My sister-in-law lives in Haida Gwaii. Done so for years. And she writes. I attach her blog: http://blueseaskyhaidagwaii.wordpress.com
Hers is not a unique view of the area – many of her friends and neighbours feel the same way about the North Coast as she does. But it is a unique way of looking at things compared to the urban point of view. Seems lower mainlanders and Ontarians see the North as simply a hinterland, a ‘back forty full of resources to use as we see fit.’ They just don’t get it. It is more than that.
In this recent blog ‘link’, C remembers the lessons learned and shared by Justice Tom Berger looking into an oil pipeline proposal undertaken decades ago in the late 70’s. Justice Berger went up north with a bias, a predisposition to what he thought was a good idea for Canadian progress. And he listened to the people and he saw what they were defending. And he was disuaded from his initial view.
The Berger report recommended NOT approving such a pipeline.
No, this is not another anti-pipeline blog but you can take it that way because my sentiments haven’t changed on that. Rather, this is a comment on our institutions. As we all know, they are failing us but, few of us know how and why. Partly it is because we forget.
And partly it is because we remember.
Berger is a case in point. He says, “The choice we make will decide whether the North is to be primarily a frontier for industry or a homeland for its peoples. We shall have the choice only once.” And he chose homeland.
Poor, naive supreme court justice, Thomas Berger. He thought he made a judicial-like finding. Once and for all. “The North is not a frontier for industry but a homeland for it’s peoples”. Done. End of story.
“At least a precedent was set, eh. Tom?”
Well, until the next oil pipeline proposal comes along, that is. Seems Berger’s point of view is no longer current reading. Such findings are no longer relevant. “That was then, this is now. Now we want to look at it again and maybe the chief honcho we appoint will see it like we want it seen. This time let’s pick a better stooge!”
This time they started with Transport Canada.
The point: the battle never ends. Ministries to the left, departments to the right. One Royal Commission after another, one environmental study after another, one more revolution (generation) of the system and we get to go through the whole damn exercise again. Should we lose one of these battles, the war and the battlefield is lost – there is nothing to protest anymore. If we win, it entitles us to fight the same fight again and again.
“Heads, the bastards win, tails, we flip again and again until we get heads!”
Know what happens if we stop the Enbridge line? First, we only ‘won’ the status quo, that which we already had. We achieve what Berger achieved. For him and for us, NOTHING happening, in such a case, is a victory. Secondly, we get to gird our loins for another run at it a generation later.
That is how our institutions fail us. Just one of the ways, I mean. Too easily they forget. Too easily they are swayed by the next group of hucksters.
But they also fail us by remembering to obey – following blindly the prime directive – whatever the premier or the Prime minster says, “do as you are told!”. Don’t any of these people have spines!?
Our institutions don’t change. They don’t shed the dead skin. They just get older and more rickety, unresponsive to everything but their own needs. It’s a self-serving memory. Institutions get into survival mode pretty quickly. They don’t live to serve, they live to survive.
The Ministry of Fisheries now thinks their main purpose is to sell fish. Honest to God! DFO are fish mongers first (read the Cohen Commission report). DFO is not ‘for‘ fisheries and oceans. It is ‘for‘ companies and corporations.
Well, it is for whatever Stephen Harper and his sycophants tell them they are for so, ultimately, DFO is simply for DFO. And your MP is for your MP. And your MLA is for your MLA.
Transport Canada is no better. It is not about improving transportation for Canadians. In a country with a two-lane TransCanada highway, a largely useless passenger rail system, the most expensive airfares in the world and a ferry system threatening to sink, we have a ministry focusing on the shoes passengers wear at airports, day-time running headlights on cars and inspecting small boat trailers at the border.
And it was Transport Canada that recently rubber-stamped the oil tanker traffic planned for the Enbrdige pipeline. Transport Canada is less than useless, it is criminally negligent and derilect in it’s duties. But it will survive.
“So, Dave, what is the point and why another rant so soon? Losing it, are we?”
No. I am not losing it. In fact, I might be on to something. The point is simple: the more things change, the more they remain the same. The bad guys will continue to take runs at the resources and the people wil continue to defend them until they can’t. The bad guys never stop. The people sometimes do. Our salvation should be in our institutions but they all seem corrupted. Our heroes should be our politicians but they are, essentially, just organized crime. Our old system doesn’t work.
Maybe everyone should take up a blog and maybe a sharpened plowshare and state their opposition to this madness. Maybe now is the time for the silent majority to make a noise by way of social media. Maybe now is the time to raise the twitter to a roar!
My sister-in-law is.
And so is her son: http://www.salmonguy.org/
Our Off the Grid Home 
I am more than sympathetic to the views expressed in this blog post. In fact I do not disagree with any of the blog. In this blog are a number of conundrums pressing on the future path of the North. I’m not informed enough to lay out the issues but I would be interested in knowing what the issue might be.
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The issues are myriad……but first there is the issue of the ‘greater good’. Is it to the greater good that tar gets pumped to China? Environmental disaster looms imminent, no one gets work as it is simply the rawest of materials that gets exported (not unlike raw logs from BC forests), the rich get richer, pollution gets greater and the price is not even payable – the beaches get ruined and the sea life dies. You can’t compensate for that.
Even if all went well, we are still sending sludge to the worst polluter on the planet to make Walmart toys.
But let’s look at it more selfishly rather than altruistically. Canada imports oil from the middle east. We also pay $5.00 plus a gallon at the pump. We export oil to the US and we are exporting oil-sludge to be refined there to the Chinese. Selling it cheap. The ‘Mericans get it from us and are upset at paying 4.00 a gallon. Does that make any sense? To anyone but an oil company?
Let’s get more intimate……..the people of the north have an opinion. It should not be the only opinion (we are all in this together) but it has to weigh heavily. It is their backyard, after all. And they don’t want the pipeline. So, wouldn’t that be simply ignoring the voice of the real people pushing this ahead?
I could go on and on. It gets boring. It should be enough to say, “We don’t want the Gulf Spill, the Kalamazoo spill and the Exxon Valdes spill on BC’s west coast. No sane person would.”
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As you point out one of the conundrums is economic. Consider the people of Attawapiskat Hudson bay living near the De Boers mine some ninety kilometres away. It was the Red Cross who responded to Attawapiskat’s plight not De Boers. The challenges faced by Attawapiskat are well known but, what we are witnessing is the inevitable result of chronic under-funding, poor bureaucratic planning and a discriminatory black hole that has allowed First Nations people to be left behind as the rest of the country moves forward.” As the North develops economically ironically few economic benefit flow to Attawapiskat. SOS Children’s Villages reports in it’s blog “Due to the squalid housing conditions on the reserve—cold, mouldy, smoky air from wood burning stoves—[kids in Attawapiskat] suffer from frequent respiratory infections, ear infections, strep throat and rashes. Due to overcrowding, neglect and abuse, they suffer from mental-health issues,” wrote Tasha Kheiriddin in the National Post last week. These children have a homeland, they have a territory that does not provide the basic decent life that most Canadian expect as a birthright. Canada’s Third World shame. The Red Cross is responding but where is our government?
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Key word is ‘our’. We picked these guys. Well, 39% of the people did. We just have to ‘unpick ’em’. And we have to pick good people – not just vote party lines. We have to vote GOOD people lines. We need to pick GOOD people to run this country and that means searching for them and picking them and helping them. The ones who step forward? Be suspicious. The ones who step forward with party backing? Be very suspicious. Don’t choose from amongst the ones presented, go choose someone good and present them.
“Dave, that is not realistic.”
Could be. Mght work. Try it. If you know a good person, suggest it. Why not? I’d vote Doug H, Ricky J and gobs of others in a heartbeat.
Maybe that is how we get a revolution?
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Things change. The Attawapiskat live a lifestyle that does not work with the modern world. You can like this, or not like this, but to expect they can live exactly as they have for centuries yet still expect all the modern basics is unreasonable. You write “they have a territory that does not provide the basic decent life that most Canadians expect as a birthright”, and that is true. It never will. The shame is we pretend to them their ancient practices are enough. They are only enough if the person is willing to get the rewards that come with those practices, and nothing else.
We were all hunters and gatherers originally. Most groups at some point went beyond that because that system did not provide all that was deemed to be necessary.
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I agree that changing the faces at the table might make a difference. What concerns me is the climate of invective and the inflexible ideological positions taken such as selling off the province’s assets ‘because governments should not own or operate any state run enterprises. “Conservative” ideology, which has more or less devolved into a kind of casino capitalism where the house always wins and the public are rubes to be stripped of their assets by whatever tricks are available to convince them the game isn’t rigged.” Sell BC Rail, Sell Terasan gas, Sell raw logs, ship unrefined oil, Dam the Fraser and destroy the fishery. It’s the ideology of fear that is wrong.
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