How can our PM, in the same breath, denounce foreign money pouring into oil sands while inviting Chinese "investment" in the oil sands?
How can our PM blast environmentalists as "radicals" but then throw his radical support behind the Northern Gateway pipeline, "vowing" to ensure its completion, while an "independent" review panel is still assessing the environmental impact. How independent can those bureaucrats feel, when the Primer Minister is a party, aggressively attacking and crushing all opposition to the pipeline?
Yes, crushing all opposition to the pipeline and trampling on First Nations' rights while preaching free speech in China? I am embarrassed and offended. Canadians deserve a slightly smarter, less "ethical" government.
The president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce Perrin Beatty can be excused for being pro-business and seeing everything that comes in the way of doing business as an obstacle that needs to be removed or overcome. However he is creating an obstacle for Canadian businesses by disrespecting the very First Nations that they want to do business with.
Note how casually Perrin Beatty dismisses treaty rights that get in the way of doing business:
“We need to look at environmental issues, we need to look at whether projects are respectful of treaty rights and so on, but we need to make decisions as well. And what we’re finding today is a process that simply bogs down, and opponents of development use process itself to prevent development from taking place, not on the merits of the case but simply on the ability to delay.” [emphasis added]
What "decisions" are these that are so important and urgent that treaty rights "and so on" cannot even slow them down?
He goes on to support Stephen Harper's governments initiative to "reform" the natural resource project review process. Reading between the lines, it is okay to change a review process (that is necessitated by treaty rights) to allow "fast-tracking" decisions favouring Canadian businesses, but it is not okay if the decisions are slowed down or even suspended due to treaty rights considerations?
This is just one example of the failure on part of Canadian businesses to treat the First Nations at least with the same respect that one business would show to another business during business negotiations. You cannot acknowledge and dismiss the rights of the other party in the same breath.
Ironically, the review process that he is so upset about, has not been any more respectful. Tyler McCreary points out the omission of native words in the transcript of the hearings of the Joint Review Panel addressing the Enbridge Northern Gateway project. He raises an important question: If the panel cannot hear (and accurately record) the words of the First Nations speakers, how can they inspire confidence that they heard the message in those words?
If this was two businesses interested in communicating with each other, efforts would be made to have accurate transcripts of the communications. If this was two nations communicating with each other, efforts would be made to have accurate translations and transcription.
The failure to treat the First Nations as a "Nation" (or even a business), a sovereign group whose rights have been recognized by the Crown and upheld by the Supreme Court, is an obstacle hindering communication and business with them (if they want to do any business in the first place). One would have thought that businesses and governments wanting to do business on the First Nations lands, and with their co-operation, would demonstrate that they are smarter -- and more ethical -- than the "unethical" tyrannical, oppressive regimes that bully their populace. Isn't this about the pursuit of "ethical oil" after all?
