Treaty 3 Grand Chief Warren White attended an Ontario Energy Board consultation in Kenora last month to express his fundamental objection to TransCanada’s proposed Energy East pipeline.
“I did not come here for consultation. I came here to let everyone know what Energy East is all about,” he said. “In unity, in Treaty 3, we will be the ones to stop this.”
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He added that “I do not want to be the grand chief that’s remembered as, ‘all he wanted was the money.’ I do not want to be the grand chief known as the destroyer of the lands, waters, sacred sites, rivers, trees, animals, birds….An oil spill will happen, no matter how safe you guys say it is.”
White said TransCanada “tried to pull a fast one” on Treaty 3 chiefs, failing to show up for a December 21 meeting after agreeing to a consultation process under traditional Ojibwe resource law. One of Ontario’s seven conditions for approving the project requires “proponents and governments” to fulfill their constitutional duty to consult with the province’s First Nations.
At an OEB hearing in Ottawa, meanwhile, “an OEB technical expert’s review of TransCanada’s claims brought the crowd to laughter,” Ecology Ottawa organizer Ben Powless reports.
“TransCanada’s claims the pipeline might only suffer a major leak every 10,000 years, that any leaks would be small, and that TransCanada would provide alternate drinking water (from an unspecified location) for any impacted communities all drew chuckles from the crowd.”
Nearly 400 people attended the Ottawa hearing.
