn. And it feels like everything else goes into panic mode as well. Instead of the majestic celebration of a feast after a long winter, it becomes chaos.
6770. The birds -- and I imagine -- life under the water are disturbed by all the boats roaring around. The herring are frantically spawning wherever they are being caught, in a desperate attempt to fulfill their biological imperative.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
6771. The smell of diesel hangs heavy on the air. The drone of engines continues day and night. In the spring of 1979, there were more people in Skincuttle Inlet competing for the money offered by a federally regulated fishery than lived in Queen Charlotte city. By 1982, when we launched the boat, it was over; from 10,000 tonne of herring to zero.
6772. I remember that year. It was the beginning of March, very early for the herring to spawn in our area. I was awakened in the night by the sound of splashing. We lived right on the edge of a small beach so I walked outside and waded into the ocean, all around me were herring flipping and dancing. This is what a natural spawn looks like, a graceful, frenzied dance. I was mesmerized.
6773. The next morning, as I paddled along the shoreline, it looked like a carpet of thousands of translucent pearls had been laid over everything. I wanted to see if I could see the dance again in the light of day, but there were no herring to be found.
6774. When the aero post arrived, they were surprised by what we saw. It was early, it was a small spawn by fishery standards and it was over. Greed ended that fishery for years after. It threatened countless species that depend on the rich feast so necessary for their own reproduction and survival.
6775. And I as a layperson watched it all unfold in front of me, knowing this was wrong, while the experts claimed it was sustainable. My confidence in experts was starting to slip.
6776. Then there was the abalone fishery, short-lived and devastating. The fishermen compared themselves with buffalo hunters; if we don't take them all, someone else will. And take them all, they did.
6777. For years, abalone was a delicious, valuable part of my diet. Even in the middle of winter, when the lowest tides are in the dark, we knew where to go close to home with makeshift candles inside a tin can flashlight to gather a feed.
6778. I remember asking the abalone fishermen to please not take from the beds that were closest to our home and was assured they would respect them. That didn't last long.
6779. The last time I dove looking for a feed of abalone was in an area where there had been hundreds. Taking a few for a feast didn't impact their population.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux This time, after searching for hours, I only saw seven. And I know how to see them, even in the dark.
6780. I have a 22 year old daughter who has never tasted abalone. Many of her generation of island kids have not eaten this local food because we choose to let the few that remain try and re-establish themselves. Not an easy thing.
6781. Again, why was I able to see so clearly this was not the way to conduct a sustainable fishery, while government experts acted blind, deaf and dumb? Was it because I lived in the middle of an area being devastated?
6782. Well, I live here now, right in the middle of an area poised on the edge of destruction. And I have watched the devastation experts condone, all in the name of the economy. I ask you, who's counting? Where on that spreadsheet is the column for the ocean, the forest, the land, and rivers we depend on and call home? The reassurance from experts is no longer reassuring.
6783. There is one more reason I can't believe what the experts say; I know you have heard about the fierce weather we experience in this area, but have you ever felt the calm that momentarily descends before a really hard blow? It feels like the wind is inhaling. In the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee, it goes from calm to hurricane.
6784. Christmas Eve 2003, I was preparing to go to work in Queen Charlotte, a 45-minute drive from my home in Tlell. I was on the back porch enjoying my coffee, feeling the eerie calm and hearing complete silence. By the time I walked inside, it was starting to really blow. By the time I was ready to leave, it was hard to open the front door against the wind.
6785. I chose not to go. I believed it would be too dangerous to drive along our coast, and I have driven through strong southeasters, getting bounced around in my Honda Civic, through floods on the highway and around fallen trees. We regularly have hurricane-force winds. It's something we've learned to live with. The really big storms feel different. I have experienced a few that will never be forgotten.
6786. I've had windows blown out because the glass couldn't bend anymore, yards swept clean of everything that wasn't nailed down and even some things that were, boats that anchor in shelter spots flipped over. There is no safe place.
6787. Really big storms make my body tingle with fear. I must protect my
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux family. My 13-year-old daughter would be at home that Christmas Eve and I would be miles away at work. I decided not to go.
6788. During the height of the storm, I walked down to the end of my driveway to see what was happening. Waves were washing through the trees and over the highway. Spray filled the air, but I could see to the north that huge logs were being tossed as high as the power lines. And I had put myself in a position where those same power lines were between myself and my daughter at home.
6789. Turning around, the wind was so strong, it blew me into the ditch and I had to crawl back to my driveway. I could not stand up against it.
6790. The government is asking us to believe that man-made rules and regulations will protect us from tankers in storms like this and the annihilation even one oil spill would mean to these islands. I have not see any rules protect us from human hubris and greed yet.
6791. As islanders, we have been through this before, history has taught us well.
6792. Thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6793. MEMBER BATEMAN: Good morning, Ms. Epners. Thank you for choosing to be with us. Please proceed.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. CEITLYNN EPNERS:
6794. MS. CEITLYNN EPNERS: Good morning Chiefs, ladies held in high esteem, good people of Haida Gwaii, and Members of the Panel. My name is Ceitlynn Epners. I live in the village Queen Charlotte.
6795. I grew up in Ontario and my husband and I moved to Haida Gwaii shortly after finishing university. We have now been here for over eight years. I'm still a newcomer to Haida Gwaii, but this is my home as much as anywhere has ever been my home. And this is where we have chosen to raise our family.
6796. It's important for me to speak today because I think that the proposed pipeline and the associated tanker traffic that will come with this pipeline threaten these islands and the communities that I've come to know and cherish, and to call
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux home.
6797. You've heard many people speak about the importance of healthy, local seafood for their health, their family, their community, and culture. I witness this everyday in so many ways.
6798. One thing that I continually marvel at, and love, is how much this nutritious and wonderful seafood is shared in these communities. When we host or go to a dinner here, everyone contributes something and we end up with a seafood feast better than anything you could find in a restaurant.
6799. Over our years living on Haida Gwaii, we have received more gifts of seafood from friends and neighbours than I can count. And I am very grateful and humble for that.
6800. Most people I know who garden here, including myself and our family, add seaweed to their gardens to help build the soil nutrients. So even our vegetable gardens are, in part, form the sea.
6801. Sharing meals and seafood is central to the strong feeling of community in our neighbourhoods and towns. And it is this sense of community, this is one of the main reasons our family are still here.
6802. Between 2003 and 2009, I worked and volunteered studying seabirds and shore birds in Laskeek Bay on Haida Gwaii. I've had the privilege of sitting in a seabird colony at night and witnessing the symphony, or some would say racket, of bird song. I've counted groups of hundreds of seabirds on Hecate Strait.
6803. And over the years I've watched hundreds of fluffy, tiny, ancient murrelet chicks coming out of their forest burrows, running through the forests at night, and jumping into the ocean to meet with their parents and set out in search of food.
6804. These birds are amazing and they're an example of one of the -- they're just one example of the many connections that exist here between the land and the sea.
6805. Haida Gwaii supports half the entire planet's population of ancient murrelets or nesting ancient murrelets, and we have an international obligation to protect this species. In the springtime over a million seabirds nest on Haida Gwaii and they forage for food for themselves and their young in the waters surrounding
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux Haida Gwaii. An oil spill would be devastating to these nesting birds.
6806. Much of my time now is spent with my two year old daughter. We visit the beach often. She runs on the beach with pure joy and freedom, we explore seaweeds, crabs, tide pools, rocks and driftwood together. The beach is our playground, and she learns so much. Already at two she is beginning to understand the cycles of life of the marine creatures she encounters and she knows where the fish and crab that she eats come from.
6807. On Haida Gwaii we no longer have a swimming pool, and we have minimal recreational facilities. But we do have clean, accessible, and expansive beaches, and the beach is our playground. To me this is one of the things that makes Haida Gwaii an incredible place to raise children.
6808. Educators and psychologists have now coined a term, “nature deficit disorder” as a blanket term for physical, social, and mental ailments related to not having enough playtime and time outside. But living here we all have the opportunity to stay healthy through food gathering, through play, recreation, and spending time outside. But this opportunity depends on healthy waters, free of oil.
6809. I do not support the proposed pipeline, the pipeline that will bring oil from Alberta to the coast. I do not support the tankers that would come with this. Pipelines leak; two major leaks have occurred in Alberta in recent weeks. The landscape that the pipeline will be built on is prone to landslides. The waters of Hecate Strait are notoriously dangerous and rough, and this region is prone to earthquakes.
6810. Humans make mistakes. Indeed human error is why the Queen of the North sank. Should the proposed project go ahead, an oil spill would be inevitable and we risk losing our way of life, we risk losing healthy food and food security. We risk losing jobs from fishing and tourism, we risk losing wildlife. These risks are far too great.
6811. Haawa, and thank you for listening to me.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6812. THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning. So I say your name, Mr. Coffey. Oh, terrific, thank you.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 6813. Good morning, Mr. Coffey. Please go ahead when you’re ready.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. CARL COFFEY:
6814. MR. CARL COFFEY: I thank the Panel and the Chiefs and ladies of high esteem for this opportunity to speak.
6815. My name is Carl Coffey and I immigrated into Canada in 1968 and have spent the last 43 years living on Haida Gwaii and residing in Queen Charlotte City; built my home by the ocean and have spent over 40 years fishing the waters of the north coast.
6816. As soon as I arrived I could feel the magic of the islands and I fell in love with the natural beauty, the pristine beaches, the abundant sea life, and with the generous and friendly Haida people who welcomed me into their lives.
6817. I could see and feel the strong, special connection of the land and sea that radiates from them and their way of life. I join my Haida brothers and sisters in opposing the pipeline project and in the banning of oil tankers full of tar sand crude oil from plying the waters of the north coast.
6818. The risk of an oil spill or a pipeline failure or a massive landslide damaging the pipeline is too high and the subsequent damage to our oceans and rivers and First Nation cultures would be horrendous. I want my Haida son and my grandchildren and future generations to experience the harvesting of fresh wild seafoods from the ocean and not have to hear stories about how it used to be.
6819. Fishing has been my livelihood. And I’ve gillnetted herring and salmon, halibut fished but mostly trawled salmon on the west coast, the Hecate Strait and Dickson Entrance. And one never forgets that first spring salmon you catch, wild and free and so nourishing to eat.
6820. I was mentored by Haida fishermen right here from Skidegate; Percy Williams, Myles Richardson, Billy Stevens, Godfrey Williams, Roy Jones, to name a few. I fished along with Russ Jones. They taught me the skills, showed me the spots, the gear, and the patience necessary to be a successful fisherman and I am indebted to them.
6821. I’ve dealt with DFO for many years and am not happy with the result. Too much politics, lobby interests dictating policy, instead of good science dictating
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux policy.
6822. We have experienced here a period of unregulated expansion of commercial sport camps in the past and overfishing of our herring stocks, as was mentioned. You start distrusting big government. Harper now has introduced a new legislation in the budget bill only protecting commercially viable fish and not fish habitat.
6823. On the Enbridge Pipeline Project the DFO has estimated the pipeline crosses over 600 rivers in Alberta and B.C., endangering fish habitat all along the route. We know what happened on the Red Deer River oil spill just recently and how it became a health risk to people’s water supply. Pipelines do fail.
6824. The Alberta Energy Resource Board, an independent agency, has stated in Alberta there were over 600 failures in 2010, in Alberta alone. And let’s remember also there are two pipelines on this project, double the trouble. It’s not just one, there’s two that are next to each other.
6825. I’m skeptical of oil companies calculating risk factors and probabilities of oil spills. We all remember the Exxon Valdez in 1989, and the destruction of fish stocks and habitat. The oil spread for hundreds of kilometres of the shoreline and down the Alaska coast.
6826. The cleanup was next to impossible. The liability issues dragged on for 20 years with compensation a fraction of the initial court decision. It was a disaster for the fish and their habitat and the communities and fishermen affected. From that disaster, the Fisherman’s Oil Spill Emergency Team, (FOSET), was created to train fishermen in combating oil spills.
6827. I have been the area coordinator for the past 10 years, starting with its creation on the islands back in 2001. I have helped in two-day training sessions every year, alternating between Massett and Queen Charlotte City and given the basic oil spill responder courses to over 100 people on the islands.
6828. We could deal with a small spill in a confined space with good weather and small tides, close to road access and oil spill equipment but not to a large spill. All the equipment on the coast couldn’t contain it. The proposed huge increase in marine traffic, specifically large oil tankers, increases the likelihood of oil spills and contamination from bilges.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 6829. Oil slicks drift with the tide and currents and the wind. The limits of booming of an oil spill are a maximum three-quarter knot current and a maximum 20 knot wind. These are good weather conditions. That’s just for containment. What about picking it up? Conditions must be relatively calm for the skimming of the oil.
6830. Then there’s the disposing of it and the decontamination work. No thanks. No one wants to have to get that dirty with toxic tar sands crude oil.
6831. I’ve also been the custodian of the only van-type response trailer on Haida Gwaii since 2001, and know its contents and perform the maintenance on the equipment.
6832. We have a vast coastline on Haida Gwaii with marine protected areas and a living ocean that surrounds us. Many of these areas are inaccessible by road and hard to reach in bad weather; difficult conditions indeed to react to a major spill.
6833. I have read Enbridge’s website on marine safety with its new radar monitoring stations and first response capabilities and other safety measures but you’re talking about 225 trips a year from three different size oil tankers carrying up to two million barrels of oil through a tight passage used by over 5,000 other vessels in all kinds of weather.
6834. What about collisions with other boats, another tanker? It’s happened before. Then there are mechanical failures, human error and engine room fires. We had the Queen of the North disaster. Fishing boats drift at night; in Dixon Entrance, the West Coast, Hecate Straits, far off shore in deep waters. Crab boats and trawlers work at night near the routes of the proposed tankers.
6835. I was aboard the Northern Adventure in 2009, when heavy seas and bad weather made it unsteerable, with flooding and electrical shorting problems compounding the situation, the crew was in total shock, not really functioning. This was a big modern vessel.
6836. I’ve experienced the domino effect myself; first a line snaps on your boat, the steering system goes, an engine room fire, a bad wave, a pump plugs up or stops working; you are at the mercy of the sea.
6837. There are safety and weather hazards for oil tankers and we are not ready to respond to a major oil spill emanating from a tanker or a ruptured pipeline in the watersheds of B.C. or Alberta.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
6838. I don’t see any long-term benefits to us. I think we should protect our food sources and reconnect to the land and oceans that sustain us. We should slow down the unregulated development in the tar sands and better utilize the oil for ourselves through refining in Canada. It is a disgrace to have these large tailing ponds next to the rivers that have fish and our people’s water supply.
6839. By saying no to this project we can give ourselves time to find alternative solutions, solutions that are more in harmony with nature, and something future generations will be proud of.
6840. Thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6841. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Great, thanks a lot, Mr. Coffey.
6842. Please, Mr. Gibbard, please go ahead and share your thoughts. Thanks.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. BRANDON GIBBARD:
6843. MR. BRANDON GIBBARD: Thank you.
6844. (Speaking in native language). Chiefs, ladies of high esteem, my precious friends, good people, I thank all of you for being here today. I want to thank the Panel for coming here and hearing everybody’s opinions and I hope you feel welcome here on Haida Gwaii.
6845. My name is Brandon. I’ve been living on these islands for 16 years now and I’m very proud to be Haida. It’s been great because not many people get to experience what we experience here on this island. Our culture comes from the ocean and the land. It gives us great respect.
6846. A lot of kids grew up here thinking that it’s boring until they get to a certain age, then they start to realize the importance of these islands and how our ancestors before us have protected these islands.
6847. And I think at this age that I am at now, I think that it is important for us to protect our islands, our culture, because that’s just who we are as people. We’ve been there for this island for thousands of years and to see this pipeline go through, and all
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux these tankers, the weather you can’t predict it. It’s unpredictable. We have the worst weather which could lead to an oil spill and not only destroy our culture, the cultures along the coast as well.
6848. There’s so many cultures that are struggling to survive, as we are. Our language, our dance, our festivities, they all come from the land, the ocean, we are so thankful for. And I myself am a Haida dancer and singer and to go to a potlatch and experience all the good people that are there that eat all the good food from the sea and the land, to have that taken away would just be heartbreaking.
6849. This is a Haida purse and I love this culture. I love the land, I love the people. There’s just nothing else more that I could say to express how I feel. And to have that taken away would -- like I said -- be heartbreaking because to go to a potlatch, have all these processed food instead of seafood, it wouldn’t be fun. It wouldn’t be who we are as people.
6850. So I am heavily opposed to this pipeline, not only to protect my future but to protect futures after my future. I want to be a great Elder, such as many here today, that have protected our lands and our language. I want to thank you all for that.
6851. It’s been a great experience on Haida Gwaii. I had the privilege to paddle a war canoe down in Gwaii Haanas for 10 days and see the beautiful nature that lies there and if that was taken away, it’d be more heartbreaking.
6852. Sorry I’m just a bit emotional but that’s how I feel about this.
6853. And with that being said, I just want to wrap this up by saying -- restating that I am heavily against this and I want to thank all of you for coming here today.
6854. Haawa.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6855. THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you to each of you for taking the time to prepare and come and present to us today.
--- (A short pause/Courte pause)
6859. MEMBER BATEMAN: Welcome to the next panel.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
6860. Mr. Moore, you’ll be our first speaker. Please proceed.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. KEITH MOORE:
6861. MR. KEITH MOORE: Thank you. Good morning.
6862. Hereditary Chiefs, ladies held in high esteem, Panel Members, my friends on Haida Gwaii, my name is Keith Moore; I’m a resident of Queen Charlotte City and I have lived in this community for 34 years.
6863. My two boys were born here in the hospital, they were raised in the community and they have both graduated from high school here. My wife is adopted into the Skedans Raven clan. I feel very much honoured and proud to say that I’m a Haida Gwaiian and like all of us here on the islands I am very much opposed to this pipeline.
6864. Like everyone else I’m here today to ask you to hear our concerns, to deliberate and to conclude no pipeline.
6865. Many speakers before me have spoken of their lives on the sea, their dependence on seafood and their deep spiritual and cultural and historical connections to the sea. I really don’t have many of those connections but I share all of their strong opinions and I respect very much their wisdom and their words that they have spoken to you.
6866. I would like to share my somewhat different perspectives reflecting my life experiences and my backgrounds, and basically, those lead me to the same conclusion.
6867. I am a registered professional forester. I work with managing forest resources and I have a long experience and some expertise in natural resource management. I have received awards in B.C. for my work, and I spent five years as the First Chair of the Forest Practices Board of British Columbia, which is an administrative tribunal with statutory responsibilities to oversee forestry in British Columbia.
6868. I worked in government, but for the last 20 years, I have run my own forest management consulting business based here in Queen Charlotte City. I work across Canada and internationally as a forest management consultant, and I have
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux provided my experience in some very controversial resource management issues in other countries.
6869. Over the last few years, I've worked in nine different countries, including in Southeast Asia, in Central America, and in Africa, as well as in five different provinces of Canada and in the United States.
6870. Throughout the course of my life, I've traveled to 68 different countries around the world, so I've witnessed resource developments, very good to very bad, in a lot of different situations. My perspectives on Enbridge have been shaped by these resource management expertise and background and by my international travel experiences, as well as my life here on Haida Gwaii.
6871. With those perspectives, I want to briefly raise three thoughts for you -- three points, and with respect to your tight timelines, this is going to be inevitably a bit superficial.
6872. First, pipelines connect things; they don't exist in isolation. This pipeline is inextricably linked to and it supports the continuing expansion of the tar sands development in northern Alberta. I have worked in the Boreal Forests of northern Alberta around Fort McMurray and Lac la Biche in the landscape they call Bitumen Alley. I've seen firsthand the huge negative impacts that tar sands development and all the associated infrastructure has on forests, environment, and the people of northern Alberta.
6873. In my international consulting work, I interact with foresters and many others who are deeply involved in climate change initiatives. I know what an impact those experts believe that our tar sands development is having on the global climate. I know what a negative impact -- from my personal experience, I know what a negative impact this development is having on Canada's reputation globally.
6874. The use of oil and the construction of pipelines are natural resource management decisions, so the pipeline and the tar sands are not as simple as just oil or no oil or stopping the development. It's about how we manage it, how we use it, who we use it for, what benefits we retrieve from it, and how we respect people and the environment as we do that.
6875. I understand all that from my forestry background, where I work every day with logging operations. It's not about stopping things, it's about managing them.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 6876. But a pipeline that's predicated on doubling the production of the tar sands is just based on a faulty premise, that somehow doubling that process is a good thing for Canada. All of my experience and my observations tell me it's not. It fails all my tests of responsible management.
6877. The concept of managing resources on the basis of how much money we can find to put into them, and how fast we can manage to extract them, is completely at odds with all the concepts of resource management, sustainable development, and socially and environmentally responsible management, that I have known and lived for more than 30 years in my world of natural resource field. We don't manage fish or wildlife or trees on that basis, what's the hurry to extract all the oil and export it.
6878. Second, the pipeline that connects the tar sands to the coast follows a route through the mountains and along the rivers of northern B.C. I know that route pretty well. I have professional experience with unstable terrain, with avalanche hazards, with the importance of protecting small streams for fish populations, the impacts of access roads and pipeline corridors on wildlife populations.
6879. The risks to the environment associated with the pipeline corridor are also huge. The likelihood of a ruptured pipeline is almost a sure thing. The response times will inevitably be very slow, they'll be complicated by the terrain, the weather, and the fact that bitumen leaks in pipelines are very difficult to detect. That's how many, many barrels, millions of barrels leaked before anybody realized there was a leak in the populated State of Michigan recently. The recovery will be limited and the impacts of a spill will be great.
6880. In the forestry business, we have had to learn not to build roads through these kinds of terrains or where these types of environmental values and hazards exist. The risks are too great and now they are off limits to many forestry operations.
6881. Third, and this brings us to the end of the pipeline, that's the oil port in Kitimat at the head of Douglas Channel, where huge tankers will travel almost daily through the very stormy and dangerous waters of the Inside Passage, Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance.
6882. I do know something about the richness of this coastal marine ecosystem. I was a founder of the Laskeek Bay Society; I've been a continuing director for 24 years, and every year I spend time doing fieldwork in Laskeek Bay.
6883. Ceitlynn spoke a little bit about that this morning. Our representative,
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux Betsy Cardell, spoke to you in March. We at Laskeek Bay have some of the longest datasets and the best information on the west coast of North America about seabird populations, shorebirds, and marine mammals. From my experience in this area, I'm convinced that the tanker traffic threatens an incredibly rich ecosystem.
6884. Accidents happen. I'm worried about the pipeline -- sorry, about the tanker accidents, but from my experience in other countries, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kuwait, I've seen the impacts of routine spillage, not accidents, but minor and routine spillage that just is part of the daily activity associated with tanker traffic.
6885. I have spoken against tanker traffic in several previous inquiries. About oil drilling, oil ports along this coast since the 1970s, when I first got involved. Nothing I have seen since has changed my mind or softened my opposition to tanker traffic in our coastal waters. In fact, my experience, my learning, my knowledge over the years simply strengthens it.
6886. So in summary, my experience tells me this pipeline is wrong at all three points; at the tar sands where it starts, along the route that it travels, and at the coast where it ends. The risk to the environment, to the lifestyles and rights of First Nations, and all our communities are just too great, and I can't see any economic justification either. Based on what I know, I don't think this pipeline's in our interest, as Haida Gwaiians, or in our national interest as Canadians.
6887. In closing, I ask you to reflect on two things. My son, Peter, and his friends are graduating from high school this week, and in their graduation ceremonies, they hear a lot about becoming adults and inheriting the world.
6888. Some of Peter's fellow grads have taken this very seriously. Kelsey and Niisii were here earlier, and they have spoken to you about their views of how they are going to inherit this world.
6889. Peter's close friend, Niisii Guujaaw spoke to you here in March when you were here in this hall in March. Niisii is 17 and she closed her presentation by saying the following to you, and I am quoting. Niisii said:
"I don't pay bills yet. I'm not yet part of the adult world, so maybe I just don't understand it. I wish someone could explain to me how money, even billions of dollars, could be worth risking something so priceless as the natural world. I wish someone could explain to me how such a threat to our lives and our future could even be
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux considered."
6890. So Niisii, I'm an adult, and I'm a natural resource professional, and an international consultant, and I don't understand it either. I can't explain it to you. I think it's wrong on just about every level. It creates serious risks to the global climate, to the rivers in northern B.C. and to the coast. That's the world that we are leaving to you.
6891. So Members of the Panel, I ask you to reflect deeply on what Niisii is asking you. How can you explain this short term reckless money-driven project to those who are going to inherit this world from us? This project is not in their interests or any of the interests of here -- of us here as Haida Gwaiians. Please consider what this does for the grads of 2012 as you deliberate.
6892. And finally, I turn back to an event that took place 40 years ago. That was an event that still gives us optimism and provides people with me, who remember it, a reason to participate in processes such as this one.
6893. It was the early 1970s, and at that time some very large oil companies were going to build a pipeline from the Beaufort Sea through the McKenzie River Valley to southern markets. It was going to be the biggest private construction project in history and it was going to generate a lot of economic activity, money and jobs.
6894. At the time, it seemed a kind of forgone conclusion that it would be approved. Why not. However, before the project could be approved it had to go through a federal inquiry and a public hearing process, and I'm hoping this is sounding a bit familiar.
6895. That, of course, was the McKenzie Valley Pipeline, and the inquiry became known as the Berger Inquiry, named for the Commissioner, Mr. Thomas Berger.
6896. MEMBER BATEMAN: Mr. Moore, you're well over your allotted time.
6897. MR. MOORE: I'm sorry.
6898. MEMBER BATEMAN: May I ask you to wrap up in a sentence?
6899. MR. MOORE: I am wrapping up.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
6900. MEMBER BATEMAN: Just in a single sentence please.
6901. MR. MOORE: Mr. Berger said no pipeline after hearing from many, many people. He heard about the environment, he heard about the rights of indigenous people, he said, "No pipeline".
6902. I'll be brief. I ask you to reflect on what Mr. Berger did and how he heard from communities just as this. And that he did the right thing for us and for his northern citizens and for Canadians, and for the world and he said, "No pipeline".
6903. Thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6904. THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning, Ms. Van Gurp. Please proceed with your oral statement when you're ready.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. MARIKEN VAN GURP:
6905. MS. MARIKEN VAN GURP: Chiefs, ladies of high esteem, Members of the Panel, good people of Haida Gwaii, thank you for being here today and for hearing me speak.
6906. My name Mariken Van Gurp Lagasse. I was born and raised in Victoria, B.C., and I have spent my life on the shores and waters of the B.C. coast. I've done extended kayak trips; I've hiked a significant part of the Vancouver Island coast.
6907. I've spent weeks on sailboats and rain research vessels; worked on the whale watching fleet out of Victoria, and I spent a semester at biology field school in Bamfield, B.C.
6908. All told, I have paddled, swam, scuba dived, and sailed waters the length of the B.C. coast. I've come to recognize individual orcas by the way they swim and the shape of their dorsal fin. And I can probably tell you the Latin names of any seaweed you'll find on the beach.
6909. From my formal education and my personal experience, I have an intimate sense of what it means to be part of this ecosystem.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 6910. Now, this is important that we are part of this ecosystem. The ocean provides us with food and transportation and also things like purpose, inspiration, and culture. We are stewards of the sea, and if we mismanage this we will suffer.
6911. If we spill oil into our ocean, we will eat oil. To risk the integrity of this coastal ecosystem is quite literally to risk ourselves. The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline and all its associated tanker traffic is a phenomenally risky proposition.
6912. I won't use my time today to go into details about the risks of oil spills along our coast or pipeline leaks into the rivers and forests through which it will pass. For now, I will just say that I share the concerns expressed by others and that based on my own research and experience, I believe these things are not a risk, but inevitabilities. The only question is how severely they will impact our ecosystem.
6913. What I would like to spend my time today telling you is how important an intact environment is to our health and how unwise it would be to risk our health and our environment for the sake of some extra tax revenue, which, as far as I can tell, is the only benefit to Canadians from this project.
6914. Health is a very important issue in this discussion, one that perhaps has not been addressed enough. I want to emphasize the importance of health to individuals, of course, but to communities and as a national interest.
6915. Healthy people make the most important contributions to our society and to our economy. When they are not healthy, not only do we lose their contribution, but we drain the system, either trying to restore health or else to compensate them for becoming sick.
6916. The Northern Gateway Project promises to increase tax revenue by $2.6 billion. But how much of that will need to be spent on compensation? The true cost of the project, even in the best-case scenario, will be far greater than Enbridge or the government is anticipating.
6917. I'm a nurse here at the hospital in Queen Charlotte. I'm also a marine biologist in my former endeavours. So my statement today comes from both a conceptual, academic understanding of health and the environment and also a very direct, practical experience.
6918. Being a nurse here, it is apparent very quickly how much out health depends on our environment. Of course, we have our challenges like anywhere, but
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux in general, we are strong people, we are healthy. And we are this way largely because of our environment.
6919. High-quality protein from seafood nourishes our bodies and our brains; economic opportunities from things like fishing and tourism provide us with resources to raise healthy families. The beauty and spirituality of this place inspires our art and our culture and helps maintain balance and perspective, which are important components of mental health.
6920. I remember an experience of caring for a Haida Elder who was admitted to hospital, she was quite ill and struggling from being bed-bound and away from her home. Although she was admitted for treatment of her physical ailments, her mental health was suffering.
6921. But I remember very clearly one afternoon I walked into her room and she had the biggest smile on her face, it was so genuine, and she was eating this big piece of k'aaw, which is a traditional Haida food, it's herring roe eaten on kelp. And the pure joy on her face left no doubt in my mind that this food was nourishing her in ways that our very best medical care could not.
6922. Now, this is what it means when I say that health and the environment are connected. Nature has the power to heal us, to keep us healthy, and particular in those domains at which western medicine fails. The two quite often work beautifully alongside each other, filling in each other's gaps.
6923. A healthy ecosystem has the power to lift our spirits when depression threatens, to motivate us to stay active and stay connected to what surround us. And it sustains us when there's no milk or fresh produce in the grocery stores and that does happen here.
6924. I've seen patients benefit from traditionally prepared medicine sourced from our local land and sea. I've witnessed the momentary relief from pain, suffering, and depression through memories of being on the ocean or in the forest.
6925. I've seen the effects of reduced stress from spending time outdoors. There are so many examples of communities that have suffered sky-rocketing rates of poor health following large industrial projects.
6926. I fear that all of our coastal communities, and those both along, and down river from the proposed pipeline route, will suffer the same fate. That is a lot of
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux people to put at risk for the sake of a bit of extra money into our economy.
6927. Now, I understand that a good portion of this money will go towards funding health care and education and things like that for Canadians. And that would probably be a good thing because our health care system does need it. But this is what I want you to understand, the trade-off is not that simple.
6928. In creating this extra money we are risking the health of virtually all British Columbians and others as well. Furthermore, prevention is so much more effective than treatment. And it's much cheaper as well. A little bit of prevention, preventing an oil spill, preventing contaminating drinking water, will have far- reaching effects on the health of British Columbians and on the health of our economy.
6929. And in the end, health is priceless. I'm sure you can all empathize with this if you've ever been sick. It would be simply wrong to justify such a great risk to so many people with something as dispensable as money.
6930. And not only that, but in this case, it's a long-term, hundreds if not thousands of years of increased health risk for, I believe, a 30-year increase in funding for our government. Canada is a country of rich natural resources, and none more so than our people.
6931. When you consider the proposal and all the input you've acquired, please consider the impacts this pipeline will have on our health. Consider it as a national interest, a priceless element. Consider its contribution to Canada and consider also its fragility and its dependency on a healthy environment.
6932. Haawa. Thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6933. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Good morning. It's nice to see so many youth participating in these sessions.
6934. So welcome, Ms. Garrett. Please go ahead and present.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. CATHERINE GARRETT:
6935. MS. CATHERINE GARRETT: Good morning. My name is Catherine
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux Garrett. I moved here in 2004, almost eight years ago.
6936. I'm currently in grade 10 at Queen Charlotte Secondary School. I'm here today to voice my opinion on the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline. I just want to say that I am -- or I do not support this project for many reasons.
6937. Before you zone out, allow me to explain myself.
6938. Haida Gwaii has been referred to as the Galapagos of the north. The ecosystems found on the island are very complex and unique. We are very lucky to have a diverse population of plants and animals here, some of which are indigenous to the islands.
6939. For example, we have a subspecies of black bear this is found almost nowhere else in the world. There is also a substantial population of migratory birds, and over 300 species of marine life found in the eelgrass forests. The pipeline itself would not directly be affecting the island, but rather the tankers would.
6940. The tankers would be travelling through the aptly named Hecate Strait which is known for its violent weather and rough seas. The marine ecosystem and everything connected to it will be seriously damaged.
6941. Pretend for a moment an oil spill did happen, how would it be cleaned up? It would take an unreasonable and unrealistic amount of effort, time and funds to repair the damage done. Even then, the oil never really disappears from the ecosystem altogether. There would be a certain amount of toxins left over.
6942. Because of Haida Gwaii’s remote location, it would be quite difficult to obtain the required resources to deal with the possible repercussions due to the pollution and threat of an oil spill. I have a quote from Canadian Business.com
“Enbridge estimates that the construction will create about 62,700 person years of employment over three years of construction but most of the jobs are only temporary. There will be only 104 permanent jobs in Alberta and B.C. and more than half will be in Kitimat.” (As read)
6943. Eco-tourism is also a significant source of revenue for Haida Gwaii. If something were to go wrong, the industry could take a turn for the worse, any upset could also decimate the already declining forestry and fishing industries as well.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
6944. I also recognize that indeed some good can come from the pipeline. The economy would benefit Canada as a country and we would receive a large profit over a short amount of time and the employment rate would increase in B.C. and Alberta.
6945. In conclusion, I do not think that the pipeline should be built. There are more negative effects than good, as well as oil tankers driving around the cost, that’s an accident waiting to happen if you ask me, especially when you factor in the wild card, human error.
6946. The risk is too great and I love my home.
6947. Thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6948. MEMBER BATEMAN: Good morning, Ms. Peerless. Thank you for choosing to participate. Please present your oral statement.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. SARAH PEERLESS:
6949. MS. SARAH PEERLESS: Hello, my name is Sarah Peerless, and I say no to the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines and tankers. And I have a reason for that, in fact, I have several.
6950. First off, I’d like to congratulate Enbridge for having the longest crude oil and liquid pipeline system in the world, and for being in operation for over 60 years. They have 13,500 kilometres of pipeline that pump more than 2 million barrels of crude oils and condensates a day.
6951. They also have many tanker guidelines and rules to prevent ecological disasters, such as modern ships with double hulls, operational safety limits, additional navigational aids, extensive first response capabilities, a low vessel speed, certified marine pilots and special containment booms when docking.
6952. However, on Enbridge’s official website, I encountered the following statement which I quote:
“Judge us by what we’ve done through our 60-year history. Safety is our highest priority. No accident is ever acceptable. Our
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux objective is to avoid spills.” (As read)
6953. Yes, Enbridge, I will judge you by what you’ve done but you appear to have quite a long track record. The following are the biggest spills from Enbridge in the years 1999 to 2010.
6954. On July 4th 2002, a ruptured pipeline near Cohasset, Minnesota spilled 6,000 barrels of crude oil; on March 18th 2006, 613 barrels spilled at a pump failure in Saskatchewan at Enbridge’s Willmar Terminal; on January 1st 2007, a pipeline running from Superior, Wisconsin to Whitewater, Wisconsin cracked open and spilled 50,000 barrels of oil.
6955. On February 2nd, later that same year, the exact same pipeline was struck by construction crews and spilled 127,000 barrels of oil. It also contaminated the local water table; in April 2007, 6,227 barrels of oil spilled near Glenavon, Saskatchewan; in 2009, Enbridge Energy partners were sued for $1 million by the State of Wisconsin for 545 environmental violations.
6956. Also in 2009, in January, a pipeline leaked 4,000 barrels near Fort McMurray, Alberta; in April 2010 a pipeline ruptured and spilled 1,500 litres of oil in Verdun, Manitoba; in July 2010, approximately 4 million litres of oil were spilled into the Kalamazoo River near Battle Creek, Michigan. It was claimed as the largest inland spill of oil in Midwest history by United States Environmental Protection Agency; on September 9, 2010, there was a rupture in a pipe near Romeoville, Illinois and 6,010 barrels were spilled.
6957. Above, I’ve only listed the 10 largest spills I found, but in actuality, there were 804 spills in the time period listed, spilling over 26.81 million litres of hydrocarbons into the environment.
6958. To put this in perspective, an average large milk carton contain 4 litres; that’s 6,702,500 4-litre milk jugs of oil. And yet, on Enbridge’s website, they claim the following things: “Pipeline leaks are rare”; Compared to what?
6959. “Pipelines are the safest method of transporting fuels”. Maybe so but they don’t seem very safe to me.
6960. “Liquid pipeline spills along rights-of-way have decreased over the past decade”. Really? It seems to me they have increased in amount of barrels spilt.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 6961. “In 2010, Enbridge safely transported 950 millions barrels of hydrocarbons with a safety record better than 99.99 percent”. I find that extremely hard to believe. And even if that long-numbered fact is true, what about all those hundreds of thousands of barrels that are spilled, do those all fit neatly and nicely into one little decimal point that we can ignore? I don’t think so.
6962. “Our environmental protection systems are designed to spot trouble before leaks occur to pro-actively protect our environment”. Well, obviously they had a lot of equipment malfunctions, over 800 of them, if you want to get technical.
6963. “Extensive training of personnel including real-time response drills”. What about that construction crew that burst open a pipeline and spilled 127,000 barrels of oil, did they get extensive training?
6964. What I’m trying to say is that Enbridge can’t make everything safe. They can claim high safety rates, and buy their way into alliances and tempt us with jobs and money but they aren’t perfect. There’s always that chance of a spill. Maybe not the first year of tankers or the second, but does anyone remember that night that the Queen of the North, one of our ferries designed specifically for these waters, sank due to human error? And who’s driving these tankers? Humans. Humans make mistakes, fatal mistakes.
6965. One of these tankers will eventually crash, maybe the equipment malfunctioned, maybe human error. But one will crash and one will sink. It’s just a matter of where and when.
6966. A friend of mine likes to say, “If a tanker goes down, the entire islands will go down with it”. Oil spills are near impossible to clean up and damage the environment beyond imagination. There are rare species on Haida Gwaii, for example, ancient murrelets which are endangered and half their population lives here. They spend nine months out of 12 on the open ocean. Some species live in Hecate Strait; they were thought extinct and live nowhere else in the world.
6967. Salmon live in our waters, is a staple food of Haida, and play a key role in our food chain; they feed the bears, the trees. These species all rely on the ocean. Birds live in the ocean, fish live in the ocean. If that ocean is polluted, their only known habitat in the world polluted, where will they go?
6968. Enbridge will create jobs, yes. Enbridge will give money, yes, but at the cost of our environment. Have we really sunk that low as to destroy these things that
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux are precious to us; these things that are one-of-a-kind, and we can’t replace them? I dearly hope not.
6969. My name is Sarah Peerless, and I say no to the Enbridge Northern Gateway.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6970. THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you to each of you for taking the time to prepare and to come and present your oral statements to us this morning.
--- (A short pause/Courte pause)
6971. THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning, Mr. Fleming. Please proceed with your oral statement when you’re ready.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. RUSSELL FLEMING:
6972. MR. RUSSELL FLEMING: Hereditary Chiefs, ladies held in high esteem, good people of Haida Gwaii, Members of the Panel, thank you for listening to me speak today.
6973. I am Russell Douglas Fleming, and I’m feeling a bit sick so I’ll try my best to be clear.
6974. I was born in the City of Guelph, in southern Ontario. My elder sister and I were raised by our parents, Robert and Janet Fleming in and around the Niagara escarpment region, to the west and to the north of Toronto.
6975. I have lived and worked as a teacher here on these islands for the better part of a decade now and I’m very proud to speak about Haida Gwaii when I’m visiting family and friends back east.
6976. People back there are always curious about our island geography, the history, the biology, the culture. Only a few have taken the time necessary to visit, but they’ve all been rewarded with unforgettable experiences.
6977. Myself, I really know only the tip of the iceberg after being here such a short period of time and seeing so very little of what is Haida Gwaii from its seafloors to its mountain tops.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
6978. But I am glad you three have come here to visit us again and I truly wish that you could spend more time here on Haida Gwaii and all along the route of this proposed pipeline, for that matter. The challenge proposed to you three to sit down inside and listen all day, day in and day out to people’s stories and then moving on to the next village to do the same, I do not envy you in the least.
6979. I know that most truly reasonable people would agree that if you’re permitted, better even obliged, to spend meaningful time here on the land, on the water, hunting, gathering food with local people, feasting on the richness of “The 100-metre Diet” Dale spoke about last night, listening to stories from Elders, learning how life is lived along this proposed route, I know that if you did these things, your decision would be much, much simpler, not to mention more memorable and meaningful.
6980. I know this because I’m a teacher, because I’m a professional learner and communicator. My job is to pass on information effectively.
6981. So during my post-secondary training in Kingston and in Thunder Bay, I learned over and over again that experience is always the best teacher. I had been learning this back in high school already doing summer jobs on sports teams, on some dates at parties, I guess, too. Those examples are too colourful for this setting, but I guess I’ll move on to my education.
6982. Before I decided to get into education as a career, I studied cutting-edge neuroscience techniques in textbooks and in labs. I can describe for you in painful detail what it feels like to hold on to a frightened lab rat in my hands, but I can’t name for you anymore the 12 pairs of cranial nerves or describe their origins or pathways.
6983. What has stuck with me besides the memories of traumatizing dozens of these helpless small mammals is that an animal’s brain is for processing information to help us to survive and thrive within our environment.
6984. So I chose to study outdoor ecological education for my teaching degree. I did so in the Boreal Forest, on lakes and rivers on the north shore of Lake Superior. So we could go across the highway just here into the hills and I could show you how to build a smoke signal fire, even without matches, if you like, if you happen to get lost in the woods sometime. But I couldn’t tell you the names of any of the vital stages of human development that I learned indoors. It’s the pursuit of an enjoyable, humble life for my family on Haida Gwaii that is what challenges my brain now.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
6985. So when I sat here last night and I listened to Kye speak about his most recent kayak trip to the west coast and how he couldn’t get the implications of this pipeline proposal out of his mind, I can reflect a moment and say to myself, you know, I know he really cares. I have paddled out there myself from Queen Charlotte. I’ve been past ancient Haida village of Cha’atl and out to the mouth of the open Pacific. It’s total sensory overload on that trip, the tidal narrows, mountains, old- growth forests. There is life, winds, waters and spirits everywhere. They are swirling all around you.
6986. So I can relate strongly to how Kye cares because I have paddled there from my backyard and I assume that you have not.
6987. When I listen to Marcy speak about guiding her young students through hands-on lessons with salmon fry, sharing time on the land and on the water with them, learning about all the inter-connectedness of things, I can relate to this too. She imagined for us last night what it would be like to speak to her students about a major oil spill near these islands if this project goes through one day. This would be an entirely avoidable, preventable oil spill if we just simply choose to keep this fossil tar sands resource on land and patiently nurture it while we force ourselves to learn to kick this habit of oil that we have, our species.
6988. I can relate to Marcy’s nightmare because her elementary students become my high school students. My daughter will likely get the chance to be in Marcy’s class one day and then years later in mine.
6989. Just yesterday our grade 8 class from Gidgalang Kuuyas Naay, Queen Charlotte Secondary School, went out to the Hanna River, just west of Queen Charlotte to release the salmon fry that we’ve been helping to raise in our school aquarium through this winter and I was telling this one student on the walk back how it’s that same river, the Hanna River, where we get our drinking water in Queen Charlotte.
6990. Have you ever set free a tiny creature when it has been depending on you for quite some time? Have you felt the twinge of regret knowing full well that you will likely never see this creature again but that it’s now become part of some greater thing, some web that helps to nurture you and your family, your neighbors, even your forests, even the very air that we breathe. I hope that you get a chance like this back where you’re from, where you call home.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 6991. And sincerely, I hope that never will someone who lives far from your home decide that they would like to make some money for a few decades and put all these feelings and experiences I’ve described, to put all of this and so much more into harm’s way forever.
6992. It’s not for their own survival; it’s for some money for a few short decades to move toxic trade goods across mountainous lands, mighty rivers and vast oceans to the other side of the earth.
6993. So I hope now that your decision is a little bit simpler. Please do not let this pipeline happen. I do not support this pipeline.
6994. Thank you for listening to me speak today.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
6995. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Good Morning, Ms. Holte. Please go ahead and present to us.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. REBECCA HOLTE:
6996. MS. REBECCA HOLTE: Hello. My name is Rebecca Holte and I am a student of Queen Charlotte Secondary School and I have been living on Haida Gwaii my whole life. It is a very special to me.
6997. I was getting my nanaay to help me write a speech, but she told me to speak from my heart. So speaking from my heart, I will tell you my thoughts on the oil tankers.
7000. When I was younger I had this big idea that I had to save the world. I wanted war to stop. It wanted it to be peaceful and I didn’t want any pollution. So after a while, I decided the only way I could do this is if I became a scientist and I studied the ocean because everything is linked to the ocean. Everything comes from the ocean and eventually everything goes back to the ocean.
7001. So the idea of a tanker going through our precious ocean worries me deeply because when I get older I want to be able to stop plastic first. I don’t want to deal with the oil of a possible spill that could happen if this does go through.
7002. And it’s not just the tankers I’m worried about. I’m worried about the
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux pipeline from Alberta that is carrying the oil to the tankers. It is going over many streams and rivers which carry salmon and other fish which many people love to eat and fish. A lot of people love fishing and that’s a great activity to do with your family.
7003. A lot of time people like to swim in the ocean because the ocean has many things we can do, and here on Haida Gwaii there is not many things. We have this gym which we can play basketball in, and then we have the youth centre, but we don’t have like a skating rink, which we are now raising money for.
7004. But we have our ocean and we swim in the ocean and we go to places that are special to us. And I believe that if tankers were to go through, we could make a lot of money, but it wouldn’t equal the amount we are risking on our environment. And I also believe if the spill happens, how much of the money that you raise from China will be used to clean up the oil spill?
7005. I was talking to my friend about this. She’s ill and she’s currently fighting a sickness, but she’s doing really good now, and she’s really against the oil tankers. And I was talking to her, she’s like, “Flip the bird”. I was like, “That wouldn’t be a very good thing. We both know that.”
7006. But my point there is, if people are already thinking such negative thoughts, if this goes through, there could be rebellion. There would be people trying to barricade the tanker and if the tanker has to do a hard move trying not to hit the people, it could just possibly tip over. And yeah, to sum it all up, I say no to the tankers.
7007. Thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7008. MEMBER BATEMAN: Ms. Fairweather, thank you for coming today. Please turn on your mic and give us your message.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. JESSICA FAIRWEATHER:
7009. MS. JESSICA FAIRWEATHER: Hello. My name is Jessica Fairweather, my friends call me Jess. I was born here and I have lived here for my entire life. I’m the age of 14. I am Haida, and my Haida name is Jaask’wan. My
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux great-grandfather, my chinaay, was a Haida Chief of Tanu.
7010. A few high school students have volunteered to speak in front of you today, including myself. One of the first things that have bothered me is the fact that my traditional Haida dance group was not allowed to perform in front of you yesterday. I would like to quote a part my -- of the speech of my dance teacher, Jenny Cross, made yesterday:
“We are descendents of the ocean and are interconnected to all living sea life, birds, and animals. All living creatures entering our lives has a purpose and sustain our people. The legacy of who we are come from our ancestors. We will do everything in our power to protect our ecosystem.” (As read)
7011. Unquote.
7012. The Haida language is growing more and more faint. It is the sad truth. Us, as the Haida children, have been chosen to carry out the culture of our ancestors and our Elders. Many of us, as the youth, do not get the opportunity to learn to speak our own native language so many children have volunteered to show what we would like to say, but in dance. The Panel would not allow this.
7013. They say due to the fact that it was in Haida and not understandable we were not allowed to represent ourselves in this way. I understand that it is against the rules, but they could have at least allowed us to show them it.
7014. Sorry. Okay, recently -- recently a few friends and I were chosen to be on an exchange trip to Alberta. This was an amazing experience. I happen to know for a fact that all of the youth from Alberta who had the chance to come here, due to the exchange, were so amazed with the wildlife and the ocean life.
7015. We even got the amazing advantage to travel to Skedans and Tanu, they all absolutely loved it. They saw all of the beautiful wildlife that we are so privileged to live near. I know many of them were planning on -- to come back this summer and wishing could have -- the chance -- have the chance to live in such a beautiful place with such amazing wildlife.
7016. If a tanker were to come through what would that do to the wildlife, to the sea life that all of the Alberta kids were so amazed to see? We even got a chance to show them a sea lion. What would happen to the sea lions if they were to be polluted
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux with all of this oil? What would we have to show -- oh yeah -- what would we have to show the youth from other areas if a large amount of oil were to affect all of the beautiful wildlife? A dying animal soaked in oil? Just because Enbridge didn’t listen to our cries and pleas to not invade our beautiful, peaceful water with such a bad thing, and as I said before, for what? More money?
7017. The amount this would impact our environment is so horrible. It truly scares me. The thought of a young child and her mother walking down the beach smelling the strong pollution; a mother having to hear her child ask, “Mommy, what’s wrong with the eagle, why can’t it fly properly, what’s all over its wings”. The poor mother having to respond to her young child by telling her about you, about Enbridge.
7018. You, as the Review Panel, deciding that your choice is over ours even though this is our land, the land we have all grown up, some for shorter times than others. This is an island we all love for its amazing beauty and nature. This is a great place to get away from the polluted large cities, a place to just relax and enjoy the view.
7019. Everybody on this island is kind and loving. In times of need we share the things we collect naturally from our islands, such as ts’iljii and k’aaw. As a young child growing up with these amazing Haida delicacies, I always felt so blessed to have the resources that let us eat these amazing treats. A childhood of always being so excited to be lucky enough to have an uncle or an aunt, a relative, or even a family member share that with you.
7020. You have the chance of taking away all of this amazing childhood food we grew up with just because you want one thing. Do you even think about how -- what -- how we as the Haidas feel, us, as everyone living on our islands, feel? Shouldn’t our decision matter more than this? Are you truly listening to what I am saying here?
7021. Us as the people who represent our native land and our economy, do not want your tankers. We do not want your pollution. Our choices should matter much higher than any others. We are the people who live here. Us as a group of people, are saying no. Does it even matter to you? Does it truly matter that you are taking a chance for future generations to not be able to swim and fish and look near the ocean for -- for creatures.
7022. I remember as a young child I would always go to my nanaay, my grandmother’s house -- and my chinaays, my grandfather’s house, and walk down the beach right in front of their house. I loved it. It was a great way for me to get away
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux and be able to get lost in thoughts. The sea life amazed me. I loved it so much. It had a huge impact on the way I saw our islands and it always will. You’re going to take that chance of experiencing the beauty -- the beautiful sea life from future generations. It’s simply not all right.
7023. I came before you today to speak of the truth and what I swear to be the truth. As a young, Haida girl living on these islands, I speak for those people who are too shy to be heard. I speak for what most people on the islands feel; we do not want your pipeline. No is no, and that, as our entire island, is what we say.
7024. Haawa for listening to what I have to say. I hope you take this statement and all of the other people on our islands to complete consideration. It is only fair.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7025. THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning, Ms. Bolt-Overton. Thank you to all the youth for -- who have signed up to provide oral statements to us, and now it’s your turn. So if you’d like to go ahead, please.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. TEIGHAN BOLT- OVERTON:
7026. MS. TEIGHAN BOLT-OVERTON: Hi, my name is Teighan. I moved here about two years ago.
7027. And just last weekend I took my little brother, who is just one year old, to the ocean with my mom and my best friend, and for the very first time he got to experience what it was like to go to the ocean and to feel the water instead of feeling the nice, warm bath, cause he loves to swim.
7028. And, in the future if he were to ever have children and come back here they probably would not be able to experience that, to go in the water, because it’d be polluted, and you wouldn’t be able to swim because there’d be oil everywhere, and it’d kill a whole bunch of animals, and I am a true animal lover. I don’t really like to eat meat because I love animals too much.
7029. And it’d really bother me if animals were just to die because people, like the Enbridge, would want to bring oil across and kill a whole bunch of animals just to bring -- I truly don’t like to hurt animals.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 7030. I say no to Enbridge.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7031. THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much to each of you for stepping forward and preparing and presenting your oral statements to us.
--- (A short pause/Courte pause)
7032. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay, welcome to our last panel for this morning. Please go ahead, Mr. Puls.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. KARL PULS:
7033. MR. KARL PULS: Thank you. Good morning Chiefs, ladies held in high esteem, cherished Elders, ladies and gentlemen, and Members of the Panel.
7034. I’ve lived on Haida Gwaii for 36 years, working as a teacher in the public school system. It’s been my pleasure and honour to work with many of the young people you’ve heard from this morning.
7035. I’m here today to urge the Panel to reject the Enbridge proposal in the highest possible and strongest possible terms. I hope you’ve been moved by the brilliant evidence for the possibilities of environmental disaster that would stem from the project. I think that the environmental impacts alone are sufficient to reject it. However, I’m equally concerned about the threat that its adoption would pose to the economic development, the sovereignty, and the territorial integrity of Canada.
7036. During my years in Haida Gwaii I’ve been very active in the outdoors, especially on the water. Starting a decade before the establishment of the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site, my wife and I spent from four to eight weeks every summer in the area travelling by, and living from, our kayaks.
7037. Subsequent to the recognition of Gwaii Haanas as a world heritage site, an international treasure, I’ve also taken many students into the park so they can appreciate their natural and cultural heritage.
7038. I’ve also had the privilege of chaperoning students to Laskeek Bay where they took part in the bird counts and participated in the research there. I’m also an
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux avid sports fisherman and food gatherer, both from my boats and on the beaches of Haida Gwaii. I use eel grass and other seaweed to nourish my garden. A very significant portion of my family’s nutrition is derived from local marine environment, and any degradation of that environment will have a major impact on my economic, physical, and spiritual well-being.
7039. Over the decades that I've lived on these islands, the subject of hydrocarbon exploitation in Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance has arisen periodically. A moratorium on such development has long been in place and the wisdom of maintaining that protection was re-affirmed most recently in 2004.
7040. I was interviewed based on my experience as a recreational user of the South Moresby area, as it was called at that time in the 1980s. At that time, studies were undertaken to determine the feasibility of protecting especially precious areas in the event of a spill where the moratorium could be lifted.
7041. The conclusion at that time and on every occasion since is that, given our 25-foot tidal range and frequent hurricane force winds, no such containment would be possible.
7042. Now, Enbridge proposes to run a pipeline across B.C., transcending the watersheds that sustain the fishing, farming, and water needs of the vast majority of the residents of this province.
7043. It would cross the most seismically active areas of Canada. The largest earthquake in Canadian history occurred just off Haida Gwaii in 1949. Tsunamis have hit the outer coast.
7044. They further propose to move huge tankers through the restricted and treacherous waters of Douglas Channel, then into storm-torn Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance and finally out to the highest energy coastline in Canada.
7045. I hardly need to remind the Panel that the Exxon Valdez catastrophe and many other tanker disasters have occurred in places with far more benign conditions than prevail around our islands.
7046. The possibility that the coast of British Columbia could be placed at the mercy of the drunken or inept captain of some Liberian-registered vessel in these challenging waters should be sufficient in and of itself to justify rejection of this project.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7047. The spread of spilled oil beyond Haida Gwaii on the southward-bound currents would be unstoppable. I'm sure the Panel is well aware of the cynical nature of past safety assurances from the oil industry with British Petroleum's recent criminal negligence in the Gulf of Mexico as just one glaring example.
7048. Since you've no doubt already been bombarded with figures about pipeline maintenance and safety, I would belabour over that point. Instead, I would like to elaborate on my further opposition based on the destination and use of the oil.
7049. Most of it will be destined for China. There, it will be used by a virtual slave workforce without rights or safety protection, working in an environment with few or no standards for pollution control.
7050. Because of the cost savings that slave labour and filthy production methods allow, the cheaper products that will result from Chinese use of Canadian energy and the chemical feed stocks produced by oil refining can then be shipped back to this country into our other potential markets for manufactured goods at prices that undercut our own manufacturing sector.
7051. Following in the wake of that self-inflicted damage to our economy, pollutions from China's irresponsible production methods will follow the prevailing westerly winds to our coast as surely as the tsunami debris that's now approaching our shoreline.
7052. As residents of Haida Gwaii, we're very familiar with the impact of quick profit, rape-and-run resource exploitation. We've seen the forest of Haida Gwaii stripped at many times the sustainable rate then shipped as raw logs to Asia, at the cost of the milling and manufacturing jobs that should have sustained our own domestic economy in perpetuity.
7053. We've seen what happens to our streams and the marine environment when standards are lowered so we can ship our resource heritage to be processed by foreign economies, and often command economies.
7054. Now, we're being told that the economic treasure that the oil sands could represent must be exploited as quickly as possible and sent as an immediate transfusion to fuel a corrupt and despicable economic model whose methods leave our own citizens unemployed.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 7055. How can that be seen as good economic stewardship?
7056. It's long past time for Canada to stop bleeding irreplaceable resources while being ewers of wood and drawers of water. We're being told to bleed ourselves to nourish a system and methods that we would never tolerate here at home.
7057. And I wonder sometimes how our NATO veterans and veterans of the Korean War feel about the outcome of the Cold War when they thought for freedom and now we're seeing our economy undermined by a work force that doesn't have the freedom that they were fighting for.
7058. I'm not so naïve as to believe that a sudden withdrawal of -- excuse me. I'm not so naïve as to believe that the sudden withdrawal of the world from its reliance on petroleum is feasible. However, the petroleum being derived from the oil sands should be refined in Canada, by Canadian workers, meeting Canadian standards.
7059. The energy and political -- and chemical feed stops produced should either be converted into manufactured goods by a Canadian workforce with rights and safety protections or shipped as refined, value-added products, that pose less risk than the unacceptable risk occurring from the crude oil transport.
7060. Canadian standards of environmental protection should be applied at every step of the extraction, processing and transport of our petroleum resources. The world should expect no less from this country.
7061. Beyond the unsupportable environmental risks and economic slow suicide that I've outlined, I have grave fears about Enbridge's impact on Canada's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
7062. As climate change opens the Northwest Passage, we are currently seeing American encroachment on what Canada rightly sees as our territorial waters in the Arctic. As we risk soldiers on snowmobiles to maintain aluminium flags to assert our long-established sovereignty in the Arctic, it seems impossible to me that our government could be blind to the threat to our territory that the tanker traffic in the Dixon Entrance would open up.
7063. International boundary in Dixon Entrance has been in dispute for over a century. Canada claims the strait is international waterway -- excuse me, an internal waterway with the A-B line running from Dall to Prince of Wales Islands at about 54
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux degrees 40 minutes.
7064. However, the United States does not recognize the A-B line for purposes of seafloor resources or fishing rights and has never shown the treaty boundary on its own official maps.
7065. Any B.C. fisherman who has worked these waters will recall instances when American detention of Canadian cruise and vessels, even though they were in Canadian waters. Given the minor importance of that dispute to the Americans, so far, they've never pushed the issue further.
7066. However, one of the arguments for the retention of the moratorium on hydrocarbon exploration in Dixon Entrance has been preserving the virgin nature of the area for environmental reasons helps provide justification for Canada's territorial claim.
7067. If something approaching 300 tankers a year are allowed to ply those waters, how can Canada continue to make any claim as an environmental steward?
7068. There's no such thing as a little bit virgin. And the U.S. could with logic decide to claim and open half of that area to oil exploration.
7069. It must be clearly seen that allowing the Enbridge Project not only opens the door to drilling in the Strait, but could also lead to the loss of Canadian fishing grounds and of control of what types of shipping enters waters we have controlled for over a century.
7070. That is not to mention -- and this deserves more mention than I'm qualified to give it -- but the moral and legal obligation to support the legally recognized sovereign rights of the Haida Nation.
7071. In North America, California does not allow in-shore drilling. In 2001, Governor Jed Bush of Florida pushed his brother, the President, to provide similar protection for his state. Is Canada's West Coast less valuable to our nation?
7072. Alaska has no policy except drill, baby, drill. Does the government of Canada really want to leave the protection of our coast to some future Sarah Palin? I can see that impending disaster from my porch, but does our government?
7073. I sincerely hope the Government of Canada has not overlooked this threat.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux A cynical person could believe that lifting the moratorium might be seen as a huge fringe benefit by the oil multinationals to be promoted by the politicians they sponsor. However, in my view, such a reckless act would create an inexcusable threat to our territorial integrity.
7074. Given those concerns, I was appalled when a representative of the Government of Canada described opponents of Enbridge as radicals. In fact, shipping raw Canadian resources to a communist-command economy so they can flout the environment and destroy Canadian manufacturing at the further cost of putting our territorial integrity and world-recognized natural values at risk, is the truly radical proposal.
7075. I was equally amazed when another spokesman recently suggested that we have to sell off our oil as fast as possible while it's still worth something. Really? Does anybody on this Panel or in this room share that opinion? Does anyone on this Panel anticipate a coming, long-lasting oil glut?
7076. Who does these spokespeople actually represent?
7077. I'd like to thank the Panel for allowing me this opportunity to voice my opposition to the Enbridge proposal. It is appropriately called “a gateway”. However, the gates it opens leads to environmental degradation, ecological disaster, economic victim-assisted suicide for Canadian manufacturing, and the potential for a national humiliation and territorial loss.
7078. I would like to have faith in this review process. I've seen previous Panels charged with making land-use decisions on these islands choose to ban the harvesting of endangered Peregrine falcons, to create Gwaii Haanas and to maintain the moratorium on oil drilling on our coast.
7079. I hope that this Panel will be similarly convinced by the compelling testimony against the Enbridge Project, that you'll be heard by a government that seems pre-disposed to ignore the dangers and threats involved, and that you will do everything in your power to help avert this catastrophy.
7080. Thank you. Haawa.
--- Applause/Applaudissements
7081. MEMBER BATEMAN: Mr. Gibson, thank you for attending today.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux Please proceed with your oral statement.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. KEVIN GIBSON:
7082. MR. KEVIN GIBSON: So I can go ahead?
7083. Good morning. Thank you everyone for coming.
7084. I'd like to welcome the Panel to Queen Charlotte and Skidegate. You've come a long ways to hear what we have to say about the Project and I'm very grateful you're here.
7085. I'm afraid I don't have anything surprises in store for you, as far as favouring the Project. I guess you're probably getting pretty tired of hearing people say “No, No, No” and I'm afraid I don't want the Project to proceed also but I think the hazards have been well covered by all the other speakers, and I have a sort of special concern about the Project that I'd like to communicate that's pretty simple, really.
7086. We have a global scientific intelligentsia in the world, and they have come down against oil, against fossil fuels in general. They are saying we must phase them out and so the very idea of discussing developing more fossil fuel infrastructure, like building the pipeline, is contrary to the advice of our formal scientists, and these people are Nobel Prize winners. They are the people who brought us the technology we now use, but they are saying we've made a terrible mistake, and I think it's important for us to acknowledge that mistake now, at this special time.
7087. When we discovered the fossil fuels, we thought: Yay, this is powerful stuff for us to burn and run our machines on. But the truth we know now is that the fossil fuels are extremely dangerous chemical control substances, and they control the global environment. And so we simply cannot use these fuels anymore, because the carbon from them is building up in the atmosphere.
7088. So I would like to talk about this global scientific intelligentsia, and how I have been following the story of their thinking and their wish for the future of our world.
7089. What they talk about now is geoengineering and global dimming and the Venus Syndrome. And those things concern the big picture which is deteriorating on our world. For instance, the geoengineering, we now have these programs to actively
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux capture carbon from the atmosphere by fertilizing the ocean, or through chemical additives to the fuel that runs the world's jet fleet. I'm speaking of chem trails, of course.
7090. And global dimming is the scientists’ knowledge that the light reaching the planet, the surface of the planet, has now been reduced by more than 10 percent by all the dust and smoke and pollution that we've kicked up into the skies, along with chem trails. And if we stop burning the fossil fuels right now and the sky cleared, it's likely the global temperature would increase five or six degrees Celsius, a very large amount.
7091. Now, the man who's probably foremost in global modeling, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, he is saying that he believes the Venus Syndrome will end the life of the planet if we continue to burn the unconventional fuels, and the stuff in the Tar Sands is such an unconventional fuel.
7092. He is speaking of the hydrofracking for gas, the digging up of the ancient oil fields that are degraded, like at Fort McMurray or in Venezuela, and also new technologies for coal. The scientists believe that, if we take advantage of these sources, we will trigger the Venus Syndrome, which is earth's mean temperature keeps on increasing in a runaway global heating event that extinguishes the life from the planet; our world would become another dead world like our sister, Venus, or Mars.
7093. Now, this overview that we should be phasing the fossil fuel industry out instead of building pipelines and developing more unconventional sources, this view, I believe it is the proper thing that Canada should do now. And I don't know what the people are thinking in the Privy Council or the Prime Minister speaking in favour of the Project, but I am asking the review panel to please reject the Project and not build the pipeline because of these considerations.
7094. When I wake up in the morning, I look out and the sky is full of abnormal clouds from the chem trail project, and I look at the forest across the inlet, on the mountains, and the forest is dying of acid rain damage, another fossil fuel effect. And when I think about the world we're leaving our children, I'm pretty worried about it.
7095. But I'd like to thank you for coming here. It's great. It's great that you're here to listen to us, and I wish you well.
7096. Thank you.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7097. THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, to both of you, for coming here and presenting your oral statements to us.
7098. Is Ms. Mills in the room? Ms. Maddie Mills? If not, that concludes the oral statements that were scheduled to be heard this morning. We will sit again this afternoon at 1:00. Thank you.
--- Upon recessing at 11:20 a.m./L'audience est suspendue a 11h20 --- Upon resuming at 1:08 p.m./L'audience est reprise a 13h08
7099. THE CHAIRPERSON: If we could have everyone take their seats, we'll get ready to get underway. Thank you.
--- (A short pause/Courte pause)
7100. THE CHAIRPERSON: Honoured Chiefs, Distinguished Elders and Ladies Held in High Esteem, thank you very much for welcoming us into your community yesterday. This is the continuation of the community hearings that we started yesterday in Skidegate.
7101. We're here for the community hearings to hear participants, who have registered in advance, to provide an oral statement. This is the continuation of that, which we started yesterday.
7102. Oral statements are an opportunity for participants to provide their personal knowledge and views about the proposed project to the Panel. The timeframe for each oral statement is a maximum of ten minutes. We do this to be fair to everyone, and to make sure that we have enough time to hear everybody who's scheduled to speak to us within each session.
7103. There's a timer at the front of the room here and, at seven minutes, there'll be a light that comes on and an audible sound, and then at ten minutes, there'll be another light that comes on and an audible sound.
7104. And we would ask everybody to respect that time limit. Like I say, as -- for respect of everybody in the room and for the process that we have for oral statements. We're hearing oral statements from -- in many different locations, and
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux this is the same restriction that we have set up for all oral statements.
7105. So we have a full agenda this afternoon, and we will get underway right away. We -- I would just like to confirm that all the people who will be presenting oral statements have been previously sworn or affirmed by the Panel Secretariat before presenting their statement.
7106. So welcome, Ms. Almassy -- sorry, I'm trying to read it from a distance and I can't quite get it. Let me get -- Almassy, and please proceed with your oral statement when you're ready.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. EVELYN VON ALMASSY:
7107. MS. EVELYN VON ALMASSY: Thank you. (Speaking in native language), good people, Chiefs, Ladies of High Esteem, Panel and friends.
7108. I am not Haida, but I am Haida Gwaiian. I came to this place when I was 38 and this year I shall be 61. My birthday is on December the 7th, in case you wish to send a card or a present.
--- (Laughter/Rires)
7109. MS. EVELYN VON ALMASSY: I have lived here longer than I have lived anywhere in my life. I moved here because I could never afford to visit. I am first generation Canadian. My parents left Austria and Hungary to meet in England, where I was born. I had lived here for a few years before I realized that I had come full circle. My parents moved from Bradford, England to Toronto for five years and then to Prince Rupert.
7110. So when I was six and seven years of age, I lived just across from Haida Gwaii, just over the Hecate Straits. My father worked on an abalone boat when that was still possible. I remember popping the seaweed bladders on the dock. I wouldn’t do that now as I now know that these are living creatures. I did not know that then. No one had taught me.
7111. To live on Haida Gwaii is to learn about the land, its people, its animals, but also to learn more about yourself.
7112. The second year that I lived here, I lived on North Beach in a cabin with a
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux well from which I pumped water. When I carried the cold water and then heated it on the wood stove, there was no electricity, and only this stove for heat. There was no radio or television. However, I did have a radio phone and every Sunday, a woman called her partner in a logging camp. The entire west coast could hear her half of the conversation but not his side. We had to make his side up in our imagination. That was my one artificial entertainment.
7113. I want to share with you about that year. That year was one of the most powerful years of my life. I would wake in the middle of the night to walk the beach, to view the stars and the universe and the planets above me. Sometimes the northern lights would wake me up and I would watch the show of lights and colours above me for hours.
7114. Haida Gwaii, as you have heard from people much wiser than I, is an incredible place of power, of the place where the Haida Nation have lived for thousands of years. It is a place of much energy. It is also a place of much love. It is the only place that I have lived where, if you have a crisis, even people that don’t like you will help you.
7115. I have lived in some huge cities on this planet, in capitals of the world such as London; on a kibbutz beside the Gaza Strip in Israel; in Vienna where some of the best opera houses exist; worked and lived in Naples, Italy; and in New Orleans pre-Katrina; and in a cave in a little village on Crete in Greece for six months. I tell you this so you that you know I didn’t wind up on the beach here, cast ashore not knowing what I landed on.
7116. There was a draw from here, and I felt it all the way down to Vancouver. I don’t have statistics or textbook knowledge or science to talk about. Other people throughout the hearings have done an incredible job of doing that. But what I want to share with you today is that Haida Gwaii has a secret. It is nothing that will put you on the cover of People magazine and it is nothing that will bring you riches in the bank. I don’t think I’m the only one that knows this secret and perhaps I shouldn’t make it public, but I’m going to take a deep breath and tell you. I think that these hearings are important enough for me to break my silence.
7117. Once that you are here; once that you have buried those that you love here; and once you are connected to this place, you can hear the hum of the land. You can actually feel the heartbeat of the earth, hear the rhythm of the rivers and know the power of this place. There has been much death in the forests of Haida Gwaii and I have felt the pain of those past souls, but you must know that this is one of the most
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux powerful energy forces on this planet.
7118. This is my reality and my connection to this land. I don’t fish and I don’t hunt deer and before I moved here, I did not know the difference between a chicken and a white-tailed hawk. I had not heard the rush of the wings of an eagle or heard the croaking of the raven on my deck. But I’m gifted with seaweed and fish and deer jerky from my friends and neighbours. I am begging you, Panel, because I am one of those radical foreign- sponsored environmentalists that the federal Minister of the Environment, Joe -- I’m sorry I forgot his last name -- described us to those that oppose this Enbridge madness, not really.
7119. But what I am is an individual who lived for 10 years in Massett and now for 12 years in Charlotte.
7120. I’m a teacher turned union president of the Haida Gwaii Teachers Association who will retire in a couple of years in a place where I have finally found peace and balance and sanity on Haida Gwaii. Until you connect with the land and are dashed by the waves in a kayak and are drenched by the rain and pushed by a wind so strong that if you wish to walk against it, you cannot, until then, Haida Gwaii can be elusive if you are not carefully listening.
7121. I hope that members of this Panel find the opportunity to go out alone to watch a fawn take its first steps; to see a bat fly low in front of you; and to feel the living earth between your toes. I hope that you hear the hum of the earth here; hear the power of Haida Gwaii and that all these messages that you have heard and will hear from the Haida Elders and their children and their children’s children; and you take this message to Ottawa.
7122. I beg you -- I beg you to speak to the government, the oil people. And while you are at it, respectfully, please tell Stephen Harper that the only kind of oil that can come to Haida Gwaii is eulachon oil. It is delicious. Some people like it on berries, and it will sustain you and keep you alive and perhaps make you smell something like a bear.
7123. I was on the road to Sleeping Beauty two evenings ago showing a newly arrived city person a little of the place where I hope one day to die in; not in a car driving up to Sleeping Beauty but on Haida Gwaii. I was hoping and talking about seeing a bear. Silently -- my friend did not know this -- I was requesting that the bear spirit show herself, truly. We turned a corner in the car and about 30 feet in front of us was the most beautiful and healthiest and biggest black bear that I have seen in my
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 22 years of living on Haida Gwaii.
7124. I felt so blessed that this was such a gift, and I was grateful for her showing herself. She was proud and strong and tall and sat and watched us with no fear. I could have looked at the beautiful, powerful creature for the rest of my life, but first we wanted a photograph so we could prove that we actually were fortunate enough to see this wonderful entity. My friend finally dug up the camera and took a photo, and we hoped that when she gets back to her city computer manipulation, the shot might actually show this elusive bear as it was running into the woods. If there is no bear that can be seen in the photograph, does that mean it wasn’t there?
7125. People come to Haida Gwaii and everyone has a powerful reason, if they are fortunate, to really connect to it. I truly hope that you realize how much of our hearts and souls, and passion has been presented to you on these special islands by these Haida people and others who have had so much pain in their lives since contact with Europeans. Yet they still have faith enough to say, we will speak with you; we will share our thoughts and our history and our pain, and I hope that this is the last time we need to protect Haida Gwaii.
7126. We have not forgotten Lyell Island. That was a turning point for Haida Gwaii. This, I believe, history will show was another one of those points. I hope that I live to know that Haida Gwaii has been saved. But if I have to physically lay down my body and give up my life, I shall do it because, because, because I have heard the hum of the earth here; the pulse of the forest, and my body will become part of the story here, because Haida Gwaii must remain what it is. We have no choice. We are part of this place.
7127. Haawa, haawa, haawa.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7128. THE CHAIRPERSON: Ms. Von Almassy and for people who will be presenting future oral statements, threats of violence with respect to this application are not helpful to the Panel in the deliberation that it needs to make. We’re here to hear about your views and your knowledge of the proposed project.
7129. So I didn’t want to interrupt you while you were speaking, but I would just ask all future oral statement presenters if they would please not -- refrain from making any threats of violence or civil disobedience. It’s not respectful to the process, and it’s not helpful to the Panel.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7130. MS. EVELYN VON ALMASSY: Threat of violence? Pardon me, I didn’t know that. Haawa.
7131. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay. Good afternoon, new panellists. Ms. Fowler, please go ahead and present.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. FRAN FOWLER:
7132. MS. FRAN FOWLER: Visitors, islanders, I’ve titled my submission, “Save our Sand Dollars, not Tar Sand Dollars”. Fran Fowler is my name. I’m a multi-generational Canadian born in the nation’s capital, raised in our provincial capital. I’m the daughter of Frank and Kathleen Nichols, both raised in Ontario. They moved across the country to live by the ocean. I came to our islands to teach, inspired by my next-door neighbour, Donald Fraser, who told his stories of living with his family in Massett in the early 1900s.
7133. I have lived here over 45 years. I came as young teacher and I fell in love with the kids, the people, the land and the life. I am here in this spot to say my greatest fear is a supertanker accident. I don't want them in our waters.
7134. I have worked to reduce my consumption. I'm doing what I can, as I believe that we have to find a compromise that works for the earth. If we use less, we need less. I realize we are hypocritical when we use oil to generate electricity when there are other ways.
7135. I have lived in Rennell Sound on the west coast, where we saw the results of tsunamis. At Cape Bald on the east coast amid shipwreck locations, but mostly in Queen Charlotte spending several summers on fish patrol, commercial fishing, and chartering all around these islands. There are few beaches I haven't seen or walked.
7136. The ocean is in my veins, everybody's, actually. And we who live by it understand how privileged we are and that we have a responsibility. When this Panel was struck, I felt it was total window dressing, that the political comments being made and the financial power imbalances, et cetera.
7137. Now, I believe that all still exists, yet people have come together with a powerful voice, a true and heartfelt concern for our land and waters. Perhaps commonsense can prevail. We can continue to live with ever-increasing expectations from longevity to profits. Growth is not unlimited.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7138. We all have a role to play; expressing our opinions, doing something about our consumption. You have a role to play, to hear us and fairly and accurately report what we say. I wish you courage and integrity to make that report.
7139. The governments have a role to play; they are supposed to represent us as minorities. The tar sand conglomerates and Enbridge partners have a role to play too; they have to find an ethical compromise, but not with our safety.
7140. Because we live in a modern world, we have seen or read of many disasters that have happened world-wide and locally; Torrey Canyon, Gulf of Mexico drilling spill, Exxon Valdez, Queen of the North, Iraq-Iran burning oil fields.
7141. I live in fear, a dreaded expectation that if supertankers are allowed to ply our waters, there will be a disaster, not an accident. That disaster will impact us all with unimaginable consequences.
7142. To have executives, public relations people and politicians say things like a once in a 150,000-year event is disgustingly frightening to hear their stupidity, naivety or complicity. It won't be an accident, as an accident is an unexpected event. This will happen.
7143. I would refer you to the heartbreaking exposé of the Valdez spill by Riky Ott, “Not One Drop”. To read of effects on the lands and the waters by the Exxon Valdez contamination, and most importantly, on the people and communities, how government and big business simply change the rules or flagrantly outspent all opposition in the courts; this can't be allowed to happen again.
7144. I can tell you how my life would be affected, tragically. My physical, spiritual, and social health will be compromised, as well as our emotional, economic and environmental lives.
7145. Without supertankers in our waters we are already feeling affects, as fear pushes us to do things we wouldn't think of, public speaking. Seriously, we begin to feel and possibly react like trapped animals with no recourse. You've heard the level of fear, frustration and anger expressed.
7146. I do understand the concept of the “greater good” and “not in my backyard”, but I also understand that I live daily the urban/rural conflict. Being taken for granted as we have too few votes to matter. Because we're small doesn't make us
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux wrong.
7147. Supertankers, an act of God, not an act of man, some threats that I can think of: fire; explosion; when one crew person misses a check or an electronic system fails; gigantic waves that could break the back of a too-big tanker; when one built for one part of the world just happens to show up in the northwest coast because I'm told they design them for what waters they'll ply; human error -- of course, there are many failsafe procedures, but we lost the Queen of the North, so we understand failsafe; human greed when money will call the schedule and the route rather than commonsense science and experience; earthquakes and tsunamis -- largest earthquake in Canada is close to our coast; the Alaskan quake of a different type -- also relatively close; severe weather occurrences are occurring with global climate change.
7148. Walk some of our trails and coastline to see the power in our winds, one falter on those tankers and they can be ashore spewing no matter how many hulls they have; terrorism -- pretty easy target; collision, close by we have atomic submarines or fogged-in surface vessels.
7149. If this pipeline project does go through, there are some issues which I believe are essential to be implemented. Some of my minimum requirements for any permission, but certainly not my endorsement, are an immediate program to reduce hydrocarbon consumption with targets that have to be met across Canada.
7150. If Canada needs this project so much, then they need to be part -- they need to do their part in helping. We carry the risk, they don't.
7151. Two, programs that must address the inevitable. Spill containment and recapture equipment permanently stationed on-island with educational programs delivered on-island for such crews. Students come here, ours don't go away.
7152. We need legislated requirements to help public watchdogs with judicial powers. Put the farmer in charge of the -- not the foxes in charge of the proverbial chicken coop.
7153. Have individuals involved in the bio-region who know and care about it. Research stations located on the island with all level of education particularly developed so that the learning and monitoring can be done and understood.
7154. Tanker requirements; -- hulls, construction, age, higher than they currently think are sufficient, with requirements for continual evaluations. Invest in science so
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux that perhaps ruptures can be contained.
7155. Improve weather and navigational and communication equipment required; expanded satellite surveillance, re-spills and bilge ballast issues; third party liability insurance, bonds in place; final responsibility to be with the producer; funding for research in hatcheries of all potentially impacted species, seaweeds, invertebrates, fish.
7156. Special funding available for tourism impacted business, surfers, chartering, all paid by a per barrel, gallon, or litre, I don't know; environmental tax to be at arm's -- to be an at arm's-length entity, not governmental. Help us to be a leader in experimenting with green technology and lifestyle, not in clean ups.
7157. I had a modern myth to tell you about a now-extinct bird that warned of a disaster because of our dependence on oil, but like that bird, I've run out of time.
7158. I'd like to end with the words from Chief Skidegate, Lewis Collinson, March 1966.
"People are like trees and groups of people are like forests. While the forests are composed of many different kinds of trees, these trees intertwine their roots so strongly that it is impossible for the strongest winds which blow on our islands to uproot the forest for each tree strengthen its neighbour and the roots are inextricably intertwined;
In the same way, the people of our islands, composed of members of nations and races all over the world, are beginning to intertwine their roots so strongly that no troubles will affect them;
Just this one tree standing alone would soon be destroyed by the first strong wind that came along. So it is impossible for any person, any family, or any community to stand alone against the troubles of the world."
7159. Chief Collinson.
7160. Thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7161. MEMBER BATEMAN: Mr. Benoit, thank you for joining us today. Please proceed with your oral statement.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. IAN BENOIT:
7162. MR. IAN BENOIT: Thank you and good afternoon. Chiefs, Elders, ladies of high esteem and the Joint Review Panel, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today.
7163. My name is Ian Benoit. I was born on Haida Gwaii and I've called it home for 23 years. I recognize many of the people in the room as friends, classmates, co-workers and mentors.
7164. For simplicity sake, I call myself a student. I have a Bachelor's Degree from the University of Victoria and I expect that I have much more to learn. At the moment, I'm working in policy development for the Council of the Haida Nation. And regardless of that appointment, I'm here today representing no person or organization other than myself as a resident of Haida Gwaii and a citizen of Canada.
7165. I belong to no organization with any partisan or special interest affiliations, domestic or foreign. I am not an eco-terrorist, and at least as far as my own self-identification would indicate, I hold political beliefs that are not commonly understood to be extreme or radical.
7166. I feel that I have to say these things because there are those who will have you believe otherwise due to my opposition to the Northern Gateway Application. I am not recognized as an expert or an authority on the analyzed implications pertaining to this application. These are simply the facts as I see them and I welcome any correction or reasoned argument that might refute my testimony, provided that those facts and premises are sound.
7167. However, if I am correct in my convictions, we, as citizens of Canada and you, as agents of an elected government must conclude that the Northern Gateway Application is not in the interests of the nation nor justice, and thereby it should be rejected.
7168. I also want to express a level of frustration in addition to a sense of disempowerment and personal inefficacity with regard to these proceedings, following from some potential procedural changes. I make no accusation and I pass
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux no judgment when I say that I am unconvinced that our testimonies will receive due consideration or that the ruling on the Proponent’s application will not in some way be politically motivated.
7169. I feel left out of a decision that will be disproportionately influenced by people who cannot appreciate the multiplicity of impacts associated with it. Nonetheless, I thank you again for hearing me. I still have faith that reason can be a human’s highest authority.
7170. For longer than I have been alive, the people of Haida Gwaii, both Haida and non-Haida have been working together with the Government of Canada, collaboratively and respectfully, to cultivate strategies for natural resource stewardship that are economically sustainable and committed to preserving cultural and ecological integrity.
7171. We are also managing to do this while remaining cognizant of the Haida’s historical title to these lands. My peers, the people who have been born and raised in this regime, are the product of the resulting policies. They are happy, worldly, healthy, prosperous and intelligent.
7172. The unique natural resource arrangements we have here, they are working for us and the abrogation of these arrangements represented by projects like Northern Gateway threaten to undo decades and in some cases lifetimes worth of progress. We are all committed to preserving this system and I think Canada needs to be reminded of its commitment.
7173. In 1988, in response to local demands for responsible forestry practices, which culminated with the civil disobedience of Lyell Island, the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia signed a Memorandum of Agreement which became known as the “South Moresby Agreement”.
7174. To establish a protected area here on Haida Gwaii, the government that represents us all as citizens decided it was in the national interest to protect this area for reasons that you have assuredly heard at this point. Section 23.4 reads, and this is really interesting:
“Neither Canada nor British Columbia will hereafter alter or impair the quality or permit the alteration or the impairment of the quality of any water in, on, or upon or flowing in through or upon the park whether by the construction of works or otherwise.”
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7175. Now, that covers a lot of actions as well as a lot of water. So what confuses me today is how people can read this and say, “Okay, I understand. Now let’s sail some tankers past that area.” And I think this misunderstanding is something that is shared by a lot of people and it’s being expressed as confusion and a mistrust today. It’s because a lot of us, as far as we’re concerned, we’ve set this issue to rest a long time ago. We have dealt with this as a problem and we don’t know why it’s rearing its head again.
7176. During a previous session, I quoted a similar agreement signed five years later, the “Gwaii Haanas Agreement”. It similarly commits Canada to:
“...leaving the same area unimpaired for the benefit, education and enjoyment of future generations”.
7177. Section 3(1).
7178. The text here is relatively unambiguous as far as legislation goes and, again, these agreements are signed by our national government, mandated to uphold the national interest, elected democratically by a national citizenry.
7179. Now, without disposing of or amending either of these pieces of legislation, Canada is considering the possibility of rapidly expanding oil tanker traffic mere miles from this area. And it seems to me that by doing so, Canada puts itself at an unreasonable risk, however small it may or may not be, of violating its own agreement.
7180. So my interest in seeing this application rejected is not only resulting from the hazard of socioeconomic and environmental impacts associated with it. I am convinced that by allowing the proponent to move forward on this project, we’ll be undermining the rule of law itself. The Government of Canada, with all the authority and legitimacy conferred to it by the democratic process, committed to never allowing this kind of project to occur in this area.
7181. For this reason, I can see no other option but for the Joint Review Panel to reject the Northern Gateway Application until such time as Canada is able to relieve itself of these commitments to its citizens which, for the record, is not something that I would support either.
7182. Finally, I want us to consider that according to Richard Girard, author of
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux the Polaris Institute’s Corporate Profile on Enbridge, Enbridge has been responsible for over 800 oil spills since 1999. I recognize that the primary risk of a spill affecting Haida Gwaii would be the result of tanker traffic, which is beyond the scope of the Proponent’s responsibility.
7183. So let’s just say for now that in light of those numbers, I do not envy those communities sitting along the proposed pipeline’s right-of-way because I’m not sure what kind of logical gymnastics one has to do to call that number acceptable. But also, I want to express my astonishment that Canada, the entity that is by its own law obligated to protect the above-mentioned areas from industrial accidents, is considering allowing a company with that kind of a track record to load bitumen onto tankers that will be in such close proximity to these areas.
7184. In this case, a company that has spilled over 800 times since 1999 is a liability that I, as part of a collective responsible for the actions of my government, refuse to accommodate.
7185. Now, I don’t always expect to get the governments that I want but I, at the very least, expect them to follow their own rules and honour the commitments they make on my behalf.
7186. As I said before, these are the facts as I see them and if I am right, then I think you know what you must do. I wish you all the best and I realize you may find yourselves in a conflicted position. So I thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak and I hope that words will be of some help.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7187. THE CHAIRPERSON: Good afternoon, Mr. Broadhead. Please proceed when you are ready.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. JOHN BROADHEAD:
7188. MR. JOHN BROADHEAD: Haida ‘laas, ladies held in high esteem, Chiefs, good people, thank you for hosting these proceedings in your community once again and for your hospitality today, as always. Members of the Joint Review Panel, hello once again. I spoke with you in March with the Village of Queen Charlotte. Thank you for returning to Haida Gwaii to sit with us and listen to our hopes and fears and our concerns about the Enbridge proposal for a Northern Gateway Pipeline.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7189. My name is John Broadhead. My Haida name is Taaxiid. Haida Gwaii has been my home for going on 40 years, during which time I worked as a writer and a designer, a cartographer, an environmental advocate at the local, provincial and national levels.
7190. I am married and have raised two sons in Queen Charlotte at Daajing giids and we have travelled the waters of Haida Gwaii extensively and had the benefit of a lifetime of sharing with so many good friends, the best food in the world from the land and the ocean.
7191. At this point, I think you must know that we are, every man, woman and child, filled with dread at the thought of this pipeline. It’s like a nightmare that you need to wake up from. You have to wake up just before you hit bottom or some other terrible fate, and we have woken up. We’re no longer in fear; we’re no longer in denial; we’re no longer in shock at the terrible things that some of our nation’s leaders and oil industry flaks have to say about us because we care for the things that have made Canada a great nation and we oppose their undoing.
7192. In 1988, I was an environmental activist who had worked for a decade or so with many hundreds of other Canadians and the Haida to bring an end to the logging in Gwaii Haanas South Moresby to protect a special part of Haida Gwaii for the enduring benefit of the Haida and the whole world.
7193. When all was said and done, I was honoured by the Haida here at home in this very hall and by my nation’s leaders in Ontario who thanked everyone involved and presented me with the Governor General’s Conservation Award, which I shared with the Honourable Tom McMillan who was the Minister of Environment in Brian Mulroney’s government and with Miles Richardson who was the President of the Haida Nation.
7194. The Prime Minister who enjoyed an elected majority Conservative government called the agreement to protect Gwaii Haanas and diversify the island’s economy a demonstration to the world of Canada’s commitment to sustainable development.
7195. I thought then that I had learned something wonderful and positive about my country and about the national interest – how it intersected with the Haida Nations and with my own life’s work. They were mutually beneficial; neither one trumped the other; neither one discounted the other. They reinforced each other in positive
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux ways -- something to be proud of.
7196. Today, in 2012, I’m the same environmental activist, working with thousands of other Canadians and First Nations, many of them the same people, many in this room to stop this pipeline, to protect this same place for all the same reasons.
7197. But, today, my country’s leaders are calling us names like “extremists” and “radicals”, “foreign money laundering dupes” for nebulous American interests that are working against the Canadian interests which seem to have been redefined as jobs and money from oil sold to a foreign state with a history of trampling on human rights, silencing dissidents and propping up totalitarian regimes in other places of the world with oil.
7198. Respect for the environment, for the people in communities of British Columbia and Haida Gwaii, and for civil discourse seem to have vanished from this majority Conservative government’s view of the national interest.
7199. Over the past year, whenever someone has spoken out against this pipeline proposal in public, someone for instance like the regional or town councils of Haida Gwaii or Prince Rupert, or Terrace or Smithers, or the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, Patrick Daniels or another Enbridge spokesman or a government person has said that people wouldn’t be so opposed if they were better informed. If only they took the time to read the 20,000 pages of documents that the company has spent millions of dollars on.
7200. Well, we’ve read them, and we are better informed. We’ve been studying these things for 30 or 40 years. Your presence here is the fourth or fifth time that a panel convened by a federal or a provincial government has come here to examine this same prospect of oil in our part of the world.
7201. And this is what we know: We have an unshakeable and a certain knowledge that this pipeline, if it were allowed to be built, would sooner or later bring tragedy and death to the rivers and people of Central British Columbia, the Coast and Haida Gwaii. Our losses would be environmental, economic and social.
7202. We know this from the 1988 Nestucca fuel barge spill in Washington. We know it from the 1989 Exxon Valdez catastrophe, and our friends and relatives in Alaska. We know it from the sinking of the Queen of the North in 2006. We know it from the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Kalamazoo River Enbridge pipeline last year and, now, we know it from Red Deer, Alberta.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7203. There is nothing that can disabuse us of understanding the profound nature of this threat. No PR bafflegab, no pretty water colour adds on TV during the hockey game, no piecemeal expert reports, no empty political assurances about environmental safety and world class standards. It’s all hubris.
7204. Sooner or later, the Northern Gateway pipeline, if built, would result in the irreversible horror of raw bitumen entering the rivers of Central British Columbia and coming onto our beaches and shorelines all at once or drop by drop and the fish, the wildlife, the forests and the people who live here and depend on them will pay the ultimate price.
7205. We know that cleanup equipment doesn’t work if you can get to the site of a spill on an ocean or in a river valley in the first place. We know that trying to clean up a spill is not good for your health. If you go there with buckets and booms and high pressure hoses, you’re likely to incur long term illness and disability caused by exposure to aromatic hydrocarbons and dispersant chemicals.
7206. We know that oil companies, pipeline and tanker owners and governments are not legally accountable for the consequences, or for the lies they tell in order to get a project approved. When it comes to putting ecosystems and economies and people’s lives and families back together after an oil spill, nobody knows how to do that. No one ever has.
7207. We know that some government officials in Ottawa and Alberta consider the possibility of a spill or two to be a calculated risk, an unfortunate but unavoidable cost of doing business. Their main concern is the extent to which it presents an inconvenient truth and bad headlines on the evening news just when they’re trying to get the next project approved.
7208. But our lives and our families, the oceans and beaches, everything and everyone that lives here and depends on them, cannot and will not be trivialized or discounted this way. We are proud Canadians who have served this nation, gone to war to defend our democratic and human rights and built an economy consistent with environmental and social well-being. We won’t allow this pipeline to be built and if push comes to shove neither will our fellow Canadians.
7209. Thank you, again, for listening to our concerns. I hope and pray that your voices will carry ours to Ottawa and the world beyond and advise them that they need to find another way to get the tar sands oil to market. This one is not in the national
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux interest.
7210. Thank you. Haawa.
7211. THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you to each of you for taking the time to prepare and present your oral statements to the Panel.
--- (A short pause/Courte pause)
7212. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Good afternoon, everyone.
7213. I guess we’ll start with Ms. Dolen. Would you like to share your comments? Are you ready?
7214. MS. JENN DOLEN: Yes, I am thank you.
7215. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. JENN DOLEN:
7216. MS. JENN DOLEN: Good afternoon, Elders, Chiefs, members of my community and Panel. These are my thoughts.
7217. My name is Jenn. I live here on Haida Gwaii. I have a ten-month-old son named Rheal. I raise chickens, have a garden, go for walks on the beach and in the forest, and can salmon when I have the chance. This is my idyllic lifestyle. It’s a lifestyle I dreamed about, even before I even knew this lifestyle was possible.
7218. I’m here today to voice my opposition to the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and an increase in crude oil tanker traffic. Based on recorded spills for both pipeline and tanker traffic and the imperfection of human nature, the likelihood of a spill is so great we’d be fooling nobody in saying it wouldn’t happen.
7219. I don’t want a spill. I also don’t want to see the development of the pipeline go through the proposed territory in the first place. Moving equipment through trees, digging trenches, upsetting creeks and rivers all has its effects. Although we have been trying to study life and ecosystems, we really don’t have all the knowledge about the actions that we are thinking about doing here.
7220. This is what I’m afraid of, pushing forward towards growth and short-term
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux gain and then realizing later the devastating effects it has. The lifestyle I have here is wholly dependent on where I live – Haida Gwaii. Haida Gwaii is a special place and in complete balance. An oil spill, increased tanker traffic, development through thousands of miles of land, mountains and rivers will certainly upset this balance.
7221. I want to share with you something that happened to me when I first moved here. Actually, I wasn’t even living here. I didn’t intend to move here, but this place has a hold on so many people.
7222. I went for a hike out in Rennell Sound, I was by myself, and I started the hike and I noticed an eagle flying above, just circling, and I was going through the trees and I looked up and I could still see the eagle circling. It’s my first experience really of the coast and the sort of impact that this land can have.
7223. So this hike came out onto the beach and I -- just as I got into the beach and onto the sand I noticed this little white feather slowly floating down from the sky and it landed, amazingly, right in my palm.
7224. This place is incredible, and it will be affected. I’m sure you’ve heard -- I’m sure you’ve heard about it and have felt it yourselves and I hope -- I hope that you take all that we say to heart and inform the people that need to be informed about the decision that could be made here.
7225. And because I want to leave here not with what you shouldn’t do and what we shouldn’t do, but with a solution, I’m going to say our solution is investment in green energy.
7226. Thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7227. MEMBER BATEMAN: Good afternoon, Ms. Atwell, thank you for coming. Please present your oral statement.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. PAIGE ATWELL:
7228. MS. PAIGE ATWELL: My name is Paige Kathleen Atwell; I am 16 years old and I have lived on Haida Gwaii for my whole life.
7229. As a little girl I always went to the beach, went swimming in the waters,
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux and picked berries in the bushes. My family would go crabbing and fishing every summer when we could.
7230. If this project happens it will change everybody’s life. Everyday we will be worried that something will happen or something will go wrong. If something goes wrong what are we going to do?
7231. The spill will still have a huge impact on Haida Gwaii. It will destroy our beaches, fish, and sea life. That damage cannot be undone. This island is our home and most of the community and island depends on our beaches and sea life for our food source.
7232. My mother always said to me to always believe in myself and fight for what I love, and that’s what I’m doing today, fighting for the island I grew up on.
7233. I understand you do not have the same bond with the island like we do, but if you get -- if you took a day and went to the beach or fishing or gathering food and getting to know the people and the culture here, I can guarantee that you will feel the same way about Haida Gwaii like we do.
7234. There has been multiple people that have spoken to you and we speak clearly when we say no. This project has brought everyone together to fight for what we love. We will make our voices heard and we will not stand back and let Enbridge destroy our island or community.
7235. A spill might not happen, but why take the chance if there is a possibility of one. We will work as a community to make sure that Enbridge does not come here and destroy our land and island. This is our home and we shouldn’t be gambling with it.
7236. We are the youth and we want to speak up. If life -- if we say yes to Enbridge, life will be rough. Life cells will die and so will we. Do we really want Enbridge to succeed life? Let’s make sure that Enbridge does not stay; let’s say no to Enbridge every day.
7237. My few of this project is that I don’t want it to happen. Haida Gwaii is beautiful and oil-free and that’s the way it should be.
7238. Haawa.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux --- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7239. THE CHAIRPERSON: Good afternoon, Ms. Pattison. I believe you spoke with us before. Please proceed with your oral statement.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. LAURA PATTISON:
7240. MS. LAURA PATTISON: Good afternoon, thank you for hearing me again. Last time I spoke to you I -- I told you a little bit from my own perspective as someone who lives in Sandspit and runs a tour business there. Today I’m here to represent the Gwaii Haanas Tour Operators Association.
7241. We’re an association of most of the businesses that run tours in Gwaii Haanas. That’s Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, Haida Heritage Site, and Marine Conservation Area Reserve. All of those terms, “National Park”, “Haida Heritage Site”, “Marine Conservation Area”, none of those are consistent with having an oil spill, a pipeline, tanker traffic. It’s a complete oxymoron and I’m -- frankly, I’m amazed that this is being considered.
7242. But since -- since the proposal is on the table I’m -- I’m here along with everyone else to say that we -- we object and we can’t see any possible reason why it could be in our interests.
7243. I’ve listened -- I’ve really -- I’ve done a lot of research. I’ve look at a lot of different -- different possibilities, different ways that this could be done and I really don’t see any way that it could be done safely or in a way that is in the interests of the Canadian people.
7244. And I’m speaking to you as -- as a representative of quite a few small businesses here. And what we’d like to see is the government -- you know -- taking us seriously as businesses even though we’re not huge, multimillion, multibillion dollar corporations. We are businesses, we have a role to play in the economy, and our -- our success, our ability to run our businesses is based on having a strong, healthy marine environment.
7245. And as well as that, it’s also based on the perception of the place. So currently Gwaii Haanas is perceived as a completely pristine wilderness and even if this pipeline went through and there was never any oil spill, which I question, but if -- if there was never an oil spill there would still be a perception that the place has been sullied and changed, and that it’s no longer the pristine, unique environment that
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux people are coming here to see.
7246. And so, to me there’s -- any -- any development in that direction would have a huge impact on our businesses. And from everything that I’ve heard, from living here, from speaking to fellow tour operators, and members of the community, it’s clear to me that -- that people strongly oppose this and that the pipeline will not be able to go through with the way that people feel about it.
7247. And I guess all -- all I can say is I hope that this process is a -- a genuine democratic process and that what we’ll see is this Panel returning to Ottawa to say that the people object and that this has to stop now, because it is going to stop and the question is will it stop now, when it should, or will it continue through some other stages and then be stopped through some other means.
7248. And, as -- as you said to a previous speaker, the -- you don’t want us to be making threatening statements or anything disrespectful and I certainly don’t want to do that, so when I say this I’m not -- I’m not saying it as -- as a threat, I’m just saying that I don’t think people will ever sit down and accept this, and so why not stop it now before it gets to the stage where people are making threats or civil disobedience or anything that -- that is out of keeping with our Canadian democracy.
7249. So I sincerely hope that -- that this process will have the outcome that it should and that we’re being heard, and that when we next hear something of this that -- that it will be good news for us; that the -- the pipeline will have been stopped.
7250. Thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7251. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay. Good afternoon, Mr. Lagasse.
7252. MR. JOEL LAGASSE: Can you guys expand the -- this?
7253. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay, so you’d like to use the map as a visual ---
7254. MR. JOEL LAGASSE: Yeah.
7255. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 7256. MR. JOEL LAGASSE: The areas I talk about aren’t all included.
7257. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay, which area would you like?
7258. MR. JOEL LAGASSE: I would like it expand out so we could see this whole area, and then also Northern Vancouver Island.
7259. MEMBER MATTHEWS: I don’t know if we go that far, do we, on that map?
7260. MR. JOEL LAGASSE: That’s -- that’ll do.
7261. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay.
7262. MR. JOEL LAGASSE: That’ll have to do, I guess.
7263. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay.
--- (Laughter/Rires)
7264. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Thanks. Please go ahead and do what you --- what you can then. Thanks.
7265. MR. JOEL LAGASSE: So ---
7266. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay.
7267. MR. JOEL LAGASSE: --- I start the time now?
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. JOEL LAGASSE:
7268. MR. JOEL LAGASSE: Thank you very much.
7269. So sometimes I can a bit unrealistic, and I’ve struggled with my oral statement for -- since I signed up in October. I have so much to say. And I came last night and the speakers were so eloquent and passionate with their words I just -- I was like, “Oh, man, I got to go back to the drawing board”
7270. So I was like, “Oh you know what, I’ve got it”; I’m going to try to show them -- give them that smile that you get when you hold a shore crab in your hands as
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux a kid, and when it scurries across your hand for the first time and it tickles you, and you just -- brings you happiness and for that -- in that moment that’s -- that’s what it’s all about for me.
7271. So I thought, that’s it, I’m going to bring some shore crabs, and got my pickle jar -- it’s right over there -- I showed up and then I learnt -- my wife said, “Well, that’s a good idea Joel, but it might be kind of unrealistic. You might want to have a backup plan”.
7272. So anyway, my pickle jar is over there and at the break, if you want, you can come and hold the shore crab and see what it feels like at the very least.
7273. There is a point I'm trying to make out of that statement, and that's this whole process is happening inside. Everything everyone has to say here is outside. It's our environment. We can tell you, but it's one thing to describe to you, so people on a tape recorder can hear I'm talking about a crab; it's another thing to hold it in your hands and feel it.
7274. People are talking about huge things. They're talking about their food. They're talking about what they do for happiness. They're talking about their favourite places. I forgot -- okay, I think I'm done that point.
7275. Going to plan -- my backup plan. So come and see me at the break if you want to hold a crab.
7276. So I would like start off, I was trying to learn this from an Elder this morning because I heard it last night and thought it was really important to say. Please forgive me on the pronunciation. Kilslaay GanGa, Kal Jaad GanGa, XaaydaGa ‘Laasis. Chiefs, ladies held in high esteem, good people, thank you for being here today. Thank you for being here today.
7277. I'd also like to thank those who have spoken before me. Your words and passion give me strength to stand up tall for our coast because it is nerve wracking and I have some experience teaching in front of -- or speaking in front of groups, so here it goes.
7278. Would you mind giving me a minute when I'm close to the end, so I can get right to the point? Okay, thanks.
7279. So my name is Joel Lagasse. I was raised on the Sunshine Coast where I
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux played on beaches with my sisters, kayaked with my father and watched the fall salmon runs with my mother.
7280. I spent seven years of my life earning a living in the waters between Johnstone Strait, which is off the screen, but in my opinion still very affected by this project, all the way to Bella Bella.
7281. For the past three years, I've been privileged to be living on Haida Gwaii. When I fly from Sandspit to Vancouver, there's scarcely 10 minutes when I don't recognize a part of the coast I haven't personally travelled through by water.
7282. My first job was selling fish out of a seafood market. I later worked as a commercial prawn fisherman. I obtained at university a Bachelor of Science in the study of coastal resource management. My studies were geared towards that.
7283. For seven consecutive summers, I led multi-day kayaking trips, leading people from around the world to show beautiful B.C. We watch eagles, orca whales, fishing boats descend on Johnstone Strait like a wave as the salmon migrated through.
7284. I’ve paddled through -- I've been amongst a school of sockeye so thick that you cannot see past the silvery and flickering backs of the fish, so thick that they jump and hit your boat.
7285. I've looked off in the distance with my guests, which included CEOs, lawyers, nuclear physicists, oil chemists even, all type -- bakers, all types of life from everywhere, Thailand. I could go on and on -- but -- the States, a lot of different places all around the world.
7286. That smile I talked about before, you see that. And when they feel it, they know. I've landed on beaches so thick with inter-tidal life, you can't see the rocks below, that in a square metre yields more marine life than I could count at the time. You might be thinking I can't count very high, but -- so where from a single rock I watched a sea urchin feeding on -- sorry, a sea otter feeding on a sea urchin; a bear scavenging the beach for the small shore crabs; a humpback or grey whale lunge feeding in the surf.
7287. And most recently, I've been privileged to teach at Sk'aadgaa Naay Elementary, which is just up the hill.
7288. All of these life experiences compel me to stand before you today and
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux recommend that you unequivocally oppose this project. Growing up in a clean shoreline gave me the greatest and happiest moments of my life. It's strengthened my family and my community. Working at a fish market taught me how much food comes out of these waters, not only locally in the community, provincially, nationally, internationally.
7289. Working as a commercial fisherman taught me that every day I would pull a creature out of the water that I had never seen before. This is even given all the experiences before. I'd go to look up about these creatures, and I would find, to my surprise, that we don't know a lot of stuff, basic information, about life history -- oh, my gosh, okay. One minute.
7290. Three? Okay, perfect that's good. Four years of university taught me that our economic policies are destroying the environments we depend on. We must restore the health of our environments, not continue to exploit them at an ever- increasing rate.
7291. Seven years as a kayak guide taught me that we are stewards and we have a huge responsibility of a piece of -- just as those in South America have a responsibility to protect the Amazon for humanity, we have a responsibility to be stewards of our coastlines.
7292. Finally, three years of teaching has taught me that this decision will most -- will affect the students I teach. It will affect their families. It will affect the community. It will affect me. It will affect my family.
7293. Now, three weeks ago, I took my class on a class fieldtrip just maybe a kilometre down the road, and the sun was out. In the background, there was a grey whale feeding. In the foreground, my students were scavenging the tidal pools. They found several crabs, nudibranchs, countless sculpins. They also caught a three-foot octopus. We shared and ate that octopus together.
7294. The smiles that that brought to those kids' faces is why, for me, if I were to say everything in one moment, that's why we're trying to do this. And this isn't some wishy-washy flaky thing. There's so many ways that I could justify that smile in terms of economics, socio-economics. Ten (10) minutes isn't enough to get into that.
7295. So now I implore you -- I'd like to finish with this -- I implore you; my start wasn't meant to be antagonistic. It really wasn't. I implore you to just, if you can, go for a walk on the beach. Hold the crab at the break. Go visit Johnstone Strait
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux when the orcas come in, mid-July to mid-August. Come and try to -- help people -- come back when the salmon is spawning. Help people can and prepare fish, smoke, freeze pack, eat.
7296. Until you experience these things, it'll be -- I really hope you can comprehend without experiencing what we are trying to say.
7297. Say no to Enbridge. Say no to tanker traffic.
7298. Haaw'a for listening. Travel safely and may you be warmly welcomed by your family.
7299. Thanks.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7300. THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you to each of you for taking the time to prepare and present your oral statements to us.
7301. MEMBER BATEMAN: Welcome to the next panel of four. Mr. Muller, we’ll begin with you. When you’re ready, please proceed.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. MICHAEL MULLER:
7302. MR. MICHAEL MULLER: Thank you.
7303. My name is Michael Muller. I’m opposed to this Project. It’s not advantageous to local interest. It’s not advantageous to the interests of B.C. and it’s not in the general interest of Canada.
7304. Locally, we need clean oceans to survive. Seafood is very important. It is difficult to practice agriculture here. To grow food on Haida Gwaii, we need seafood to supplement the poor soil. Seaweed is necessary for kitchen gardens and farms on Haida Gwaii. Seaweed is also nutritious. Clean surrounding water is essential to Haida Gwaii.
7305. The certainty of increased pollution as a result of increased marine traffic deems the proposal undesirable, even before the thought of an oil spill or other marine accident enters the equation.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 7306. The benefits of seaweed trickle up. The perils of oil dribble down covering much of our thought in a black muck. Provincially, the risks far outweigh any benefits. The majority of the pipeline route is within British Columbia while the benefits go to other provinces, countries and corporations not from British Columbia.
7307. Gambling away the marine resources of Haida Gwaii and British Columbia on behalf of other people is a fool’s bet, especially, since there will never be a winning payout to British Columbia, only the risk and the potential loss of a priceless region of Canada.
7308. This Project is supposedly in the national interest. In reality, this has become the national economic interest. What about the national social interest or national environmental interest or national cultural interest?
7309. Social interest, is there no national social benefit to maintaining a healthy urban system that includes small vibrant communities?
7310. Canada needs a diversity of small communities and the fishing communities of Coastal B.C. are a necessary and important part of our social fabric, especially since these coastal communities have been in existence since before the pyramids were built and before Western thought of any kind emerged.
7311. I don’t need to talk more about a national environmental interest. Coastal B.C. and, in particular, Haida Gwaii and Gwaii Haanas are recognized as national treasures. The same goes for this region as a cultural treasure. So why don’t we hear that the pipeline is against the national cultural interest?
7312. In the media you hear economic primacy and propaganda, those were old pipelines, this is a new pipeline; that was old technology, this is new technology; promises made, promises broken.
7313. Accidents happen all the time. It is not worth the risk for Haida Gwaii. It is not worth the risk for Canada. It is not worth the risk for British Columbia. The proposed pipeline is not for the general advantage of Canada.
7314. Thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7315. THE CHAIRPERSON: Good afternoon, Ms. Olson. Please proceed
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux with your oral statement when you’re ready.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. LEA OLSON:
7316. MS. LEA OLSON: Greetings and thank you and welcome -- to giving me the opportunity to talk.
7317. I come from a very old non-Native family. My family came to the colonies in 1640. We have lived and worked to make this country what this country is. We have fought in every -- and produced in every place possible.
7318. From the War of 1812, our farm got burned down for holding the Canadian -- we had the provisions, ammunitions and the store goods in the Town of Bath, Ontario, and we -- this country and this land is very, very important to me and it really bothers me when our elected officials trash talk us and it’s not right.
7319. I can tell you I’m a number. I have a number which we relate to. I am the second child of a second child of a first child of a fifth child of a sixth child in North America. My cousin has just retired from the Navy. My nephew is joining the Navy. So it’s when we oppose this pipeline, oppose the tankers coming here, it’s not because we’re a part of some gobbledygoop, it’s because we believe in it. We believe it is so wrong.
7320. I commercially fished these waters. I have crossed the Hecate Straits. When the Canadian weather people were on strike, there was no weather. It was 1979. The weather people were on strike. We couldn’t get our weather. We had to get back to Rupert because it was the end of the closure. We lost a boat. The boat went down. We never -- no one’s ever gone to look for that boat. It’s still sitting in the Hecate Straits.
7321. All of these boat accidents -- the Hecate Straits can be a beautiful night and it can come up in a storm in three hours and it can be beautiful again in three hours. We don’t know what’s in the bottom of these straits. We don’t know what’s down there. I’ve fished it by oil light in the complete fog and, all of a sudden, I have a cruise ship on me. I have to cut my line, my net goes, the cruise ship goes by, I go find my net. We don’t know the fog, when everything’s out there.
7322. Now, we’re going to have oil tankers. We’re going to have the net fleet -- the B.C. ferries can’t even come into this inlet if it’s blowing, the ship will hit the ground coming over. We have oil tankers in there and we’re going to have LNG
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux tankers in there, and we’ve got fishing gear, we’ve got lines. We don’t know what’s in the bottom of that Hecate Strait. It moves. It’s scary. And it really, really, really bothers me, and all I can see is mass confusion, mass chaos.
7323. My one son is an advanced life paramedic. He is now learning to be in the helicopters and the planes. We don’t have enough people. We’ve got our hospitals. We had the fire in Burns Lake. The paramedics couldn’t work -- couldn’t -- there wasn’t enough beds and mattresses, blankets and things.
7324. If we have a disaster we’re not going to be losing just that disaster -- disasters don’t come one year, five years, they come in little clumps. When the wind blows here, it’s not just it’s blowing and it’s gone, it comes in a series. And I just see total chaos.
7325. And this is just -- no, it’s like as a mother, I see my child going up to the stove, the electric stove, and it’s a hot burner and I see him reaching for it, I grab his hand and I go “no”, my heart shakes, you know? No, this is not right. We do not know.
7326. And we shouldn’t be giving our resources away. I have no say about oil sands if it’s -- I know it’s wrong but I think we have to work. Industry has done good for me and my family. But this is so wrong. It is mass chaos out there. We’re not going to be able to afford to pay for all the trauma that’s going to come. This is just total wrong.
7327. And I want to thank my neighbours and I want to thank -- I will not read it because it’s been read, but I want to thank the Collison family for allowing me the right to read Lewis Collison’s story, how we are all entwined here, and this is so, so important.
7328. So thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7329. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Welcome, Ms. Mountifield. Would you like to present to us, please.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS ANNE MOUNTIFIELD:
7330. MS. ANNE MOUNTIFIELD: Thank you.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7331. Chiefs, Elders, Ladies of High Esteem, good, good friends and neighbours, I am feeling a bit nervous about being here today because this is such an important occasion.
7332. Thank you to the Joint Review Panel for providing me with the opportunity to speak to you this afternoon. I appreciate that.
7333. My name is Anne Mountifield. I’ve been privileged to live here since 1973. My husband and I have raised two daughters. One of my daughters was born here. My granddaughter is of this culture and of these islands and I feel that there is a good deal that requires protection and care and nurture and it worries me that all the things all of us collectively hold dear is in jeopardy. We are in danger of having our lives, our environment, these islands destroyed.
7334. Where do I fit in the community? Well, I worked here, I'm retired here, Wednesdays, I fold newspaper at our local newspaper.
7335. And in the fall, I get to count coho and pink salmon returning to the Tlell. And I would like to give you about a minute of what it's like to count fish. I'm not on the Tlell, thank God, it's darn cold out there. But I do count from a 24-hour video tape.
7336. And so, for me the anxiety of the year starts waiting to see the first fish come through the fish fence on the Tlell. And by and large, the first fish I see are very healthy, vigorous, busy pinks. And they are making their way up through the fish fence up the Tlell because they're heading for the spawning ground.
7337. And there is a really breathless pause for me waiting for the first coho. In the meantime, what I'm also seeing are the animals that live in the Tlell. I have seen beaver busily working their way downstream and back upstream. I have seen otter flirt with the cameras. I have seen families of otter up and down the Tlell. Not once, but fives times in an hour span.
7338. And I have seen muskrat. Muskrat are the funniest creature you could ever see under water because their fur does not lie sleek to them, their fur is spiky like a little kid who's just gotten up from a deep sleep. And as the otters -- I'm sorry -- as the muskrat zips past the camera lens, little bubbles of air are popping off its fur. And it is just desperate to get from one side to the other. I've seen these.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 7339. I have seen sculpins of various sizes and colours come in and out with the tides. And once, I was very, very fortunate to see a cloud of crustacea come up the Tlell on the tide. These are crustecea that grey whales feed on, that our fish feed on, that our wild birds feed on. And I was privileged to see that. So that's a day counting fish.
7340. But the prime -- the prime event is that first coho salmon. And I have to describe to you the coho, which is large and solid and bright silver. And it knows where it is going and it is so determined to get there that nothing stops it, nothing.
7341. The females are gorgeous. The males are handsome. And, every once in a while, there's a jack coho; this is an immature coho, which comes up.
7342. And for me, the fun part is that the coho is always sneaking up through the fence fish on the far side of a gorgeous coho lady because he is going to get his time with her and not that big male that just went ahead of them. So this is what I see when I count fish.
7343. What -- the point of this is that when there is an oil spill, the oil will not disperse. It will float on the waters of the Hecate Strait and it will float inevitably towards Haida Gwaii. And it will enter the freshwater creeks and rivers on our east coast, from Rose Spit to Cape St. James. It will enter into the estuaries where the birds breed and where they live, where intertidal species live. And I fear that when this oil spill happens, that the intensity and the interest that I have in counting fish will be no more. That will be gone because those fish will be destroyed.
7344. And it doesn't matter during what part of their cycle, either returning home to spawn or going out to sea to grow, it doesn't matter when the oil spill happens, it matters that that cycle will be destroyed.
7345. It matters to me that my friends and neighbours will no longer be able to harvest the seaweed and the roe on kelp, k'aaw, they will no longer be able to harvest octopus, fresh. There may be damage to the herring runs, which have just started to recover.
7346. The damage -- the potential damage to our environment is inconceivable. We have the ability to prevent that. We have the option to prevent that.
7347. In addition to my concern for the environment is the potential damage I see to businesses, which are young entrepreneurs on these islands, have struggled
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux hard to set up and to make practical and to make possible.
7348. Their businesses depend on the bounty of the waters around us. Their businesses depend on people from away coming to visit us, to see what it is we have to offer. Those businesses are in jeopardy, and it will be their loss.
7349. They already do not have logs to fall and fish to gather because those two prime industries have been devastated through economic downturns.
7350. It troubles me that the presence of oil tankers jeopardizes this entire living environment for the sake of a limited, a very limited, non-renewable resource.
7351. This is what we're -- this is what is planned. Something which is non- renewable is being pulled from the earth and is being sent somewhere else for someone else to use to bring back to us in whatever form that comes.
7352. I don't know -- I don't know how much more I can say. I hope that I have given you some sense of the passion for which I hold these islands that I live on, that I have the privilege of living here.
7353. In closing, please, please consider everything that you have heard from everyone here through your months spent on the islands. Please give them the weight of the people who have spoken to you.
7354. And please, please, say no. You have the power to do that. I wish I could convince you that you that you have the moral obligation to do that.
7355. Thank you very much.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7356. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Mr. Olsen, thank you for joining us today. Please proceed.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. ROBERT OLSEN:
7357. MR. ROBERT OLSEN: Okay. Can you hear me? Chiefs, Elders, ladies of high esteem, all my good friends, neighbours out there, Review Panel, welcome here to Haida Gwaii.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 7358. I was going to sing you a song. That was going to be my contribution because -- but I see I can't do that so I'm going to have to make this one up a little bit as I go along here.
7359. My name is Robert Olsen. I was born here on the British Columbia coast. From -- oh let me see, I have Norwegian relatives in Astoria, I have some in Ketchikan, I have them in Prince Rupert, all up and down this coast.
7360. At the beginning of the century, I guess, most of my family came over here to set up a fishing industry, to build boats and to catch fish. A few generations later, I find myself a fisherman and a carpenter. And my retiring job, I was harbour manager of the Queen Charlotte Harbour.
7361. We took a lot of oil spill response courses when I worked for the harbour. We constantly upgraded all the different things you had to know as a harbour manager.
7362. And I'm -- the first course that I took, a team was sent up from Vancouver to explain to us exactly what we could do under what weather conditions and things. The safety of the people on the oil spill clean up was number one. And I was told then that a successful clean up is 25 percent of the oil spill.
7363. Later, more courses came up. Now, we have Berard Clean (ph) here and they sent people up and they’re telling the students at the course that a successful oil spill is 15 percent.
7364. Now, we had a little spill here a few years ago at Marie Lake. A little fuel truck tipped over in the ditch. About half of it went out, you know, it’s like nothing. Very, very, very small amount, not half a million barrels of it or anything, just a small amount.
7365. And all the resources on these islands were used, everything in Masset, everything the Coast Guard had, everything that Berard Clean had. They took their semi-trailer truck up there and started bringing equipment out. And that spill was pretty well contained; I mean damage was done but I would say that was successfully completed.
7366. But that tiny little bit, a teacup full, thrown into Marie Lake and we used all of our resources up on just that one little spill. It’s not even imaginable with one of those extra-large tankers spilled out there in Hecate Straits. There’s nothing we
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux could do, absolutely nothing. We could go out there and it’s pissing into the wind, as the old fishermen would say, about all the good it would do us because it would come back and slap us there.
7367. And there will be an oil spill. All our instructors told us that, that eventually there will be an oil spill`; no ifs, ands or anything like that. Eventually, it is going to happen so it’s absolutely not a matter of if but it’s a matter of when.
7368. And I guess I wanted to tell you about my song a little bit here because -- I’ll give you one of the verses here:
“Douglas Channel isn’t very wide. Gas and oil tankers collide. Then we’ll hear a very big boom and smoke so dense it blocks out the moon.” (As read)
7369. Now, we had a liquid natural gas plant was planned for Grassy Point just out of Prince Rupert there. This was, oh, 20-some odd years ago, and the fishermen and everybody got together and we actually talked them out of not doing that.
7370. One of the things that came up is if one of those LNG tankers went up, it would actually take out Prince Rupert and Port Simpson. It would just obliterate them. The fire would be so huge, the explosion, and it would form a fire storm and a mushroom cloud like a nuclear bomb had gone off or something.
7371. Now, imagine that bumping into an extra-large oil tanker and setting that on fire. We’d see it from here. Kitimat’s quite a ways away but we’d actually see it from here, and we’d certainly hear the -- I mean see the smoke.
7372. And the Douglas Channel and all the different narrow twisted channels, they’re getting more and more and more cluttered with all different kinds of -- there’s going to be ore tankers going out of there. There’s all the boats -- the oil -- the coal tankers from Ridley Island. The traffic, it’s getting to be more and more and more traffic in these areas here.
7373. There’s going to be accidents. Hopefully, it’s not going to be oil because we’re hoping that there won’t be any oil tankers.
7374. Thank you.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux --- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7375. THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, to each of you, for taking the time to prepare and come and present your oral statements to us.
--- (A short pause/Courte pause)
7376. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Okay, are we ready to go?
7377. I’m looking at you; are you ready to go? Okay.
7378. So we’ll start off with Mr. O’Neail over there. I wanted to put you on the hot seat right now.
7379. Okay, Mr. O’Neail can you please share your views with the Panel?
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MR. SEAN O’NEAIL:
7380. MR. SEAN O’NEAIL: Chiefs, Elders, Esteemed Ladies, friends, neighbours, friends I haven’t met yet.
7381. We moved to the islands here about three years ago. Before we came here, we travelled Canada. We had a camper on the back of the truck and we travelled the country, every province, two out of three territories. We spent two years just driving the roads of Canada, mostly back roads, been to every coast, the Artic, the Atlantic, the Pacific, and we were looking for a place to call home.
7382. In our travels, we -- now, every part of Canada has its glorious features but, when we came here, there was something special. The people were proud. The land is -- it’s vibrant, it’s alive here and in a way that you don’t find in many, many parts of Canada. It is special.
7383. And we saw the clear-cuts but the land is healing. I mean, the Haida stood up and they stopped it and the land is healing. The forest is coming back.
7384. There is a sense of security here that you know okay, the economy -- the world economy is doing what it’s doing. It could be crumbling, it could be falling apart. I know that the world leaders are fighting to maintain some kind of a status quo but we don’t know if that’s going to work or not, we just know that there are major changes in store.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7385. And living here, you have such a sense of security that you don’t need that. I mean, it’s nice, it’s nice having all the things that money can buy but it’s not necessary. This place sustains life and it has for tens of thousands of years.
7386. And that’s something that you see in the people. There are people here they don’t have much but they’re not stressed about the future. They know that they can survive. They know their children can survive and survive well, and that is definitely something that money cannot buy and economy cannot replace that. That’s a treasure that should be enshrined and protected and expanded on.
7387. So the idea of putting that to any kind of a risk is just insanity. It’s going in the wrong direction.
7388. No matter what its cause, you know, like, whether it’s human caused or whether it’s natural causes, the climate change is real and what every respected science finding has proven is that the effects of climate change are with us for decades.
7389. The ocean will continue to warm. The ecosystem will be under stress for decades and the best thing we can do -- we don't know how to fix these things. So the best we can do is keep them pristine, allow the ecosystem to try and maintain a balance through this stressful time.
7390. But instead, what this proposal would mean is that every ship coming in, whether it’s -- even in the best-case scenario, no accidents, the tugboats work, everything works, but these ships do not come here empty. They come carrying water ballast from other parts of the world and the volume of that ballast is enormous.
7391. One ship can carry 100,000 cubic metres of water ballast. They suck it aboard the ship in a harbour in Asia, and they use that ballast so that they can cross the ocean to here, where they pump it out into ours -- our waters. Anyone who has travelled to other parts of the world knows that you can’t even put an ice cube in your drink because we’re not -- our own immune systems just aren’t capable of dealing with the pathogens and new organisms found in water from other parts of the world.
7392. So the idea of transporting that volume of water into an ecosystem that’s already stressed is just nonsense. It can’t be allowed to happen. And this is a best- case scenario. This isn’t even with an accident. This is just a normal operation of tankers.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7393. And some of the mitigating abilities of the tankers to try and clean their water on the way across the ocean, even that is only considered, at best, 95 percent effective. They are introducing pathogens and invasive species to the waters here that are already having trouble maintaining their balance, and it’s that balance that sustains life here.
7394. Now, I haven’t measured this, but I would be surprised if the volume of this room exceeds 100,000 cubic metres. The amount of water we’re talking about is immense, and it is enough to shift the balance of destroying an ecosystem or keeping it weak. I mean, the zebra mussels back east, no one knows how to deal with them. They were introduced with bilge water.
7395. We’ve seen -- well, some of you are from Ontario -- Dutch Elm disease was just brought in as part of a shipping crate, and all the elm trees in Ontario were gone. Things can happen that are not foreseen, but they can’t be fixed, and that’s with everything working out well.
7396. Now, the empty tankers come in; they fill up with oil; then they’re heading out. Those tankers are essentially weapons of mass destruction. There isn’t somebody pushing the button, but they are capable of causing mass destruction.
7397. And they’ve had tankers, sailing off the coast of Somalia, hijacked by people with hand weapons and motor boats. Around here, any organized terrorist group could accomplish the same thing. And I mean what better terrorist attack than scuttling a super tanker in food producing waters? How better to attack a country? So there’s no way of making sure this doesn’t happen. If it does happen, there’s no way of stopping it, and so all you can do is keep those weapons out of our waters. You take away the ability for it to happen.
7398. When we came here, my wife and I came here and were blown away by the power of this place. We don’t even throw our cigarette butts out the window. It just seems wrong. Quite frankly, it feels like if we did, some tree branch would fall and hit us in the head later on. But it’s that feeling of connectedness.
7399. Our son -- our 21-year-old son came to visit us, and he was so blown away that he moved here. And to our absolute honour, and I mean we’re so thrilled -- our son was adopted into the Haida Nation. And for us, that gave us not just the pride, but also the security of knowing that his future is secure. This place has everything that he needs, and it has the people that can teach him how to live. So his future is
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux assured.
7400. This proposal is threatening that very future. It’s like the Cold War which ended with Glasnost and the world was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. The button’s not going to be pushed. It’s not going to happen. When tankers start sailing these waters, the Cold War returns to us.
7401. Our world is under threat, and it doesn’t even take somebody pushing a button. Human error can do it. A natural force can do it. A terrorist attack can do it. And these are all easily imaginable scenarios. So we would be living the rest of our lives under a constant feeling of stress and anxiety and dread. Now, if the Cold War was a blight upon humanity, this cannot be allowed to happen to us either.
7402. And lastly, I can only hope that you three are gaining enormous strength from these talks, because from our point of view, we don’t know. It feels like an exercise in futility. We know that the government is not listening to us. We know the government is not listening to science that it doesn’t want to hear. Yet you three have been listening to us for a year now.
7403. The strength that you have to take away from this, you have to put your connections, your very careers on the line because you know the message, and somebody has to make the government get the message, and that’s your job. We’ve done ours. This is all we can do as law-abiding citizens, and we’re doing all we can. And I can only hope that you are gaining strength and the strength to go there, back to Ottawa, and make this project end.
7404. Thank you very much.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7405. MEMBER BATEMAN: Ms. Brown, thank you for coming this afternoon to speak to us. Please proceed.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. SUE BROWN:
7406. MS. SUE BROWN: Good Chief, ladies held in high esteem, and my good friends. I thank you for sitting in front of me and for the opportunity to speak.
7407. I can tell you what I’m not. I’m not a politician. I’m not a scientist. I’m not a radical. I’m a mother. And what is a mother? Mother is defined as a person in
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux whom life receives a form suitable for living in this world. From this understanding of mother we receive such concepts as Mother Earth.
7408. This earth, the one that we all live on, which gives us everything we need to sustain our lives, and just like our mothers, she gives us life. There was a time when Mother Earth could produce all we needed to sustain us; a time when all the air and the water was clean; a time when we only took what we needed. That time is gone. Our earth is dying. It’s dying from pollution. How did we get here?
7409. Since we, mankind, figured out the ability to generate fire, to forge metal, to generate machinery from building fossil fuels -- and we all know it; the scientists know it; the politicians know it; the radicals know it -- they’ve been telling all of this since the industrial age. And at this time, the beginnings of environmental awareness became. And every day and every year since, it has been a world issue.
7410. Our politicians debate over it; our scientists study it; our education institutes teach it; our universities have degrees in it; our radicals publish it; our entertainers write stories about it, and even our politicians make movies about it, with all the same message.
7411. Our earth is dying from pollution. There is literally pollution in every part of our earth. There is so much literature on pollution it would take me, as a mother, a lifetime to read it. And I know by the end of a busy day most mothers, including myself, seem to have just enough time to read a bedtime story to their children.
7412. Our child asks us: “Why are you coming here?” and I say to her: “Our world is a mess.” The politicians, the scientists, the radicals and the mothers know it. But at one -- when it comes to pollution, mothers have taught us since we could talk and walk not to pollute.
7413. Our teachers have been teaching our children since kindergarten not to pollute. In our school, our textbooks are full of this, on the damages and the dangers of pollution to our world and our earth. Our universities and scientists have taught us, if we continue to pollute, we will destroy our earth, our Mother Earth.
7414. So why is it okay for our country's leaders, our government, the people who are supposed to protect and take care of us, allow to legislate laws that allow corporations, companies and individuals to pollute our air, our land and our water?
7415. The answer is for economy, for world economy, for local economy, for
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux jobs. I don’t buy that. We are the only creatures on earth that take more than what we need. We are the only creatures on earth that desire wealth. Mother Earth has given us all we need to sustain ourselves: sunshine, wind and water. The scientists know this, the radicals know this, the mothers know this and even the politicians know this.
7416. So what I have to say about the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project is: Put a plug in it. Put a plug in it, stop it, just like I would tell my daughter if she made a mess and spilled her milk: Put a plug in it, get some fresh water, a little bit of soap and let's clean it up.
7417. Our Mother Earth will heal, we know this. The scientists have told us this, the radicals have told us this, the politicians have told us this and our children believe in this. Mother Earth will heal and Father Time will help her.
7418. Our economy and our country can be built so that our children can be proud of it. We have the knowledge, the skill; the universities, the teachers, the radicals and even the politicians know that we have the technology and the means to stop using fossil fuels.
7419. Why do we not build a country that our children can be proud of? Why do we not create jobs that will use what Mother Earth has given us that we can be proud of? That we know that maybe it'll take 800 years to rebuild our country, but we will have clean air, clean water and clean earth?
7420. I came here when I was five years old. My father was a mechanic, I was born in Alberta; I'm not proud right now to say that. But I am proud of myself for making the choice to come here and live here. I am a proud Canadian. I am proud of Haida Gwaii. I am proud of my daughter. I am proud of my life.
7421. All I want our government to do and for you to say to them is: Put a plug in it, stop it. Our future is our children, our grandchildren, our grandchildren's children. Our earth is not going to be sustained if we continue with this. It's not just this pipeline, it's all pipelines.
7422. I have a daughter that’s going to be turning 16 at the end of this month and do you know what she wants? A driver's licence. And I have no option to give her another vehicle beside one that is run with gasoline; that breaks my heart. If I had the option of an electric car, I would buy it for her.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 7423. We have this technology, it's out there. The scientists, the engineers, everyone knows -- everyone in this room knows that we have the technology to have clean air, clean water and clean land.
7424. I'm not a scientist, I'm not a radical, I am a mother and I do not usually speak out in public, but I feel so strongly to say: Please, stop this. Stop this for my daughter who wants to come back here and live on Haida Gwaii and be a proud Canadian.
7425. Thank you.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7426. THE CHAIRPERSON: I understand that the rest of the oral statement presentations will be made by Chiefs of the Haida Nation so I just thought at this point I would do just a recap of the process and where we're at, to make sure that we're -- you're not -- well, I apologize because I was told you were.
7427. MS. APRIL CHURCHILL: I'm an elected vice-president of the Haida Nation, but I am not a Chief, don’t get me in trouble with people.
--- (Laughter/Rires)
7428. THE CHAIRPERSON: I imagine I've just gotten myself in trouble. So, please, accept my apologies and also to the Chiefs.
7429. So, Ms. Churchill, why don’t you proceed with your oral statement?
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR MS. APRIL CHURCHILL:
7430. MS. APRIL CHURCHILL: I have to push this button -- oh no, I'm talking. Do I have to push a button? Okay, start timing me now.
7431. Howa’a. Chiefs, Women of High Esteem, and Joint Review Panel, I am April Churchill and a Haida.
7432. Today, I speak on behalf of clean water and food and healthy environment and for the wellbeing of all, both for today and into the future; consequently, against this proposed project. Please bear with me as I'm going to read this without prose or pause because 10 minutes is a short time.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7433. Many have opted out of this process because the government, through media and legislative changes, has affirmed that they intend to approve this project. I honour and thank everyone who participated and look forward to working together as we continue in defence of our precious homelands and the earth. To be sure we have only just begun.
7434. The work that Indigenous Nations, environmentalists, communities, industries, the province of B.C. and even federal agencies have done to move from the environmental approach of protecting wilderness to the exclusion of development and human use has resulted in today's environmental approach of balanced, sustainable and respectful development and use of lands, waters and resources.
7435. Joe Oliver's purposeful misrepresentation of First Nations as feeble- minded people that foreign radical environmentalist are leading around is designed to marginalized the accurate information that is being provided to this Panel. This stereotype has no place during consideration of the information and evidence we have provided.
7436. This Panel is supposed to consider effects on title and rights which we know is not within its legal authority. However, this Panel may attempt this and Enbridge's provided information needs correction.
7437. Of the 24 anonymous First Nations that Enbridge says signed on to the Project, only two of those will be affected by the pipeline; the others have little economic opportunity and grave government-created poverty issues. I cannot judge them. The fact is at least 130 First Nations extending from the Arctic to the U.S. border are united against this project.
7438. At the Enbridge AGM, which I attended, the shareholders were told by management that support from Aboriginal groups is desired, but not legally required, except for crossing Indian reserves. This is so far from the truth, it is not funny. As well, they reported Aboriginal rights remain subject to justifiable infringement by the Crown as long as appropriate consultation and, if necessary, accommodation has taken place. This simplistic information is intended to calm the shareholders into believing that they can knowingly infringe on Aboriginal rights and title with little liability.
7439. The Yinka Dene Freedom Train participants told the shareholders what the true liabilities are so there is absolutely no excuse when they start whining about
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux having to deal with the liabilities.
7440. My concerns about this project include Canada doesn’t have a national energy plan which Fran Fowler and others have described is needed. A plan needs to be done before consideration of this project, which will negatively affect the very face of the Haida nation, other First Nations, B.C. and the environment.
7441. Through financial and political bullying, the Proponents are attempting to take away the rights of First Nations and the rights of B.C. and other provinces, including the attempt by Alberta and the oil corporations to force tar sand needed nuclear plants onto Saskatchewan First Nations’ territories because Alberta doesn’t want them in their province.
7442. My concerns are not unfounded. Your concerns are not unfounded. The world provides too many examples of the realties. The proposed project jeopardizes health and food and safety and security through the poisons from this project’s inevitable oil disbursement and condensates spills into our food chain and air.
7443. We can anticipate the consequences to be the same health issues, including increased cancer rates and deaths that First Nations near the tar sands and pipeline spills are experiencing; the same destruction of human reproduction capability that is occurring in First Nations located near Sarnia; the same increased social issues and mental illness, including suicides that follow oil spills; excessive poisonous chemicals in our bodies from eating foods that have ingested these poisons; the same loss of clean water as those living in contaminated areas.
7444. We can expect the same negative environmental consequences of oil spills experienced around the world which includes the death of thousands of birds, mammals, fish amphibians and sea life specifies, not to mention the death of the plankton algae vegetation and krill which are not measured in the death counts. We can expect deformation of sea life as are found today in the Gulf of Mexico, photo toxin melting of herring eggs and the collapse of herring fisheries that the San Francisco Bay experienced.
7445. Olds dirty pipes being left on site to rot and leak as being done at the Kalamazoo when the new pipe was put in and, worse, tankers left on the bottom of the seabed, like the Queen of the North.
7446. The American coast states, particularly Washington and Alaska and the countries that share migratory birds and fish have nothing to gain from this project,
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux but have a great deal to lose.
7447. The Government of Canada is wrong. We do not have the right to bully other countries around and expect them to take on these kinds of liabilities and they have nothing to gain. Booms don’t work efficiently in turbulent water, as seen in other response areas. Studies show that it is impossible to clean up more than 20 percent of the ocean oil spilled in optimum weather. Bitumen sinks to the seabed where insufficient -- I’m going to skip all this because it -- I’m going to skip the economic side, except to tell you to read Jeff Ruben’s new book about what this boom and bust does, and I’ll skip jobs and just suggest that you take a look at Naomi Klein’s book, Shock Doctrine in terms of how they will replace the jobs that they destroy.
7448. We’ve talked about Chinese ownership of the tar sands in Enbridge and given the deaths that are going on in Syria because of a Chinese and Russian vote, we have a lot to consider about how we will be treated in this country.
7449. Canada is being denied information because the media is complicit, because they have -- they survive on corporate advertisement. The Sun News reported that under speculation that Aboriginal peoples’ opposition is just a ploy to get more money out of the deal. This Panel has been told many times that no amount of money is acceptable.
7450. I’m concerned about the Canadian government’s actions. How did a non- existing company get transportation approval on, according to Enbridge, a route that does not exist in their project? Why did the feds approve the transportation route over the jointly managed Bowie Seamount in Gwaii Haanas conservation area without participation with the Haida?
7451. Is the government getting ready to be heavy-handed with their identified adversarial, radical, domestic terrorists in the interest of national security? Please watch what goes on. We need people watching this because we have lived through this same kind of thing since forever. Aboriginal people know this technique.
7452. Did Enbridge interfere in national policy by participating in the gutting of the fisheries, environmental laws and regulatory agencies?
7453. I thank the elected opposition that is right now staying up all night to reveal how the power disease can make a majority government’s judgment go off the deep end. Canadians aren’t dumb. When they find the accurate information, they
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux will act appropriately because bad things do happen when good people do nothing. Please do something.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7454. THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you to each of you for being here to present your oral statements today.
7455. This seems like a good time to take a break, so let’s take a break for 15 minutes and come back. Thank you.
--- Upon recessing at 3:09 p.m./L’audience est suspendue à 15h09 --- Upon resuming at 3:25 p.m./L’audience est reprise à 15h25
7456. THE CHAIRPERSON: If we could get ready to get under way again? Thank you.
7457. While people are settling in, we have some people who registered to speak who we haven’t seen yet, and I just wonder if you are in the room, if you would go and see our staff. Mr. Mayr, Ms. Pearson, Mr. Collison, Mr. Wier, Ms. Lee, Ms. Vigneault and -- I’m sorry I don’t know, but it’s a Mr. or a Ms. Vigneault as well, Taimen Vigneault. If any of you are here, if you could go and see our staff, that would be great.
7458. And with that, we’re ready for the next panel.
--- (A short pause/Courte pause)
7459. THE CHAIRPERSON: Good afternoon, Chiefs. Just as we’re beginning, I just wanted to review where we’re at in the process of our hearings. As you well know, because we’ve been seeing each other as we’ve gone along the various processes, we’ve had two sets of community hearings. The first set was to hear the oral evidence and then the second set, which is ongoing now, is to hear the oral statements.
7460. Oral statements were designed to hear the views and knowledge from registered participants who are not participating in the Joint Review Process as intervenors.
7461. The Haida Nation, as a registered intervenor, has presented oral evidence,
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux traditional Aboriginal knowledge to the Panel during the first round of the community hearings, and indeed in this very room.
7462. In addition to that, the Haida Nation has the ongoing opportunity to participate as a registered intervenor, including the questioning and the final argument phases of the process.
7463. The point in the process that we're at today is to hear individual perspectives about the proposed project up to a maximum of 10 minutes. So I just wanted to have that additional clarification before we began to listen to the Chiefs.
7464. And Chief, I'm really sorry, my eyes I think need to be adjusted, I can't read your name tag. It starts with a G. Could you allow -- could you tell me your name so I can pronounce it for you properly, I'll try.
7465. CHIEF LONNIE YOUNG: Gaahlay.
7466. THE CHAIRPERSON: Chief Gaahlay, would you please proceed with your oral statement. Thank you.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR CHIEF LONNIE YOUNG:
7467. CHIEF LONNIE YOUNG: (Speaking in native language).
7468. I speak in opposition to the Northern Gateway proposal because of the adverse effect it would have on Haida Gwaii and surrounding waters.
7469. As a hereditary leader of the Kaay 'Llnagaay people, I uphold the constitution of the Haida Nation and the governance of the Council of the Haida Nation.
7470. If you can put up the other map, please?
7471. THE CHAIRPERSON: Our IT person is running over to …
7472. CHIEF LONNIE YOUNG: As you can see by this map, the proposed pipeline is going to run through many different Nations that have not signed treaties or agreements with Canada yet. So therefore, to put a pipeline through these territories without a treaty or anything is illegal according to the Canadian Constitution, Section 35.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7473. Further to that, if it did go through, you're going through so many headwaters of so many of the main rivers in B.C. that supply fish for all of Canada and the world. In order to -- and to put all that in jeopardy because of a few shareholders wanting more money, it doesn't make sense.
7474. According to what we've here heard, some of the shareholders of Enbridge have questioned their putting this project through. It is only one of many that Enbridge has got on the burners right now. And it's not one that is meeting with the approval of all their shareholders. So my question is: Why are they trying to push it through?
7475. And it doesn't do that much for Canada. You're exporting jobs.
7476. When I spoke to Mr. Daniels a couple years ago, I asked him the same question: Why are you exporting jobs out of Canada? What good is that for Canadian economy?
7477. And he didn't have an answer for me then and I don't think he will now because he's going to be the outgoing CEO. There will be somebody else in place. So then, we'll have to do that fight all over again.
7478. In closing, I reiterate that I am against the pipeline project and the tankers that will follow. Thank you.
--- Applause/Applaudissements
7479. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Good afternoon Mr. Collison. Chief Collison, please, go ahead and share your views on the Project.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR CHIEF FRANK COLLISON:
7480. CHIEF FRANK COLLISON: Thank you very much.
7481. Madam Chair, Members of the Panel, good people of Haida Gwaii.
7482. I can reiterate the position taken by many of the presenters in opposing the pipeline and the tanker traffic for all the reasons that have been stated over the last several days and several months, I would think, because of the several hearings that have been scheduled.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7483. I support them because of the passion that people have for this island and for their homeland and it's something that has been deeply embedded in the culture of the Haida Nation over the years: That our archaeological evidence supports life on these islands for many hundreds and possibly thousands of years.
7484. And when you build a culture over those periods of time, the spirits of our ancestors continue to guide us in how we care for and steward this land that has been given to us.
7485. So we are not about to just walk away and go and find somewhere else because we have nowhere else to go. All we have are these islands that we live on.
7486. So the passion that has been expressed over these years has been done in a very difficult and, I would think, an emotionally draining system or draining way; that most of us have thought long and hard about what we should say.
7487. We have now been in this position before where we've had to think so hard about what we have to say about our position on this particular project and it certainly has been emotionally draining for myself, even if -- when I do speak several times in public.
7488. So those people that have come forward and said what they have to say has been the right things to say. They've said it from their hearts and because of their attachment to these islands and their desire to keep it as it is.
7489. When you think about the possibility of tanker traffic that, maybe, on these large ships that could be almost a quarter of a mile long. And we were looking at the length of this floor, and it's about 100 feet, a very large crude carrier would be 200 feet.
7490. So just imagine this hall being twice as wide and that would be the width of one carrier. Then, you go down a quarter of mile that way or that way and you get the idea of the length of a ship that would be plying these waters.
7491. And to think that something like that would not be subject to human error is very erroneous. Somewhere along the line, the two uncontrollable forces that we live with on these islands are the winds and the tides and somewhere in the weather patterns over the years, it will surely put those ships up on the rocks. And there is no plan in place to do anything about it.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7492. There's nothing to say that they can clean up that mess. The tides and the winds are just too strong.
7493. I came across the Right Sound where the tankers cross over, where there are several different tidal patterns. And I was coming across on the ferry, down at the bottom end of Right Sound and the wind was blowing out of Douglas Channel and it hit the ferry and the ferry was on about a 10-degree angle, all the way up until it got into Grenville Channel.
7494. And that’s just a small example of the power of the wind. And if you couple that with the power of the tide, you have no control over it. There is no control that is in place to do anything about that.
7495. You are dealing with tankers that I suspect are single screw and they only have power in the back end of it. And a quarter mile down the end, there's the end of the ship. And you're trying to move that with a tugboat and I don't think it's possible. I do not think it is possible.
7496. So those are some of my concerns and I would just continue to support the positions that have been taken so passionately by our people and our friends who live on these islands, to say no to this project. The spiritual connection here is just too strong; we can never let it go.
7497. Haawa.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7498. MEMBER BATEMAN: Chief Wilson, thank you for choosing to attend today. Please present your oral statement.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR CHIEF RONALD WILSON:
7499. CHIEF RONALD WILSON: (Speaking in native language).
7500. I am Gitkinjuuwaas of the St'awaas Xaaydagaay. My mandate is to protect this land. We are known in the white vernacular as “Chiefs”, we have our own word, but Chief will do for today. But as Chief of the St'awaas Xaaydagaay, I say no to your project. I cannot allow this; I have been mandated to protect this place and I can’t walk away from that.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7501. I’m a hereditary leader. I am a former Justice of the Peace. I am an artist. The artist in me bids me to share with you a poem I have written. I call it Haida Gwaii.
“Such a beautiful place to be calling my home. None other like it. The land, mine. The sea is mine; mine to share with you.”
7502. The artist in me has always appreciated the beauty of this place. I am also chinaay, I have two grandsons, two beautiful grandsons who have not, as yet, seen the beaches of Haida Gwaii that I grew up on. I grew up on that beach out there.
7503. I love the statement that I found that says, I -- that everybody uses -- that says, “I am what I eat”. The clam that is part of me says no; the octopus that I have eaten says no. The halibut that is part of me says no to your project. Everything that I eat from the sea bids me, say no to your dangerous project that can and will destroy the sea life here. If you have not been on our beaches, you cannot appreciate it.
7504. When I was a child I spent endless hours down there. I would watch as the tide went out and develop little tide pools. And I would watch the tiny little minnows and the tiny little bullheads, and they were eating smaller things, and as I got closer I could see these tiny little bugs in the sand. All these things depend on clean water. You’re threatening that. That’s not good enough.
7505. All these foods that we get from the ocean, the halibut, the salmon, the clams, the mussels, the list goes on and on, and just makes me hungry thinking about it, but there is not a time here on Haida Gwaii when there is not something to go down on the beach to gather. You threaten that. I cannot allow that.
7506. I ask you to see commonsense and consider that there is enough food out there to feed a lot of people in the world. You threaten that. I cannot allow that. My mandate says stop you, whatever way.
7507. You people scare the hell out of me. You have a power to say a word that could destroy an entire lifestyle; I hope you understand that. I hope you understand that I cannot allow that. The foods that we are, again, bid me to stop you.
7508. We are the Haida and we say no to your project.
7509. Haawa.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7510. THE CHAIRPERSON: Chief, I might need a lesson in pronunciation; this is a great learning opportunity for me. Chief Nang Jingwas?
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR CHIEF RUSS JONES:
7511. CHIEF RUSS JONES: That’s close.
7512. (Speaking in native language). Hereditary Chiefs, ladies held in high esteem, good people, Panel Members, my Haida name is Nang Jingwas. I’m speaking today as a Hereditary Chief of the onNaa S'aagaas Haida Gwaii. Our clan is a branch of the Skidegate Gidins or Skidegate Eagles. I also speak from my experience as a fisheries biologist, a professional engineer, and a fisherman.
7513. I speak in opposition to the Northern Gateway proposal because of the adverse effects it would have on Haida Gwaii and the surrounding waters. As a Hereditary Chief, I uphold the Constitution of the Haida Nation and the governance of the Council of the Haida Nation. It is our duty to protect our title and rights to territories of the Haida Nation and ensure that Haida Gwaii can provide for future generations. The Haida Nation is an important party that will be significantly impacted by this project if it goes forward.
7514. If the Enbridge Project proceeds, it would result in oil tankers passing by or through Haida territory, with the risk of accidents, including chronic and possibly catastrophic oil spills. These risks and the potential consequences to Haida culture and our way of life are unacceptable to me as a Hereditary Chief and to my clan.
7515. As Haida, our ancestry can be traced throughout Haida Gwaii and Alaska. Our ancestors have made their living from the sea. Marine resources, including fish, continue to be a major source of food and livelihood for us, and are the future cornerstone of a sustainable Haida economy. Our fisheries and the ecosystems of Haida Gwaii could be irreversibly damaged through an oil spill or by introduction of foreign species through ballast water discharge.
7516. Several of my ancestors, including my Uncle Dempsy Collinson, the late Chief Skidegate, my father Vernon Jones, and grandfather Albert Jones were fishermen who made their living from the ocean. Similar to many other Haida they travelled and fished throughout Haida waters.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux
7517. And if you could go to the other slide, please, showing the waters.
7518. So they’d travel the waters of Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait, and the west coast of Haida Gwaii. I was also a fisherman, but now work for the Council Haida Nation to protect the oceans of Haida Gwaii through marine planning. This way of life that we enjoy could easily come to an end if the Enbridge Project goes ahead.
7519. I oppose the Enbridge Project for the following five reasons: First, the environmental impact of increased marine shipping on Haida Gwaii, including the fish, shellfish, birds and marine mammals.
7520. An oil spill has potential to destroy the environment, including the habitat and living creatures that we depend on as Haida people. Introduced species from ballast water could result in irreversible changes to Haida Gwaii ecosystems.
7521. Increased traffic will result in more ship strikes of whales and chronic pollution through oily water discharge. The project will increase threats to listed species such as northern abalone, humpback whale and seabirds such as the ancient murrelet or cassin’s auklet, which are all important to us.
7522. Second, the potential socioeconomic impacts from accidents or oil spills, this includes the potential loss of access to local marine food. Economically important species are also affected. After 23 years, herring has still not recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound. A million dollar industry was destroyed overnight. Herring is a forward species and they’re also in a depressed state here in Haida Gwaii and an oil spill could affect many other species as well.
7523. Third, unacceptable risk to Haida Gwaii from the project. Risk assessment needs to incorporate both the likelihood of an accident occurring and the potential consequences. Enbridge claims that an oil spill larger than 40,000 cubic metres -- they call that a large spill -- is not likely to occur more than once in 15,000 years.
7524. The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in 1989, only 12 years after the Alaska pipeline was built. That spill was estimated to be 41,000 cubic metres and possibly up to 119,000 cubic metres.
7525. The Gulf of Alaska oil spill occurred in 2010, only 35 years after deep water drilling started in that area. That spill was up to 780,000 cubic metres. And
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux there’s great uncertainty even about how much oil was actually spilled. We’re not even able to know that.
7526. And this is just a blink of an eye compared to what Enbridge claims 15,000 years, you know, to have one spill. I don’t think -- 15,000 years ago, I think there was still Neanderthals in Europe.
7527. These accidents aren’t predicted to happen and they could not be effectively contained. I’m sure that both these projects claimed that accidents were unlikely, but major spills occurred anyway within a short time with significant long- term consequences to the region and local peoples.
7528. Enbridge’s claim that an accident will occur once in 15,000 years is frivolous.
7529. Risk assessment also needs to consider the consequences of a spill. We are only now starting to understand the long-term impacts of oil spills and don’t know with certainty if many species or habitats will recover from an oil spill or when.
7530. Fourth, the Panel should consider alternatives to the project, some that have been mentioned by previous speakers. Oil could be left in the ground for another day, refined in Alberta, sent to U.S. markets through the proposed Keystone Pipeline or sent to refineries in eastern Canada for domestic use or export.
7531. Fifth, the proposal is not in the public interest. Haida people and the people of Haida Gwaii are part of the public interest. A clean healthy environment is also part of the healthy interest -- of the public interest. It’s also in the public interest not to infringe Haida rights to fish and to protect and minimize risk to habitat that is important for fish.
7532. The Applicants have based their assessment on only a shallow interpretation of Haida title and rights. A major flaw in the current process is that the Crown is failing to meet its legal obligations to First Nations.
7533. Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the many people from Haida Gwaii who have made statements to the Joint Review Panel in Queen Charlotte, Masset and now Skidegate over the past several months. Haawa for sharing your passion and knowledge about Haida Gwaii. 7534. I also want to state my concern about impending changes to the Canadian
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux Environmental Assessment Act, the National Energy Board Act and the Fisheries Act under Bill C-38. I’m particularly concerned about limiting the scope and fast tracking of environmental reviews and federal cabinet becoming the decision maker for major projects rather than regulatory bodies. Changes are ignoring the real priority, that projects need to be safe, meet high environmental standards and be acceptable to local peoples.
7535. In closing, I urge the Panel to say no to the Enbridge Application.
7536. Haawa for your time.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7537. THE CHAIRPERSON: Haawa, Chiefs, for presenting your oral statements to us this afternoon.
7538. Just as the next panel is being seated, Chief Brown, Chief Crosby, Chief Hart and Chief Williams, if you’re in the room, could you go and see staff so that we can get you registered to speak? Thank you.
7539. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Good afternoon. I’m just going to try and -- Thasi? Am I correct? No? You have to help me out. Please introduce yourself. Great. Thanks, Chief.
7540. CHIEF KEN EDGARS: Chief Thasi.
7541. MEMBER MATTHEWS: Thasi. Was I close?
7542. CHIEF KEN EDGARS: In our traditions we pay for a mistake like that.
--- (Laughter/Rires)
7543. MEMBER MATTHEWS: We’ll talk about it later. Sorry.
--- (Laughter/Rires)
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR CHIEF KEN EDGARS:
7544. CHIEF KEN EDGARS: I’m Chief Thasi from a village in Naden Harbour, Kung. My mother -- I was born and raised there -- her and my grandmother
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux were the last couple that moved into Massett during the bottom end of the epidemic that was hitting the island. My grandfather, my mother’s dad, didn’t want them to move into Massett because of the smallpox epidemic.
7545. I grew up when there was no indoor plumbing. I grew up when there was no hydro, no telephones, no TV. And when I come to think of it, I think I was very fortunate because my parents taught me how to live off the land.
7546. I grew up on a boat, learned how to run the boat when I was five years old. We’d moved from Massett to Kiis Gwaii, which is North Island, in the springtime to harvest halibut, process halibut. And we used to catch a bird we call Sedona so our parents can jar them or can them for the winter. These birds rarely ever came to the land only to lay their eggs and then back out to the ocean again. Nowadays it’s considered an endangered species; in other words, a luxury to us if we ever happen to get some.
7547. My experience in witnessing natural disasters which can destroy a tanker in 1949 -- I was born in 1949, a few months before the big earthquake.
7548. I remember my mother holding me on her lap under my dad's 37-foot trawling boat and our boat was shaking like it was on -- like we were sitting in a bowl of Jell-O. And my mother pointed to the beach where my dad and my brother were carrying supplies to the skiff to take out to the boat.
7549. My father had fallen down, tripped over a log when the earthquake hit and my brother, he told us later, the reason he jumped in the skiff is because the ground was getting so soft he got scared. And we -- my mother was pointing to the road which was undulating, it looked like a huge wave was underground. You know, our community hall was half the size of this, but that was moving up and down.
7550. And these natural disasters threaten and eventually will happen to the pipelines, it will wreck the pipelines. Also the tsunamis caused by earthquakes can break a tanker in half.
7551. I remember my mom taking me down the beach to watch a volcano erupting in Alaska; we could see the glow in the sky. And for weeks and weeks pumice rock was floating up on the beach, and the waves were pretty big, almost like we were in the middle of winter. And during the summer months, as kids, we were always on the beach. We'd find tar balls, some of them up to two feet in diameter.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 7552. And we used to get a spanking for trying to burn them because it was very -- a rancid smell to it. I know my uncle got one stuck in his propeller and it almost tore his boat in half. And that’s just part of the disasters that can happen -- natural disasters that can be a threat to the tankers going out through the Dixon Entrance.
7553. Never mind the big deadheads that float out into the Dixon Entrance from the loggers clear-cutting on this island and up in Alaska. Because of the reef in the middle of Dixon Entrance, there's a riptide there where the stumps float.
7554. They just seem to gather there and it's pretty scary to see them come out of the water when you're fishing out there. These logging companies don’t take responsibility for cleaning it up, they say, “Oh, it'll float away and dry up on the island somewhere” But it's not so, they're still out there. Natural disasters can happen anywhere along our coast.
7555. And when we were growing up, our teachers used to tell us to eat our lunch because the rest of the country is starving because of the depression. We weren’t allowed to waste our foods, our lunch at school.
7556. One day, I asked my mother, I said, “What does depression mean”, she told us -- she told me to listen to the radio and listen really hard. I finally found out what depression meant, that the rest of the country was starving during the war. But I think only the people on Haida Gwaii were thriving because we were -- we are resourceful people and we lived off the land when the rest of the country was going through a very serious depression.
7557. Nowadays, our politicians call a depression when our money goes downhill for about two cents.
7558. I'm with the rest of our Hereditary Chiefs in opposing this project, because as Hereditary Chiefs we have to work as a team to support our Constitution, and to support the rest of our clan members who we represent.
7559. I didn’t really want to come down here because my wife was sick. But she was babysitting so she just told me to come down because she believes in our clan system where I was put forward by my clan to represent them and speak for them.
7560. We, as Hereditary Chiefs, strongly believe in our Constitution, we work as a team. Although sometimes we disagree with one another, we get mad at each other at meetings, but we don’t take it home with us. We shake hands at the end of the day
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux and go home and leave our differences at the meeting until the next session. That’s how our governance works.
7561. I'm very proud to be Haida people because we're very strong and resourceful, very proud.
7562. The one thing -- people do not understand our system because we believe in our matriarchs who are there for us, they're always there for us and I thank them for being here today.
7563. All our knowledge comes from them, when one passes away we lose a great deal of knowledge. They lived our traditional way of life which is threatened by these tankers and this pipeline.
7564. Haawa for listening.
--- (Applause/Applaudissements)
7565. MEMBER BATEMAN: Chief Wilson, thank you being here. I believe that you will our last speaker, so when you're ready, please proceed.
--- ORAL STATEMENT BY/EXPOSÉ ORAL PAR CHIEF ALLAN WILSON:
7566. CHIEF ALLAN WILSON: Thank you very much.
7567. For the ease of the JR Panel, I put my English name forward, and as soon as he was done I swung it around. I'm Chief 7iw7waans Duugwaa St'laangng 7laanaas from the west coast of Haida Gwaii. And I appreciate my fellow Chiefs allowing me to be the last to speak. And just so the JRP knows, and their faithful timer, I have a stopwatch.
7568. And a lot of times, when I go to dinners and stuff, I prepare myself by -- like, on a computer, you set up bullets so you're able to refer to it. And I've been doing that for, dang, over 60 years now. So I'm prepared for every -- no matter where it is, no matter what the occasion, no matter what the situation, I'm ready.
7569. Listening to the Panel, I heard a few comments made today. People expressing their passion for Haida Gwaii. Some have been here for months. Some, just a few years.
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux 7570. There's one fellow in Queen Charlotte city, he's been here just about all his life. I think it's -- I think he's here for 60 years or something, I'm not sure. But he said, "I'm a newcomer."
7571. And it just floors me to listen to all the people that have just come here in the last six months, last year, two years, six years, their passion for Haida Gwaii.
7572. That shows the Panel and all the people how those that are born here for generations, how we feel. You look on the map up there from Langara to Cape St. James up to Naikoon. It's our home. It's our front yard, our backyard, it's our home. We live for Haida Gwaii.
7573. I was listening to the speakers and some expressed deep passion for Haida Gwaii. And it was perceived as a threat. Me, all my fellow Haida Gwaiians seated in here, we're threatened, big time.
7574. Our very life is because of Haida Gwaii. People have chosen Haida Gwaii first because of its beauty. And then, they meet the people and it gets deeper.
7575. People have come here to visit. Some become permanent residents. Some only come here for two or three days, it ends up being a lifetime. That's the effect Haida Gwai has on you. And if it doesn't happen to this JRP, this Panel, I don't know.
7576. Makes it really hard. I'm trying to be very diplomatic and trying not to say something that would be deemed a threat because I feel so threatened. It's so deep within me. Every one of the people on Haida Gwaii, no matter what walk of life, you feel it.
7577. You have to walk the beach only once, go down on one low tide to pick some food and you feel it. My mom did it. My dad. My grandparents. My ancestors. They all did it.
7578. I had the opportunity with my fellow Chief to go to Kitkatla. I'll always remember that boy. I don't know, he was eight, maybe ten years old. He got up to the mic to speak. I was sitting there trying to be a tough warrior. I was listening to this little boy.
7579. He said: "I want to go pick seaweed. I want to go dig clams with my uncle. I want to go fishing with my brother. I want to help my grandmother dry fish." I could just see my grandchildren, my great-great-grandchildren and theirs
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011 Oral statements Exposés oraux saying the same thing.
7580. I look at the Valdez spill up in Alaska, our cousins there. They still feel the effects and it's over 20 years. I don't want that to happen to my children, to all our children.
7581. My friend, Simon, his daughter came in packing a little girl. And I said, "Who is that? " He said, "That's my granddaughter." I felt so good knowing that we're going to work to preserve something that she could feel how I feel when I go to the beach to dig clams, to have a chowder.
7582. There's such a passion within each one of us that is so strong that, if we feel threatened, we're going to be able to stand up for it. We'll be able to stand for something we believe in, something that's right there.
7583. Because I want all our future, whoever you are that deem Haida Gwaii your home, I want your children and their children and their children to feel what you feel. I want them to be able to smile when they walk down the beach and enjoy it.
7584. I'm threatened today. And I'll be threatened tomorrow. And I stand for Haida Gwaii. Haida Gwaii is our home and if anything threatens it, every person will stand. We love Haida Gwaii.
7585. And as a warrior for the Haida Nation, as a Chief, I stand with my fellow Chiefs. We speak in opposition to Northern Gateway proposal because of the damage it can do to our home, our land and the water.
7586. We all sit and we stand up. We uphold the Constitution of the Haida Nation. When we had trouble within our Nation, there were several of the men got together and they did up what we call “The Accord”. We all signed it.
7587. Each Chief here that represents a clan -- and those clans that don't have chiefs, we represent them also -- we stand together as one. We're one family here on Haida Gwaii.
7588. And all those that have come to adopt Haida Gwaii as their homeland, you stand with us and we stand with you because we love it. We'll continue to defend Haida Gwaii because it's our home.
7589. Haawa.
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--- Applause/Applaudissements
7590. THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Chiefs.
7591. Thank you, Chiefs, for presenting your oral statements to us this afternoon.
7592. That concludes the oral statements that we're scheduled to be presented for this set of community hearings here in Skidegate.
7593. Chief Collison in his comments said that -- I think he said something -- if I misquote you, I apologize, Chief Collison, but something about that you think long and hard about what to say and that you know that others have thought long and hard about what to say in the oral statements that have been presented to the Panel.
7594. And the Panel wishes to express our appreciation for people having put that degree of thought into what they wanted to say and for being here to communicate their messages to the Panel.
7595. So thank you all for that. Haawa.
7596. We will close the record and I understand that Elder Roy Jones Senior is again going to do us the honour of a closing prayer this afternoon.
7597. MR. ROY JONES SR.: We’ll all bow our heads in prayer.
--- (Closing Prayer/Prière de clôture)
--- Upon adjourning at 4:20 p.m./L'audience est ajournée à 16h20
Transcript Hearing Order OH-4-2011