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Following is the textual content of an open letter despatched by the Alliance to BC Premier David Eby on 22 February 2023:
February 22, 2023
The Honourable David Eby KC, M.L.A. By electronic mail: premier@gov.bc.ca
Premier of British Columbia
PO Field 9041 STN PROV GOVT
VICTORIA, BC V8W 9E1
Pricey Premier Eby:
Re: Open Letter Regarding Liquefied Pure Fuel
The members of the First Nations LNG Alliance are issuing this open letter in response to rising issues about the way forward for Liquefied Pure Fuel in British Columbia. Your authorities’s obvious withdrawal from this most essential pillar of financial reconciliation and accountable power transition could be an environmental and financial coverage failure that threatens the wellbeing of our members and the province as a complete.
Our issues are triggered by the obvious lack of specific dedication to LNG improvement within the February 6, 2023 Throne Speech along with lengthy delays in regulatory decision-making.
We’re additionally totally conscious that your workplace is below excessive stress from sure members of caucus and varied ill-informed NGOs who consider that the province ought to instantly stop all conventional power improvement, whatever the financial and human penalties.
We don’t maintain these irresponsible and unrealistic views. Somewhat, for the primary time in lots of generations, LNG improvement has offered speedy and medium-term alternatives to raise hundreds of Indigenous folks and our communities out of intergenerational poverty. In reality, we’re already seeing advantages from employment, coaching, contracting, procurement, and advantages agreements which we anticipate will proceed flowing from accountable useful resource improvement initiatives into the longer term.
Comparable hopes and plans are more and more shared by different First Nations throughout Canada, as evidenced by our current alliance with White Bear First Nations in Saskatchewan and Miawpukek Mi’kamawey Mawi’omi First Nation in Newfoundland and Labrador. These First Nations additionally acknowledge the super nationwide alternatives which are being misplaced by means of Canada’s power insurance policies, most lately within the obvious rejection of pure gasoline exports to Germany and Japan. We anticipate the federal government of British Columbia to help financial reconciliation regardless of these federal failures.
We remind you that First Nations have supported provincial priorities in LNG improvement since its inception. This help was cautiously given after substantial inner and intergovernmental session. Based mostly on agreements reached by means of these processes and our conviction that LNG is the one obtainable transition-to-net-zero gas, now we have made substantial funding choices that aligned our financial reconciliation aspirations with provincial values and commitments.
We acknowledge the Throne Speech dedication to a spread of social applications and group helps. Nevertheless, with out equally clear commitments to financial reconciliation initiatives, such applications and helps can have no extra success than they’ve had prior to now. Reconciliation is unimaginable with out the hope and dignity supported by participation in a viable, trendy economic system.
Your authorities’s Throne Speech recognition that “First Nations working to pursue sustainable financial improvement and long-term partnerships with {industry}, profit not simply First Nations – however everybody round them, now and into the longer term” offers a transparent path ahead to help and approve liquefied pure gasoline initiatives now that groundbreaking Indigenous useful resource reconciliation choices have been made.
To do in any other case for no different cause than to appease local weather alarmists is unimaginable to reconcile with these values or your authorities’s dedication below the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the provincial Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, and the judicially acknowledged financial element of treaty and Aboriginal rights protected by part 35 of the Structure Act, 1982.
We won’t hesitate to advance and implement our pursuits ought to British Columbia default on any of those obligations.
Yours really,
Karen Ogen, MSW, MBA
Chief Government Officer
First Nations LNG Alliance
cc: Board members
Hon. Josie Osborne, Minister of Power, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation
Hon. Murray Rankin, Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation
Statements from the Board of Administrators
Karen Ogen, Chief Government Officer acknowledged: “We’ve come such a good distance in help of LNG initiatives, a few of which are actually ready for constructive choices to allow them to proceed. While you determine to hearken to us, and once we say ‘sure’ to unlocking prosperity in our communities, each group in BC additionally prospers. There is a chance prematurely of Finances 2023 for the BC NDP authorities to indicate reconciliation in motion by recognizing the worth of LNG in British Columbia’s path to reconciliation.
Please make the fitting choices to construct sturdy and wholesome First Nations communities, benefiting all residents. The journey has begun. Please be a part of us.”
Chief Annette Lonechild from White Bear First Nations in Treaty 4 in Saskatchewan says “nations have the inherent financial proper as sovereign nations for financial inclusion and reconciliation in creating the Indigenous economic system. Sustainable Indigenous power and LNG play an important position in supporting communities with significant improvement. Nation-to-industry and nation-to-nation coverage, improvement, and shared helpful outcomes make for a greater high quality of life and atmosphere for all. Exclusionary politics shouldn’t be restrictive and discriminatory instruments in opposition to Indigenous self-determinism and steady enchancment.”
Chief Lonechild leads White Bear Nations Improvement Corp in power and infrastructure improvement and performs a number one position with indigenous engineered, procurement, and constructed developments throughout the Indigenous power and infrastructure sector. She advocates for a sustainable imaginative and prescient with The First Nations LNG Alliance from coast-to-coast-to-coast motion with LNG and power outcomes.
John Jack, Member of Council for Huu-ay-aht First Nations
“LNG initiatives in Canada are crucial to handle the very actual financial wants of British Columbians, particularly indigenous peoples and communities. Realistically, indigenous governments should assist create and share worth in a globalized economic system to vary the closely broken destinies of their peoples and communities. The troublesome financial scenario of indigenous communities and other people have to be thought of on stability with overarching however impersonal climate-related objectives. Like many inconvenient industries, LNG is crucial for true financial reconciliation between indigenous communities and British Columbia and Canada.”
Clifford White, Gitxaala Nation Hereditary Chief
“Whereas the world seeks higher methods to enhance local weather change, Liquid Pure Fuel (LNG), dealt with in an environmentally sustainable method, helps our creating nations cut back greenhouse gases from using coal, diesel, and wooden burning.
Liquid Pure Fuel offers our Indigenous communities with a cleaner gas for producing electrical energy, heating properties, and cooking. Amongst many alternatives, LNG offers our Indigenous peoples and communities with coaching, larger schooling, expertise, employment, larger paying jobs, native First Nation Authorities agreements, and environmental monitoring to guard Mom Earth and our communities.
Because the Stewards of Mom Earth, now we have a duty to guard the environment, cut back world warming, and constantly discovering alternative routes to depart this world in a greater place for our youngsters’s kids but to be born. For now, LNG helps the world cut back damaging emissions. In lower than a day, the air that’s breathed in different nations, we breath in now.”
Jackie Thomas, FNLNGA Board Member
“Within the bigger context of power effectivity and environmental sustainability, pure gasoline appear safer than coal burning or nuclear energy to me, and First Nations ought to have the ability of selection. Our ancestors all the time revered this idea.”
Councillor Ellen Lorentz, Ts’il Kaz Koh First Nation
“Lately, there have been rising issues about our local weather right here on Earth and the position Liquified Pure Fuel performs in it. This low price, dependable power, in partnership with the Indigenous inhabitants, has a really important profit to billions of individuals all over the world. Due to fossil fueled developments, local weather associated deaths are at an all-time low. This power is behind actually each {industry} in North America. It even runs the equipment that’s wanted to wash the air within the aim of achieving web zero. With expertise, strides are being achieved and can proceed.
LNG, working with Indigenous companions, can construct higher initiatives and convey financial reconciliation to the folks. With the Coastal Fuel Hyperlink mission, there have been advantages in schooling, employment and contracting, bringing communities out of poverty. The price of residing is quickly rising and placing healthful existence out of attain of the typical particular person in North America. With out LNG, life could be a fantastic deal extra pricey than it’s at the moment.
There are different nations that predominantly use coal. Canada is within the place to assist Mom Earth as a complete, not simply house. Liquified Pure Fuel just isn’t our rival.”
(Posted right here 22 February 2023)
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