FIRST READING: As Carney government approves first pipeline, First Nations threaten to destroy another

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“No company would build a pipeline to nowhere,” Ebel said.

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The anti-pipeline consortium seemed to acknowledge as much. A statement trumpeted their success in shutting down prior projects, including Northern Gateway, and imposing “legal risk” on the endeavour.

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“No companies have come forward to support a proposed oil pipeline and tankers project to the North Coast thus far and we expect it to stay that way,” Marilyn Slett, chief councillor of the Heiltsuk Nation, is quoted as saying.

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Both Alberta and the federal government have been particularly emphatic about how any West Coast Oil Pipeline would have to include heavy Indigenous ownership and participation.

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A November Memorandum of Understanding about the proposed pipeline mentions the word “Indigenous” 19 times, and Alberta’s official literature for the project brands it a “world-class Indigenous co-owned pipeline.”

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Nevertheless, the First Nations consortium indicated an uncompromising intention to shut down the project, citing a “potential oil spill” as a deal breaker.

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Gaagwiis, president of the Haida Nation, is quoted in a statement as saying that Prime Minister Mark Carney had sought out “free, prior and informed consent” for a pipeline, and that none would be forthcoming.

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“There is no pathway to yes for us when it comes to this level of risk to our food security, culture and way of life,” he said.

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All of this is occurring against ongoing controversy in B.C. over the amount of Indigenous control over both resource development and even the very workings of the provincial government.

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This has mostly coalesced around the issue of DRIPA, a 2019 bill that wrote the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into B.C. law.

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Although pitched as mostly a symbolic measure, last December a B.C. Appeals Court judge ruled that DRIPA effectively superseded all other B.C. laws and was now “the interpretive lens through which B.C. laws must be viewed.”

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B.C. Premier David Eby originally signalled his intent to remove the more compromising sections of DRIPA cited by the court, only to abruptly reverse course last week.

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Last Monday, Eby appeared alongside the First Nations Leadership Council — a pro-DRIPA activist group — and announced that the legislation would be staying in place.

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“The Government of B.C. will not be introducing legislation to suspend or amend DRIPA or UN Declaration-related provisions in the Interpretation Act, in the spring legislative session,” read a one-page statement from the premier’s office.

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In a press scrum that day, Eby would acknowledge that the decision was partially informed by the threat of Indigenous blockades, saying “there is a very real threat to our province in continued conflict with First Nations.”

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IN OTHER NEWS

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Ever since Pierre Poilievre became Conservative leader in 2022, the party has done extraordinarily well among younger voters. Polls have consistently shown the under-29 demographic as one of the strongest single cohorts for the Conservatives, and even a poll of 917,109 high schoolers in the 2025 federal election revealed that teenagers would have preferred a Conservative government. But the above Abacus Data poll, released on Sunday, shows that Conservative dominance of the 20-something vote may be faltering.

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In advance of a fiscal update scheduled to be released Tuesday, on Monday the Carney government launched the Canada Strong Fund, which it touted as a “sovereign wealth fund” for Canada.

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There’s just one problem. Sovereign wealth funds are typically set up to sock away budget surpluses. Canada, by contrast, is stacking up record quantities of government debt.

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The totemic example of a sovereign wealth fund is the Government Pension Fund of Norway. Norway has been running massive budget surpluses ever since the mid-1990s largely as a result of its lucrative oil and gas sector.

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Rather than simply blowing all this surplus on extra spending, Norway adds it to a sovereign wealth fund that is now worth about $3.5 trillion.

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Canada is in the precise opposite situation. Its combined provincial and federal debt is currently around $2.5 trillion, and multiple governments continue to stack up record deficits.