Joint Review Panel Hearings Skidegate, June 13-14, 2012

The National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel (JRP) community hearings were held in Skidegate on June 13 and 14, 2012. In an attempt to provide you with a sense of what is being said at these hearings, we have selected excerpts from the presenta-tions and will continue to do so through to the end of the hearings in July. For those of you wishing to read the complete text of a statement, it is available on the JRP website: gatewaypanel.review-examen.gc.ca/clf-nsi/prtcptngprcss/hrng-eng.html

“And even if one of those tankers, if this project were ever to proceed, was to break down and lose an engine or the inability to manoeuvre itself, there isn’t a tug on this coast that could tow an oil tanker out of harm’s way. It’s just we’re just totally unprepared on this coast for anything, anything like that at all. I mean, we’ve seen B.C. Ferries hit the rocks with the most modern navigation equipment in the world. The rock’s still there, the ferry is gone. One of those things hits our beach and the boat will be gone but that oil will still be there as we can see with the Exxon Valdez and the results of what’s happened there. It would totally wipe us out, the entire coast. I mean that’s our food source; that’s our livelihood. That’s just our way of life on this coast, and it’s just -- the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.” – Lindsay Doerksen

“I live up the highway here, about 20 minutes’ ride from here. There’s a beautiful beach up there, I walk it almost every day when there isn’t a storm. And as I walk along the beach, I think to myself how beautiful it is and also the whole islands in general, the whole coast, how beautiful it is. And to me, it would be just absolutely unimaginable to see an oil spill. It would be horrendous. It makes me sick to think about it.” – Colin Davies

“And now that I’m older, I find myself falling into that role. I have eight grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and they know when they come to my house, all they’re going to get is ts’iiljii, k’aaw, jam, k’yuu, smoked salmon, everything that’s -- one of my granddaughters, she said, ‘Nana, when I think of you, I think of your house as a slaughter house because there’s always something getting prepared, octopus hanging on the deck, crabs crawling around, venison on the table, smokehouse going’. So I don’t want to lose all that. I just want to keep passing on what I know, what my parents taught me, and I just want to also remember that we did put up a big fight for South Moresby, 1984-1985, and I can almost feel that starting to happen again. And so my answer to Enbridge is no. Haawa.” – Roberta Olson

“As my mother says, and the Panel has heard, this is all about resources. You’ve heard -- the Panel has heard all along the trail how we not only survive, but we thrive against all odds. And today we’re talking about short term resources versus all of us in here which is long-term resources. I think perhaps if the Prime Minister realized that there wouldn’t be a fight that’ll happen, and perhaps the people -- resources will go to a positive nature instead of fighting this. Hopefully one day an apology will mean something to us.” – Geoffrey Greene

“We all know one thing is for sure, and that is history does repeat itself. That’s one of the lessons that’s passed down in all cultures. And it is inevitable that pipelines do break, tankers sink, and people make mistakes and cut corners to make more money, and technology ultimately does fail, despite how advanced we get or how advanced we think we are. There’s a number of examples of technology failing, human beings and catastrophes happening throughout history. So allowing this project to proceed, to me, it’s like declaring war on the environment and authorizing an assault on the land that the pipeline crosses, the seas that sustain us on the Coast here in Haida Gwaii, and on the sky and the atmosphere and the air that we breathe, and on the spirit of the people who feel -- may feel backed into a corner as they defend their freedoms and liberties and the right to make a livelihood and to enjoy clean water, fresh air and fresh food.” – Jason Alsop

“All the money in the world can’t bring me to agree. Money can last a day whereas a day of food gathering can last you for a winter. Money buys you TV dinners, frozen pizzas, drugs and alcohol. The problems will still be the same, but our waters and land won’t be. Why make a permanent risk to our land for temporary money? We’re about to fight for land, raised to fight for what we know is right; right now, we’re fighting for our land. When we say no, we mean it. We’ll not be silenced, not now, not ever.” – Shyla Cross (18)

“I’m here to offer support to the young people and Haida people and the people who are united against this oil pipeline. My wife and I immigrated here 42 years ago, immigrated to Canada, and settled in Haida Gwaii. We’re grateful for the opportunity to live here.” – George Farrell

“And because of the Exxon Valdez still not being cleaned up and people not being compensated, I don’t really have a lot of trust in big companies and corporations and I’m here today to say no. And thank you for this opportunity to say it. And I support the Haida Nation and everything they say and do here.” – Donnette Farrell

“There is nothing, and I believe it with all my heart, that out there that can clean up the mess of crude oil on our beaches. You look at our coast, the mainland coast and our coast, there is no way that we can clean up what we put into this ocean in the form of crude oil. And it will affect not only us on the island today, it will affect our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren for seven generations or more. And the legacy will affect this country; the legacy of deceit, the legacy of rape and pillage of the land, if you will. And that is not what this country is about and I don’t believe the people of this country want this either. I am against Enbridge; I am against tankers on our coast.” – Carolyn Hesseltine

“And lately there has been a lot of debris and garbage that has come from a natural disaster a year ago in Japan, and we’ve been trying to clean up whatever we can. And it’s mostly plastic and Styrofoam, and it just seems to be coming in during the wintertime on a daily basis. Almost every day we are out there collecting more garbage, to the point that we are in a position now where we don’t even know what to do with the garbage anymore because it’s just accumulating. And so the threat of oil being added to this is just unthinkable to me. And I just hope that this oil line will not happen. And just looking at the map is really scary to me, seeing where these oil tankers are coming from and then they’ll be going through or very close by a protected marine area, named Gwaii Haanas. “ – Cacilia Honisch

“And if you look at this map what you’ll find is in the little North Pacific Rim between B.C., -- you know the coast of British Columbia, Alaska, and Russia, and Japan, is that there’s virtually no tanker traffic; there is no, I mean, container traffic or anything. There’s no traffic here. So what this project will bring, along with the oil spill and the devastation, cultural, environmental, and everything, is it’s going to bring the bilge water from all those tankers. And these are huge VLCCs with I think, what, 200 million barrel capacity and they’re going to be dumping their bilge water, introducing toxins, pollutants from the stuff that runs off from the engines and introduce species from different parts of the world. And Haida Gwaii has a very unique ecosystem; we have animals here and variants and species of animals that don’t exist anywhere else. It’s my point that these bilge flushings alone are going to destroy and negatively affect everything, you know, in this whole climate here.” – Gerry Leminski

“So the safety net has many holes in it and it’s very hard to plan against the risk. We have, as we’ve heard here, hurricanes -- our last one was April 2nd -- with seas of eight metres and a 958 millibar low. Very difficult, according to a mariner pilot friend of mine who suggested that it could be very difficult for inbound ship in ballast to maintain control and reach sheltered waters.” – Nick Reynolds

“Right now, if you look at a map of all the pipelines leading out of Edmonton it becomes pretty apparent there’s a big section of northern B.C. that’s missing solid lines. But right now, there’s a little dotted line that goes from there all the way to Kitimat and we need your help to make sure that doesn’t become a solid line in the future. I’m curious if Enbridge is going to pay for the lost jobs and the economies destroyed when there is a spill, the tourism wages and the failed tour operator businesses. And my last point is that it seems kind of odd that the government, on one hand, is creating a National Marine Conservation Area in Gwaii Haanas, which is a huge deal and one of the only ones on the planet protecting places from mountaintops to seafloor, but on the other hand, they’re proposing massive tanker traffic in the exact same area. Basically, we need your help -- we need your help. We need you to help the government understand what is at stake here. We need them to understand just how little we stand to gain and how much we stand to lose. So please do what you can to save our coast.” – Barrett Johnson

“Condensate, also called diluent, is a by-product of the natural gas industry. It is a liquid solvent and has traditionally been added to bitumen as a diluent at a mix of 70 percent bitumen to 30 percent diluent; with the resulting product being called dilbit, which is short for diluted bitumen, of course. We should also look at the composition of condensate or diluent as it is called. Often found in condensate are hydrogen sulfide, mercaptan, carbon dioxide, alkanes, cyclohexane and other naphthenes, and of course the aromatics which include benzene, toluene, xylenes and ethylbenzenes. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services classifies benzene as a human carcinogen. Long-term exposure to excessive levels of benzene in the air causes leukemia, a potentially fatal cancer of the blood-forming organs in susceptible individuals. Human exposure to benzene is a global health problem. Benzene targets liver, kidney, lung, heart, and the brain, and can cause DNA strand breaks, chromosomal damage, et cetera. Benzene causes cancer in both animals and humans. Benzene has been shown to cause cancer in both sexes of a multiple species of laboratory animals exposed via various routes.” – Robert Prudhomme

“I really think that this is an issue that we don’t have to look for arguments as to why or why not; it’s a moral issue. It’s wrong. It’s simply wrong. Humanity over the past hundred years has become so hydrocarbon dependent that we’ve gone from being symbiotic to parasitic. We’re chewing this world up and turning it into crud. We’re killing species and exterminating species one after the other, and we know it.” – Gary Wunsch

“Some people rely on the money in their bank account to survive. Our bank is the ocean. Our money is the food it provides. And our insurance is the respect we show it. So from the true constitution of Haida Gwaii it states: ‘Our culture is born of respect; and intimacy with the land and sea and the air around us. Like the forests, the roots of our people are intertwined such that the greatest troubles cannot overcome us. We owe our existence to Haida Gwaii. The living generation accepts [this] responsibility to ensure that our heritage is passed on to following generations’ These words now have more meaning than ever before, and the people of these islands, and the people of this coast, we have created a forest and no wind will blow us over.” – Kye Borserio (19)

“So I will say it again, as I said in 2004, to a former federal panel, things that have never happened before happen all the time. Bopal disaster in India, the space shuttle explosion, Chernobyl, countless airline crashes all happen, in part, when people were denying small-scale system failures and warnings before them. My message to you is to keep those complex, tightly coupled technological systems called oil tankers away from Haida Gwaii because bad things will happen. Martin Luther King once said, ‘Our lives begin to end -- end the day we become silent about the things that matter’. Well, I will never be silent on this issue. These oil tankers represent a horrid threat to our ability to harvest seafood, they threaten our National Park Reserve Gwaii Haanas and all the beaches of Haida Gwaii -- and in my mind, they are a threat to our Canadian sovereignty and our personal safety.” – Kevin Borserio

“I think it’s important that you understand that these outings are the fieldtrips here. We don’t have zoos, aquariums, science centres, planetariums, or recreation centres. Our recreation and leisure is absolutely dependent on having the ocean be a safe clean place of life, not a poisoned place, as we know the beaches of Cordova in Alaska still are. When the Joint Review Panel began the hearings, I thought back to listening to people from Cordova in Alaska after the Exxon spill. I thought about having to face my own children or my class of students and tell them that there had been a spill. I’ve had to sit down with my students and tell them of tragedies like house fires and a classmate’s cancer, and these are tragedies that I’m helpless to do anything about, but when an oil spill occurs how could I tell them that they can’t eat the k’aaw and that there won’t be any next year; that we can’t raise salmon eggs because the salmon are poisoned and dead; that they can’t eat the salmon anymore and can’t go to Copper Bay with their families; we can’t play on the beach because it’s toxic and no one knows how to clean it up and we could have prevented this?” – Marcy Watkins

“I’m only Grade 12. I mean, I’m not a university education, I made sure my kids got that, but you don’t have to be a genius to figure out if we just sent that oil east and really had a national energy system and looked after our own needs, the oil companies would find a way to gouge the 30 bucks out of us just the same as if they sold it to China. This is not in the national interest for that reason; it’s not in the national interest down the road. If you can think ahead a little bit, most of the catastrophic confrontations in the world happened because nobody thought at the time.” – Dale Lore

“You know, we face many challenges in the world today and, as a people, we’re fighting for survival all the time. You know, in the past, life hasn’t been a picnic and with Enbridge on the horizon, you know, we’re surely to perish as a people. It will affect everything from the depths of the ocean to the top of the mountains. There is nothing that is going to be spared if there is a disaster. As a people, we survived smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza, the major strains that hit in 1917 and the 1940s. They took a lot of our people. An oil spill will change things for generations to come and I’m going to use an analogy of a death. When we talk about a death, if it’s sudden, it’s very, very hard.” – Roy Jones Jr.

“I would like to read a poem that my great-grandfather -- it was a speech that he did in this very hall when they were christening the hall in 1966: ‘People are like trees, and groups of people are like the forest. 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 strengthens its neighbour, and their roots are inexplicably intertwined. In the same way the people of our islands, composed of members of nations and races from all over the world, are beginning to intertwine their roots so strongly that no troubles will affect them. Just as one tree standing alone would soon be destroyed by the first strong wind which came along, so is it impossible for any person, any family, or any community to stand alone against the troubles of this world.’ One voice can make a difference. Many voices echo into eternity. By all of us standing here together to voice our concern over our beautiful islands, all of our voices together will echo into eternity and hopefully our local -- our government will hear our cry.” – Jenny Cross

“Over and over again, those who have been here and those who haven’t, always, always tell me how lucky I am that I live here and what a special and unique place that Gwaii Haanas is and how inspired they are by its existence. There is an inherent value that people across the world -- that people across the country and around the world place on the unspoiled beauty, the un-severed connections between land and sea and people, and the uninterrupted cycles of life that are here. These values, as they become increasingly rare in the modern world, continue to inspire people. And so they support the protection of places like Gwaii Haanas and they yearn to come here to Haida Gwaii and experience it for themselves. Good people of the Joint Review Panel, I implore you with all of my heart to hear our voices here today and tomorrow, and to take this clear message of “no” with you; no to this project, no to the supertankers; yes to the life and land and waters of Haida Gwaii.” – Stephanie Fung

“One day we were coming down the east coast and we were maybe a couple of kilometres off coast, around Benjamin Point, going down to Rose Harbour, just right near the south end of Haida Gwaii, and someone in the distance saw something. The eyes on this guy were incredible, he could pick out anything miles away. And we all started looking and we just saw fish flying out of the water, and we all assumed it was dolphins. Just they were -- the height they were getting and the amount of fish that were out there was just amazing. As we got closer, we realized it was a pod of orca whales. And just as we got close they stopped jumping out of the water, breaching. And we got closer and we killed the engines of the boat, and we just kind of drifted along. And they kept coming towards us and at one point, all the cows and the calves went behind the boat. And all the bulls came in front of the boat, just surrounded us, and kept going east, disappearing off into the mist. I could go on and on of everything I’ve seen in Haida Gwaii. You get the point, like, it’s a treasure. And I think we need to, at some point, acknowledge that and say: Okay, maybe industry can find other routes or other ways to get done what they need to get done. But we need to put, you know, a place like Haida Gwaii as a high priority and the whole coast, the coast of British Columbia.” – Jonathan Dunsmore

“I feel strongly that, if the Enbridge project was to continue and to go through, that there could be huge catastrophic disasters to our most precious land here. And not just speaking for myself, but speaking for my family and for everyone that I love dear in the community, all my friends that I’ve grown up with, our whole life here would change. And we’ve only got a few, as everybody else has spoken before me, we’ve only got a few of these precious little areas left and if money is to override all that just so that, in my opinion, a few shareholders are going to benefit monetarily or with power, then how can we, as Canadian citizens, feel that that’s the right way to go about things.” – Christine Rowan

“If the pipeline leaks it will destroy animal habitat and impact the communities that depend on the environment. It is a risk that many of my students and community members have spoken against in front of you. As a teacher and community member I feel the risk of a pipeline leak or a sinking ship and its effects on the community far exceed the risks of stopping the Northern Gateway Project. I feel the risk in continuing to invest in our students while stopping the Northern Gateway Project is sound. It is a risk that we cannot justify to future generations on Haida Gwaii and elsewhere in Canada.” – Oliver Kollar

“I am proud and deeply moved by all of our students and other young people here who have spoken or will be speaking to you about their concerns, and sincerely hope that this process is done in good faith, because to alienate people from their own decision-making is to dehumanize and change them into objects. I encourage you to carry this message to the federal government and to not ignore what the community is saying here. What I’ve said has been echoed in one form or another for months now and will continue to echo afterwards. I urge you to recognize these echoes as one strong voice, and that voice is saying “No” to this project.” – Preet Lidder

“This island, at one time, fed a nation of over 30,000 persons from the beaches and the forest. The beaches being the most important. Everything down there has a part in the chain of life and all it takes is one cut of that chain to unravel the whole thing.” – John Wesley

“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 over again in the way we’ve done business, and I think that that too needs to be changed.” – Alexander MacDonald

“In my estimation, I cannot see the value of importing (oil) 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. 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. 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.” – Barbara Wilson

“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. 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.” – Heidi Richarson

“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. 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.” – Kelsey Pelton (18)

“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.” – Susan Brown

“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 Haida Gwaii. An oil spill would be devastating to these nesting birds.” – Ceitlynn Epners

“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. 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. 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.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.” – Carl Coffey

“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 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. 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.” – Brandon Gibbard

“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. 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. 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 considered.’ 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.” – Keith Moore

“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. 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.” – Mariken Van Gurp

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. 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. 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.” – Catherine Garrett

“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. 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? 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.” – Sarah Peerless

“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. 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.” – Russell Flemming

“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. So the idea of a tanker going through our precious ocean worries me deeply ” – Rebecca Holte

“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? 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.” – Jessica Fairweather (14)

“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. 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.” – Teighan Bolt-Overton

“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. 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. 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. How can that be seen as good economic stewardship?” – Karl Puls

“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.” – Kevin Gibson

“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. 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.” – Evelyn Von Almassy

“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. 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. 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.” – Fran Fowler

“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. 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.’

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. 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.” – Ian Benoit

“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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.” – John Broadhead

“This is what I’m afraid of, pushing forward towards growth and short-term 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. 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. 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. 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. This place is incredible, and it will be affected.” –Jenn Dolen

“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. 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. 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.” – Paige Atwell (16)

“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. 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.” – Laura Pattison

“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. 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. 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.” – Joel Legasse

“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. 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.” – Michael Muller

“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.” – Lea Olson

“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.” – Anne Mountifield

“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. And all the resources on these islands were used, everything in Masset, everything the Coast Guard had, everything that Burrard 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. 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 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.” – Robert Olsen

“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. 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. So the idea of putting that to any kind of a risk is just insanity. It’s going in the wrong direction.” – Sean O’Neail

“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. 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. 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.” – Sue Brown

“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. 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. 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? 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.” – April Churchill

“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. 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.” – Chief Lonnie Young

“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. 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. There’s nothing to say that they can clean up that mess. The tides and the winds are just too strong.” – Chief Frank Collison

“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. 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. 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. We are the Haida and we say no to your project.” – Chief Ronald Wilson

“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. 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. The Gulf (BP) 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 there’s great uncertainty even about how much oil was actually spilled. We’re not even able to know that. 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. 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. Enbridge’s claim that an accident will occur once in 15,000 years is frivolous.” – Chief Russ Jones

“I’m very proud to be Haida people because we’re very strong and resourceful, very proud. 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. 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.” – Chief Ken Edgars

“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. 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. 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.” – Chief Allan Wilson

Produced by Northwest Institute