Chief Aaron Sam says the band hasn’t taken a position on the pipeline twinning yet

Lower Nicola Indian Band (LNIB) chief Aaron Sam was in the Lower Mainland earlier this week, boycotting what he calls a “flawed” environmental assessment process done by the federal government’s National Energy Board (NEB).

“We feel that what the government is going to do is a foregone conclusion,” Aaron told the Herald in a phone interview.

“How can we ensure that our environmental concerns are going to be addressed when we don’t even have an opportunity to test the evidence by way of cross examination, to properly be able to assess the potential risks that could be there as a result of the project going ahead?” —LNIB chief Aaron Sam

Sam attended a larger protest outside the Delta Hotel and Conference Centre in Burnaby at the beginning of the week, where other demonstrators made it clear they don’t want to see the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

But Sam said that for Lower Nicola, this wasn’t about Kinder Morgan. “We haven’t made a decision to support or not support the proposed expansion, but in regards to the NEB hearings, we’re not going to take part any more,” he said. “We’ve asked on numerous occasions to sit down with the federal government and the province so they can properly consult with us, and that hasn’t happened.”   He said there were a number of things about the NEB process that concerned LNIB. The list of parties who can intervene in the process is restricted, and they don’t take climate change into consideration, he said.

“We wrote a letter to the Prime Minister letting him know that we’re disappointed that he hasn’t taken any steps to address the flawed process like he said he would.” —Aaron Sam

“Probably the biggest issue from our perspective is that First Nations, Lower Nicola Band, is not allowed to cross examine the proponent on their evidence,” he said. “From our perspective, how can we ensure that our environmental concerns are going to be addressed when we don’t even have an opportunity to test the evidence by way of cross examination, to properly be able to assess the potential risks that could be there as a result of the project going ahead?”   He pointed out that there was plenty of opposition to the Northern Gateway Pipeline, which the federal body approved in 2014, subject to 209 conditions.

Lower Nicola Band isn’t the only band boycotting the NEB process. Neskonlith Indian Band, located near Chase and led by chief Judy Wilson is another. Sam estimated that about 20 First Nations were still participating in the hearings. “One of the things that Prime Minister Trudeau said prior to being elected was that the NEB process needed to be overhauled — that it was a flawed process,” concluded Sam. “We wrote a letter to the Prime Minister letting him know that we’re disappointed that he hasn’t taken any steps to address the flawed process like he said he would.”