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What the heck is Sierra Club BC doing in Northern Alberta?!

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By Galen Armstrong, Peace Valley Campaigner & Volunteer Coordinator

June 2018

When we started working on the Site C dam, it was for mostly BC-centric reasons. BC Hydro ratepayers would have to foot the multi-billion dollar bill for an unnecessary megadam; BC residents would be essentially losing the Peace River Valley, and losing the benefit of the food grown there. As Canadians, we would be violating Treaty 8, which guarantees the rights of Treaty 8 First Nations to use the land – rights which can’t be exercised when the land is flooded.

The list of problems with Site C goes on and on, and like the Mighty Peace, it doesn’t stop in BC. The Peace River’s headwaters are in BC’s Rocky Mountains, fed by the Finlay River, Halfway River, Parsnip River and other tributaries as it flows eastward and northward into Alberta.

Having worked with the Mikisew Cree First Nation to initiate the UNESCO Mission to Wood Buffalo National Park and the Peace-Athabasca Delta within it, our campaign to protect BC’s Peace River inevitably moved beyond the BC border. With Canada refusing to assess Site C’s impact on the Delta, we decided to return there, this time with photographer Louis Bockner, to capture photographs of this huge, internationally significant Delta.

The Narwhal also sent reporter Judith Lavoie along on the mission this month, to report on the story of the Delta. Together, we interviewed Indigenous Elders in and around the Delta. Stay tuned on The Narwhal’s website for forthcoming stories, photos and video from the trip!

Until then, here are a few snapshots I took along the way:

Here is a relatively quiet section of the Slave River, just North of Wood Buffalo National Park. We visited with locals fishing from the banks. The Slave drains the Peace-Athabasca Delta and flows into Great Slave Lake, which is drained by the Mackenzie into the Arctic Ocean.

 

A wilder section of the Slave River, where migrating American white pelicans feed on fish in the rapids.

 

A view out of the window on our flyover of Wood Buffalo National Park and the Peace-Athabasca Delta, where the boreal forest meets the boreal plains. Later in the trip, we did a flyover of the Tar Sands and the proposed site of Teck’s Frontier Oil Sands Mine Project, which would be the largest Tar Sands mine ever built.

 

After driving through the Park, we met a boat and were taken down the Peace River to Fort Chipewyan. This small community is accessible by boat and plane only except for a few months when it’s cold enough to open the frozen winter road – a window of time growing shorter each year. Reporter Judith Lavoie interviews the boat’s captain.

 

I can’t wait for you to see Louis’ photos and video and read Judith Lavoie’s articles! Stay tuned to our website and The Narwhal. Until then, take action on our website here: https://sierraclub.bc.ca/stop-site-c/

 

Feature image by Katie Wheatley 

 

 

 

 

Site C is not a done deal

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March 2018

Farmers Ken and Arlene Boon. Photo by Louis Bockner

This month, Peace Valley farmers Ken and Arlene Boon have been touring southern BC with a message: Site C is not a done deal.

While some of their land has been expropriated to accommodate the re-routing of Highway 29, they have not been forced out of their historic farmhouse, and they are not packing their bags.

The list of reasons that the Site C dam project on the Peace River never should have been started is long. And so is the list of reasons why now, more than two years into construction, it still makes sense to scrap the project and restore the Peace River Valley.

The farmland in the valley is uniquely productive, including the land Arlene Boon’s family has farmed for generations. The cost of the project is ever-rising, having gone from $9 billion to $10.7 billion in just the past year. The electricity is expected to be used to power the LNG industry, an industry that – at best – shouldn’t need BC Hydro to subsidize it, and – at worst – threatens to tip us over the climate change edge.

And there’s another huge reason bigger than any megadam: treaty rights. West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations, both Treaty 8 signatories, will finally have a chance to make arguments in court this summer. These BC Supreme Court hearings on their injunction application will last 10 days and are scheduled to take place sometime between July 23 and September 10.

Another Treaty 8 Nation, Blueberry River First Nation, has a major case heading for the courts in Vancouver on April 9. This case will look at the cumulative impacts of industrial development in their territory, which includes major dams on the Peace like Site C.

Downstream of the Site C dam site, the Mikisew Cree First Nation is fighting to protect the Peace-Athabasca Delta (the PAD) from industrial encroachments such as tarsands development and major dams on the Peace River including Site C.

Yvonne Tupper. Photo by Louis Bockner.

We continue to stand with Treaty 8 First Nations against the Site C dam, which threatens their treaty rights and their ways of life.

On the Peace-Athabasca Delta file in particular, the world is watching. Wood Buffalo National Park is Canada’s largest national park and a globally significant World Heritage Site. It protects the Peace-Athabasca Delta, home to fish, moose, bison, endangered migratory birds and a landscape the Mikisew Cree have depended on for millennia. But Trudeau’s inaction on assessing the potential impacts of Site C could put this globally significant region on the List of World Heritage in Danger. After Sierra Club BC raised the issue with UNESCO, the international body strongly criticized Canada for failing to protect Wood Buffalo National Park.

Please call on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to halt Site C construction immediately and keep his promise to honour Indigenous rights!

Send your letter now

An update about the Boons’ tour

Site C fundraiser on Salt Spring Island

Crowd gathered at Salt Spring Island Library

We participated in a 7-stop tour organized with Ken and Arlene Boon, organizing events on Salt Spring Island and helping out in Sooke. Over $13,000 was raised across the tour to support West Moberly & Prophet River First Nations legal challenges, as well as the Peace Valley Landowner Association.

Sierra Club BC’s Quadra Island Local Group had a terrific success at their coffee house with musician Luke Wallace as part of the tour. They raised $3,500 in 2 hours!

“We are a community of 2,500 men, women and children…informed and committed to stopping Site C. Since January we have raised $4,500 for the PVLA and for the court challenges. All it took was a phone call to two friends, a hundred hours of work and a committed community.”
-Geraldine Kenney, Quadra Island Local Group and Sierra Club BC board member

Thank you to everyone that came out to participate in conversations on where we go from here, and for their generous contributions to keep this fight alive!

Feature image: Wood Buffalo National Park, courtesy of MCFN GIR.

Site C dam decision a litmus test of government’s commitment to Indigenous reconciliation and rights

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

November 30, 2017

With a decision on whether to complete or cancel the Site C dam imminent, Sierra Club BC calls for the provincial cabinet to consider its impacts on downstream Indigenous communities.

Responding to an open letter from downstream Indigenous communities calling on Premier John Horgan to cancel the project, Peace Valley campaigner Galen Armstrong said, “If the provincial government’s commitment to reconciliation and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is to mean anything, this government must cancel the Site C dam.”

The government was elected on promises of reconciliation and implementation of the principles of the UN Declaration.

“Site C threatens the land, waters and resources of downstream Indigenous communities with permanent, extensive and irreversible harm,” said Armstrong. “It’s easy to spout the rhetoric of reconciliation and rights, but now those words are being tested by a very real choice.

“This government cannot simply push title and rights aside when they are inconvenient. If it is serious about its commitment, there is no choice but to cancel Site C.

“Sierra Club BC stands with Treaty 8 First Nations and all downstream Indigenous communities who would be negatively impacted by this dam,” said Armstrong. “The people of this region are already facing negative impacts from existing dam development and to make this problem worse by building yet another mega-dam would be a terrible injustice. British Columbia needs to move forward in its relationship with Indigenous peoples, not backward.”

Site C would impact hundreds of culturally significant sites and important hunting and fishing grounds in the Peace River Valley and would threaten water flows downstream in the Peace-Athabasca Delta (protected by Wood Buffalo National Park) upon which the Mikisew Cree depend. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee has called upon Canada to conduct an assessment of Site C’s impact on Wood Buffalo National Park, a World Heritage Site.

When the need for reconciliation with Indigenous communities is combined with the threats posed by the dam to vital farmland, the impact on wildlife and ecosystems, the horrendous cost to Hydro ratepayers and the dramatic reductions we have seen in the cost of renewable alternatives, the balance is decisively tipped in favour of cancelling Site C.

Ninety-four per cent of the province is designated public Crown land; much of this is unceded territory, subject to Indigenous title and rights. Reconciliation for historical wrongs is necessary and important and any plan for our common future must recognize and address the province’s painful shared history.

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Contact:
Galen Armstrong
Sierra Club BC
C: 778-679-3191
galen@sierraclub.bc.ca

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