Now that the Liberals and Christy Clark are back in charge for the next four years, some serious movement should be expected on the pipeline front.
A central plank of the Clark platform was becoming a world powerhouse in the liquefied natural gas market, building pipelines, plants and ports to ship the gas to Asian markets. Carrier Sekani Tribal Council chief Terry Teegee is eager to meet with the premier to get more information on her plans and to share his views with her on these proposals. His comment made to The Citizen's Peter James in Tuesday's front page story spoke volumes.
"The sooner she talks to us, the quicker we can make an informed decision on whether we will approve these projects or not," he said.
Unstoppable force (Christy Clark), meet immovable object (Terry Teegee).
Clark was adamant during her exclusive interview with The Citizen during the campaign that B.C. First Nations without a treaty do not have veto rights when it comes to development on their traditional territories. Yet Teegee and many other aboriginal leaders insist their prior approval is essential to any major resource development on their lands.
It's important to stress that both Clark and Teegee have shown some flexibility on this issue.
Teegee made it clear he's not opposed to development in general and natural gas pipelines in particular but he's got questions he wants answered. On the flip side, he's made his opposition to Northern Gateway crystal clear. He no doubt expects Clark to hold to her five conditions that she wants met before endorsing Northern Gateway and will certainly remind her of it when they do meet face to face.
Clark made First Nations buy-in one of her five conditions, opening the door herself to the idea of aboriginal approval to major resource development without actually defining what "buy-in" looks like. In her remarks to The Citizen, she stressed that when all communities and stakeholders are on side with development, everyone wins.
That's true but naturally, the devil is in the details. Getting to "yes" requires some tough negotiating and that can take time and bruise relations. That means staying at the table, even when it's hard.
Despite their "frosty" talks last year, Clark is willing to have another go-around with Alberta Premier Alison Redford over Northern Gateway, in an effort to find common ground. Politics is the art of the compromise and ideals shouldn't get in the way of common-sense solutions.
With a four-year mandate, Clark now has room to manoeuvre on both the resource development and First Nations fronts. The challenge for her will be to get things done and not get mired in the mud.
