Despite the hastily completed agreement with the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, the federal government’s foot-dragging in ending the solidarity protests across the country that were spurred by the dispute over the Coastal GasLink pipeline will only further entrench a culture of radical obstructionism and incentivize future actions similarly impacting the economy.
Such brinkmanship by our politicians has the potential to greatly incapacitate Canada’s capabilities as a global competitor.
One of the biggest problems is the excess burden the regulatory systems impose on companies, specifically the costs and delays that have resulted in Canada ranking dismally in the OECD in terms of how long it takes for construction projects to receive the necessary regulatory approval. (Canada ranks 34 out of 35 countries, according to the World Bank.)
The federal Liberals are known to be “climate hawks,” and their conception of Indigenous issues is inextricably linked with the climate change agenda. In this way they have ingratiated themselves to dogmatists who have hyper-politicized the climate issue and divorced it from the humility, good statesmanship, and dispassionate analysis it requires.
The most depressing aspect of environmental advocacy is that it co-opts a natural inclination to want to defend the environment and subjects it to the whims of apocalyptic doomsayers. It propounds a secular eschatology that dictates a consensus and condemns those who may not agree. Many in the climate change movement see environmentalism primarily as a pillar of their Marxian quest to uproot the social order. Their ideas are not rebuttable nor their terms negotiable.
Commitments to the climate issue seem to supersede the need to consider possible viable remedies for socio-economic ailments. But the government’s tables for the Community Well-Being Index released last May indicate that, since most First Nations live in remote locations, their hope for economic advancement lies in the opportunities that the development of national resources provide.
When it comes to pipelines, Flanagan rightly points out that the opportunities derived from them allows Indigenous people to reap the full benefits of their consultation rights. The natural resource sector can offer high wages and benefit agreements can provide hundreds of millions of dollars to improve living standards; the Coastal GasLink project could mean millions of dollars in contract employment opportunities. Moreover, he demonstrates that the constant blocking of pipelines makes the right to consultation meaningless as it sacrifices the material betterment of people to the desires of the few.