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Northern
www.northernsentinel.com
Volume 61 No. 17
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
1.30 INCLUDES TAX
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A group of volunteers pose before heading out on the road to clean up trash on April 18. The lead organizer Sandra Jackson felt embarrassed seeing garbage as she drives the highway daily for her work.
Clean-up crew tackles Kitimat highway Cameron Orr Having lived in Kitimat for under a year so far, Sandra Jackson still felt embarrassed to bring people in to her community due to the abundance of trash along Highway 37S. Jackson drives a bus from the airport to Kitimat and has always been very aware of the garbage along the road’s side. Having had enough of that, she banded together a group of fellow do-gooders who donned reflective vests
Why does it rain so much in Kitimat?
/page 3 Jungle Book comes to life on stage. /page 6 PM477761
and pickers, and took to the road to get at least a little bit of it cleaned up. Jackson took to social media to recruit helpers and eventually set a day and time and told would-be cleaners she’d be there if they wanted to join. In the end 11 people gathered at the Kitimat Chamber of Commerce parking lot. They were read the safety briefing, and set out towards Cablecar. “It’s bad,” said organizer Sandra Jackson about the
garbage just before heading out on clean-up duty. “You don’t see scenery or mountains, just trash.” There were plans for further clean up efforts following this one. Maintaining the road, which includes trash pick-up, is officially a duty for the main highway contractor, which for us is Nechako Northcoast. We called Northcoast to ask them about their cleanup protocols but had not received a call back by press time.
Haisla FOI request 4 years later Cameron Orr Haisla Chief Councillor Ellis Ross says the reveal of internal government e-mails comes too late to support their court case against Canada relating to the Enbridge Northern Gateway project, but does confirm his long-standing suspicions regarding the consultation process for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines proposal. “We’ve done a tremendous amount of Freedom of Information requests regarding Enbridge,” said Ross, noting some had come back sooner, among the exceptions this latest one that came four years later. “But this one here for some reason didn’t come out until after the Joint Review process and after Canada’s process and after our court case against Canada got started.” Among the information released in the FOI documents are that First Nations were not involved in the design of the consultation process, there was limited opportunity for government departments to engage with Aboriginal groups until after the JRP process and there was a “lack of clarity” about First Nations rights and title considerations. “It’s too late for us to use it in any of our court proceed-
“This confirms that even their administrative body...believed the same thing the Haisla did. ” ings...and this is exactly why we’re taking Canada to court,” said Ross. He said the reveal of these internal documents confirms the Haisla’s perspective on Canada’s approach to rights and title. ”We’ve been saying it since day one,” he said. “It just fell on deaf ears. So this confirms that even their administrative body...believed the same thing the Haisla did. By the way we did not talk in depth with Canada’s administration regarding these issues.” The Haisla have taken Canada to court following the issuing of a federal government approval to Enbridge, on the grounds the government did not abide by rights and title case law. Ross said proceedings will likely begin on that matter in October.