Poilievre promises to let tankers carry oil through B.C. oceans. Some voters warn it will reopen an old fight
Coastal First Nation leaders, local Conservative candidate, have long feared impact of ocean spills
If a ban on oil tankers off British Columbia's North Coast is lifted, Arnie Nagy is ready to fight.
A member of the Haida Nation living in Prince Rupert, more than 700 kilometres up the coast from Vancouver, he spent his career working in fish canneries that once employed thousands, and still takes to the ocean for salmon.
He didn't hesitate when asked what is at stake for him in the upcoming federal election.
"Our way of life," he replied.
"My family's way of life since time immemorial: The protection of the marine environment, the protection of our rights to go food fishing, the protection of the salmon resources and the marine resources that we used to build the economics in coastal communities."
Nagy, now 61, said he's been fighting proposals to put oil tankers in B.C.'s oceans since the 1970s. Today, the issue has been brought back to the agenda by the federal Conservatives, who are running on a promise to repeal Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act.
And the question of which message resonates more — getting oil to market or protecting coastal waters — could help decide the outcome of a federal election, in which this riding of Skeena-Bulkley Valley is shaping up to be a key battleground if the Conservatives want to form government.
Passed in 2019 under then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, the moratorium act prevents tankers carrying more than 12,500 metric tonnes of oil from travelling along B.C.'s coastline between the north tip of Vancouver Island and Alaska, and was celebrated by Nagy when it became law.
But Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre argues the legislation is choking Canada's resource industry and has promised to lift it should he become prime minister. He's attacked Mark Carney for saying a new Liberal government would keep the ban in place.
Poilievre has also framed the issue as a matter of national security in the face of tariffs and economic threats from the United States, arguing there is a renewed importance on opening up overseas markets for oil produced in B.C. and Alberta.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, meanwhile, has put out a list of demands for whoever becomes prime minister. It includes lifting the tanker ban alongside several other measures aimed at getting Albertan oil to market in order to "avoid an unprecedented national unity crisis."
"Albertans will no longer tolerate the way we've been treated by the federal Liberals over the past 10 years," she wrote on X.
At his request, I met with Prime Minister Mark Carney <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkJCarney?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MarkJCarney</a> today. We had a very frank discussion in which I made it clear that Albertans will no longer tolerate the way we've been treated by the federal Liberals over the past 10 years. <br><br>I provided a specific list of… <a href="https://t.co/SmTsyFoxvM">pic.twitter.com/SmTsyFoxvM</a>
—@ABDanielleSmithNagy, however, believes that's simply a smokescreen, dressing resource projects up in a message of patriotism when in reality they would reopen old conflicts.
"We've got to be united as Canadians, not divided on silly proposals that don't really benefit the Canadian people," he said, arguing the money from projects goes to companies rather than communities, while putting marine environments at risk.
Divisive Northern Gateway pipeline still looms large
Down a gravel road through farmers' fields north of Red Deer, Alberta, are the historic Leduc Oil Fields.
Leduc kicked off Alberta's post-war oil boom in 1947 and today crews are still working to power the local economy — and, as they see it, that of the country as a whole.
But, they say, they often feel ignored or worse, maligned by other parts of the country — a feeling Bryan Gould, CEO of Aspenleaf Energy, believes is about to boil over depending on the outcome of this year's election.
"I see a sort of crossroads, frankly, where we either leverage the great strengths and the bounty that we have as a country, or we put barriers in place, don't realize our potential, and that can have, you know, really dramatic unity impacts in a negative sense," he said in an interview with CBC Radio's The Current.
Chris Simeniuk, a former oil worker, expressed enthusiasm for Poilievre's plans to streamline the regulatory approval process for new energy projects.
"Let's get something happening," he said.
He also lamented the death of Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline, a project whose name is often brought up in discussions around efforts to get Canadian oil overseas.
That development would have seen about 525,000 barrels of petroleum a day shipped from just northeast of Edmonton through more than 1,700 kilometres of pipeline to Kitimat, B.C., just east of Prince Rupert, for export overseas.
The pipeline was approved by Stephen Harper's Conservatives, and protested by hundreds of people in both Kitimat and further afield. Its approval was reversed when the Federal Court found Ottawa had not adequately consulted Indigenous people along the project's route, and effectively killed once Trudeau came to power and announced the tanker moratorium in 2016.
But the Conservatives already have a strong foothold in Alberta, where the tanker ban is maligned.
Where they are attempting to win new voters is on B.C.'s North Coast, in the vast Skeena-Bulkley Valley riding which has returned NDP candidates since its creation in 2004 and where opposition to Northern Gateway and oil shipments remains strong.
In January, when Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip said he was prepared to rethink his opposition to the pipeline in the face of tariff threats, he was quickly faced with backlash and retracted his comments the next day.
Indigenous leaders, including the elected Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations and Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs, reiterated their opposition to the project, warning they would do everything they could to stop if from moving forward.
'Not a risk people are willing to take': NDP
Also opposed to reopening the debate is Taylor Bachrach, who as mayor of Smithers joined in a council vote opposing the project. Today, he is running for re-election as the NDP MP in Skeena-Bulkley Valley, a riding so large and remote that he visits some of his constituents by canoe.
"For 10 years, people in this part of the world — communities, First Nations, ranchers, fishermen — stood together and said, 'We don't want crude oil coming through our watersheds or going up and down our coast.' It was one of the greatest acts of unity, I think that I've ever seen," he said.
The impact of the ban being repealed, he said, would be "really devastating" for the region, with the potential it would last long after a Trump presidency is over.
"The implications of an oil spill in a wild salmon river or on the North Coast would last for over a century," he said. "It's not a risk people are willing to take."
Also prominent in his opposition to the pipeline, at the time, was Ellis Ross. As the chief councillor of the Haisla First Nation, he went so far as to join a lawsuit against Enbridge for failing to consult with Indigenous communities on the project.
In a 2012 interview with CBC, he echoed many of the same points made by Nagy, saying a single oil spill would devastate the marine life that his people have long relied on.
At the same time he was fighting Enbridge, Ross supported the development of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, saying that while it, too, had risks, they were not nearly as great as those posed by oil tankers, adding the economic benefits to First Nations and local communities could not be ignored.
He rode that message in the 2017 provincial election campaign, where he ran under the banner of the centre-right B.C. Liberals, flipping the riding away from the provincial NDP.
And now, he's hoping to do it again, this time as the hand-picked candidate for the federal Conservatives.
He joined Poilievre at a campaign stop in Terrace this week, where the party leader vowed to unleash the natural resource industry by creating a "one stop shop" to speed up approvals for natural resource projects, specifically citing the Canada LNG plant currently coming online in Kitimat that Ross had championed.
But shipping LNG isn't nearly as divisive as oil tankers, and the industry has received the backing of both the federal Liberal and provincial NDP governments.
Meanwhile, Poilievre's speech in Terrace made no mention of his promise to allow tankers into the nearby Douglas Channel, in contrast to an appearance a week earlier in Newfoundland, where he checked "repeal the tanker ban" off of a giant to-do list and criticized Carney for opposing Northern Gateway.
Neither Poilievre nor Ross took questions from the media on the tanker ban while speaking in Terrace, and Ross' team has also declined multiple interview requests put forward by CBC News to clarify his position on the topic.
Ross did, however, tell a special senate committee meeting in 2019 that he feared opposition to resource development, including the tanker ban, is based more on ideology than fact. He has also been vocal on social media saying there needs to be more pipelines in order to diversify the economy.
That message isn't particularly at odds with that coming from Carney, who has said he wants to work with Canada's energy industries and First Nations to move more resource projects forward.
But Nagy said no matter who wins the election, coastal First Nations are clear: no tankers in B.C.'s waters.
"We've been through this battle … and we've come to the conclusion that it is not a safe proposal," he said. "It may be another fight."
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With files from Daybreak North, the Current and Jon Hernandez