Celebrities’ interference in northern B.C. energy project causing more harm to First Nations: Haisla Chief
Haisla Nation Chief Councilor Crystal Smith is the latest BC leader to warn Hollywood A-listers who have urged banks to stop funding the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline project.
“I wonder if the Hollywood actors who are calling for an end to our economic independence understand Canada’s indigenous history and what life on reservations is like,” Smith wrote in an open letter (first published in The National Post on March 29). ).
“…if they succeed in stopping these projects, they will also crush the hopes and aspirations of thousands of BC Aboriginal people for a future without unemployment, without welfare and without hopelessness and despair,” Smith said.
Earlier this month, more than 65 Hollywood celebrities, led by The Avengers actor Mark Ruffalo, signed the “No More Dirty Banks” petition, urging RBC bank to stop funding fossil fuel projects like CGL and the rights of indigenous people disregard peoples.
Smith, who is in her second term as Haisla’s Chief Councilor-elect, is also Chair of the First Nations LNG Alliance, which promotes economic development of indigenous communities through energy projects.
The Haisla Nation is also one of 20 First Nations who have signed the 400-mile (670-kilometer) CGL Pipeline that runs through their lands in northwestern BC. The pipeline will be constructed to deliver natural gas from the Dawson Creek area to LNG Canada’s facility under construction at Kitimat in the Haisla Territory.
However, pipeline opponents have repeatedly emphasized environmental concerns about building the pipeline under the Wedzin Kwa (Morice River) without the consent of the hereditary chiefs.
On March 9, Haisla, along with 16 of those First Nations, also signed an option agreement with CGL’s parent company, TC Energy, to become a shareholder.
“When Mark Ruffalo and Ben Stiller and other celebrities ask banks to withhold funding for projects like Coastal GasLink, they don’t consider the damage they are doing to the interests of our nation and our people,” Smith said.
Smith went on to speak about Indigenous partnerships with projects like LNG Canada, saying the Haisla had a “part and a say” in that project, in contrast to the large industrial projects of the 1950s and ’60s at Kitimat, including the Aluminum Company of Canada ( now Rio Tinto) and a now closed pulp and paper mill.
Smith isn’t the only person calling Ruffalo and the other celebrities. Premier John Horgan expressed his disappointment at celebrity interference in British Columbia’s affairs immediately after the launch of the No More Dirty Banks campaign in mid-March.
While Horgan’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Terrace Standard, he said in an interview with Global News that Ruffalo was shooting from the sidelines without fully understanding the intricacies of British Columbia’s economic development.
Skeena BC Liberal MLA Ellis Ross, who wrote a similar open letter last year scolding Leonardo DiCaprio on the same issue, said it’s about time Canadians stop caring about what foreigners think about our resources or Energy development say, beat up.
“The world needed our clean LNG long before this energy crisis, and now they need it more than ever,” he said, referring to the supply crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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