◼ ECONOMICS Bloomberg Businessweek March 2, 202026
JASON FRANSON/THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP PHOTOit’s working with indigenous groups to provide them
the opportunity to acquire a 10% stake in the line.
There are already precedents for such deals. The
Fort McKay and Mikisew Cree First Nations own 49%
of a Suncor Energy Inc. oil storage facility near Fort
McMurray, Alta., an investment that was financed in
part with a C$545 million bond sale in 2017.
At least three indigenous-led groups have drawn
up competing proposals to give First Nations a
chance to buy a stake in the Trans Mountain pipe-
line. The groups are attracted to the idea of having
a reliable source of revenue. They’re also aware
that providing the project with an imprimatur of
indigenous approval could help it overcome resis-
tance from local communities.Chief Mike LeBourdais, who leads the Pellt’iq’t
people near Kamloops, B.C., has organized a group
of communities seeking to buy a majority stake in
Trans Mountain. “This pipeline is important to
Canada, and that’s the bottom line,” he says. “If
we want doctors and standing armies and Royal
Canadian Mounted Police and a health-care system,
then you get the pipeline done. I’m trying to help
them do that.”
But support from groups like LeBourdais’s
may not be enough to head off protests. Kanahus
Manuel, a member of the Secwepemc people,
lives in a community of tiny houses in the moun-
tains of central British Columbia, near where a
1,000-person work camp is planned for the build-
ers of the Trans Mountain expansion.
Manuel says she and a group of fellow Secwepemc
people are going to put up a fight, and they have sup-
porters and friends ready to join them. “Canada pur-
chased the pipeline to de-risk it,” Manuel says. “The
risk is us.”�Kevin Orland and Robert TuttleTHE BOTTOM LINE Disruptions to rail and port traffic in Western
Canada caused by demonstrations against a planned gas pipeline
could knock first-quarter growth to 1.5%.government has made a priority of improving
relations with First Nations, initially struck a concil-
iatory tone, instructing his ministers to reach out to
indigenous communities. But on Feb. 21, Trudeau
said efforts to arrive at a negotiated solution had
failed and signaled that he’d be open to police inter-
vention. “We cannot continue to watch Canadians
suffer shortages and layoffs,” the prime minister
told reporters. “The barricades must now come
down,” he said.
Trudeau’s initial overtures to the protesters
angered some business leaders and Conservatives,
a few of whom pressed the government to use
force to swiftly end the demonstrations. Alberta
Premier Jason Kenney, whose oil- and gas-rich
province stands to benefit from the natural gas
pipeline, criticized the protests as “ecocolonial-
ism” by urban Canadians who are projecting their
“fringe political agenda” onto indigenous people.
“This is a dress rehearsal for illegal protests on
pretty much any major project,” Kenney said at a
Feb. 11 press conference.
The major project Kenney may have in mind is
the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, a much
larger development than the gas line at the cen-
ter of the Wet’suwet’en protests. The C$12.6 bil-
lion ($9.5 billion) Trans Mountain project seeks to
roughly triple the capacity of an oil pipeline run-
ning along a 1,150-kilometer (715-mile) route from
Edmonton, through the Rocky Mountains, to a
shipping terminal near Vancouver.
The opposition to the project has been so fierce
that the pipeline’s original owner, Kinder Morgan
Inc., threatened to scrap the expansion, prompt-
ing Trudeau’s government to swoop in and buy the
pipeline in 2018. Construction started in late 2019
and is scheduled to resume in earnest this year
after the winter freeze ends, possibly kicking off a
new round of protests.
This isn’t the first time Canada’s indigenous com-
munities—which account for about 5% of the nation’s
population—have clashed with industry. In the 1990s
more than 10,000 people protested logging activities
along Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island, leading
to almost 1,000 arrests. The latest demonstrations
have the support of about 39% of Canadians, while
51% support the natural gas pipeline, according to a
poll released by the Angus Reid Institute on Feb. 13.
Canada’s First Nations aren’t united in their oppo-
sition to the Coastal GasLink line. The project has the
support of all 20 indigenous communities along the
line’s route, according to TC Energy Corp., including
the elected council of the Wet’suwet’en. The main
source of resistance to the project is a number of the
Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs. TC Energy has said▲ Wet’suwet’en
hereditary chiefs at
a January rally in
British Columbia