I am delighted, and honoured, to be asked again to speak to representatives of one of Canada’s most important and far-reaching industries. A lot of us take this industry for granted, because natural gas heats our homes and powers our factories. It’s used by 21-million Canadians. It is exported, rather unobtrusively and efficiently. And it is transported, as many of you know, through more than half a million kilometres of pipelines without any fuss or making any headlines. This performance, however, doesn’t stop the industry from being caught in maelstroms of controversy, but then it’s hard for any natural resource industry today to avoid these maelstroms, and it about these maelstroms that I wish to offer some modest thoughts this morning.

Before I do, let me open a digression that I will close later in my remarks. I used to be critical of this and other natural resource industries for the lack of attention paid to climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions largely from human activity. There was a lot of denial about the land when I co-authored a book about climate change with Professor Marc Jaccard in 2007. It was entitled Hot Air: Meeting Canada’s Climate Change Challenge.² It became one of my many instant rare books. I still have many unsold copies for those looking for something other than a sleeping pill at night.

The book attempted to explain in clear, non-polemical language that climate change was happening, that it posed a long-term challenge, and suggested what we could reasonably do about it. I emphasize “reasonably,” since we were not polemicists or scaremongers. But we did not think the country, including governments and industries, were taking the climate change challenge seriously enough, and we outlined a series of steps we thought could and should be taken to turn the emissions trend line from up to down. We were realists. This is what we wrote in 2007: “Successful policies will require decades to produce substantial reductions in GHG emissions.”³ Our preferred options involved placing a price on carbon and introducing various regulations.

That book made me fleetingly a mini-celebrity among environmental groups. Here was a bigfoot national columnist and author taking their issue seriously. I was invited to many conferences by environmental groups, allowing me to get to know them rather well. I admired their passion and I was glad they were drawing attention to the issues, but after a while my natural journalistic skepticism led me to recoil at their unwillingness to compromise and to acknowledge that solutions to climate change were complex, costly and would take time. They asked hard questions of others but did not ask hard questions of themselves. They preferred to assert certainties.

I meant what I said to them — and what I say to you today — that climate change must be tackled but it is what policy analysts call a “wicked problem,” that is extremely complex, that requires action at the global level, at the continental level in North America with its integrated economies, at the national level because Ottawa has many powers, at the provincial level since provinces control natural resource policy, at the municipal level because towns and cities have many pertinent powers, and by choices individuals make and policies they are willing or encourage their politicians to make.

This kind of observation did not make me popular among the “True Believers”. Nor did my comments to industrial groups that it was time to wake up and smell the coffee. They needed to change policies and attitudes. I was where I felt most comfortable as a result: criticized by everyone!

However, I am distressed, indeed alarmed, that in Canada today we are talking past each other, with too many groups unwilling to compromise and hard-line advocates for the cause of the environment unwilling to consider the costs of what they want, in the time frames they want it.

This obduracy contributes but is in no way entirely to blame for a myriad of confusions and contradictions that have ensnared natural resources projects, including those involving natural gas, and made proceeding with projects difficult to the point of absurdity. Indeed, I would argue that these confusions and contradictions fairly raise the question about Canada’s ability to govern itself, or at least push forward important projects in natural resources in a timely and cost-efficient manner.

I stress two points about these confusions and contradictions. First, although they are particularly evident in plaguing fossil fuel projects and the transmission of these products, the confusions and contradictions are also apparent around mining projects, hydro dams, transmission lines and even roads. Second, these confusions and contradictions do not arise from international pressures, treaties or policies. No one outside our borders has invented these problems and foisted them on Canada; indeed, competitors (and they do exist) are quietly delighted that Canada has wrapped itself in these confusions and contradictions. One more natural resource-rich competitor knocking itself out of the international ring with self-inflicted punches delights competitors. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the natural gas industry where Canada’s inability to get LNG projects going on a timely basis, or at all, has left the door wide open to the United States, Australia and others to capture markets without worrying about Canadian competition.

I mention the U.S. and Australia and natural gas as a way of illustrating what too many Canadians apparently do not understand. We are, pretensions to the contrary, a quite parochial people. We are certainly not an “energy superpower,” as former Prime Minister Stephen Harper used to say.⁴ Superpowers can dictate or influence. Canada cannot. Canada is a price-taker, not a price-setter. We have plenty of natural resources, but these are found elsewhere in the world too, and if it is less expensive, cumbersome, controversial and time-consuming to access the resources elsewhere, money will go elsewhere. Under our feet, the ground is shifting without enough people realizing the costs. The U.S., courtesy of the shale revolution, will no longer oblige us by taking every drop of oil or cubic metre of natural gas or Kilo-watt of hydro that we can export. The U.S. is now a competitor. Moreover, it turns out that hard-line environmentalists are alive and kicking in the U.S., and they have stalled Canadian export projects from Keystone XL to Quebec’s hydro exports to Massachusetts to Enbridge’s Line 3 in Minnesota. The burgeoning Asian economies, many of which are energy poor, scour the globe for what they need. If China or Japan cannot get LNG from Canada, they will get it from Qatar and the Middle East, from African suppliers and of course from the U.S. and Australia.

When we think of the balance between global warming and resource development, it is easy to think of just Canada and what we are doing, or not doing, without realizing that the rest of the world doesn’t really care. If Asian countries want to replace coal with natural gas, they will look around and if Canada isn’t interested, because groups here say all fossil fuels are bad and none should be developed in Canada, those countries will shrug and get the gas elsewhere. We may not like this. We might wish that they got off coal AND gas and do everything the way our hard-line environmentalists want (solar and wind and conservation), but that isn’t how the world works, or how it will work. The most misleading commercial slogan in Canada is: “The World Needs More Canada”. No, it doesn’t. If Canada doesn’t want to give more by exporting products, nobody will care. We will only hurt ourselves.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that global energy demand will grow by 25 per cent from 2017 to 2040. It forecasts that renewable energies will meet 45 per cent of that increase, but natural gas will meet 35 per cent. Fossil fuels are expected to account for almost three-quarters of global primary energy demand in 2040.⁵ Even if the Paris Accord targets were reached, the IEA says oil and gas will account for half of demand in 2040.⁶ Half.

We Canadians account for 0.5 per cent of the world’s population but we have 4.7 per cent of the world’s natural gas and 4.8 per cent of its oil.⁷ We have the supply; the world will still have the demand. Are we seriously going to shut down using fossil fuel products in Canada and exporting them with that kind of supply-demand equation?

Here is one among many hard questions to ask those who want extremely aggressive GHG reduction targets leading, as the Green Party wants, to the elimination of all fossil fuels by 2040. Today, renewable energies, including nuclear, account for about 20 per cent of the country’s energy mix. A scenario from the Trottier Energy Future Project suggests that for Canada to accomplish this “elimination” target we would need to more than double — from 150 gigawatts to over 300 — our electricity capacity.⁸ That would mean building more than 150 projects the size of B.C.’s Site C dam, which the Greens opposed by the way. We would need a massive increase in wind and solar. Can you imagine the reaction in Elizabeth May’s riding among the Gulf Islands if it were proposed, as in Denmark or Germany, to build huge wind farms in the Georgia Strait or on the Gulf islands themselves? You would see NIMBYISM the likes of which we have seldom seen as Elizabeth and her constituents opposed the farms.

I’ve spoken of confusions and contradictions. Let me mention some, then speak about each.

• Federal-provincial constitutional disagreements.
• Inter-provincial disagreements.
• The contested legitimacy of regulatory institutions that are supposed to -depoliticize decisions but are themselves the target of political attacks.
• The fogginess around the definition of Indigenous rights, including who “owns” the land, and in particular what it means to “consult and accommodate” Indigenous concerns.
• Do Indigenous peoples, merely claiming a territory, have a right of veto within that territory?
• The increasingly public divisions within the Indigenous world between those nations that favour development and those who do not.
• The inability of the Trudeau government, in the real world of power as opposed to the imaginary one of opposition, to find a balance between much stricter environmental laws, Indigenous rights and projects completed. For example, how does one reconcile the government’s ban on tanker traffic off the north B.C. coast where few people live but support, to the point of buying, a pipeline project that will triple tanker traffic where tens of thousands of people live? Or how does a province, Quebec, vociferously oppose an oil pipeline, while allowing crude oil shipped by tankers down the St. Lawrence River to refineries in Quebec while also allowing oil to pass through the province by train?
• What is “social licence”? Who defines it? What does it mean?
• The gap in attitudes towards natural resource development between the inner cities and the hinterlands.
• A hard-line and well-organized environmental movement that opposes all natural resource developments that lead to more GHG emissions, but oppose carbon-free nuclear power and sometimes dams and transmission lines to bring more, cleaner hydro to the grid.
• Court decisions, especially but not exclusively from the Supreme Court of Canada, that are opaque and can be interpreted quite differently by different groups. The recent Federal Court of appeal ruling on the Trans-Mountain pipeline is vague to the point of irresponsibility.
• And I leave aside the obvious and necessary divisions between and among political parties which are always present in a healthy democracy.

So let’s just run through these confusions and contradictions.

Federal/provincial disputes: These are particularly acute with Conservative governments now running various provinces, while the NDP runs B.C. As you know, the Conservative provinces have taken the federal government to court contesting its constitutional authority to levy a carbon tax. They lost the first found in the court of Saskatchewan but of course they are appealing to the Supreme Court⁹, an appeal that will take months to be heard. B.C. took Ottawa to court arguing, on environmental grounds, it had the right to regulate goods passing through its territory.¹⁰ The court wasn’t fooled. This was aimed at fossil fuels, especially bitumen oil. B.C. lost 5-0 in the Court of Appeal.¹¹ I read the ruling. It was clear, precise and unanimous. And yet, having promised to use every tool in the toolbox to stop the Trans-Mountain project, the provincial government will appeal this devastating loss. This amounts to a plan not to win legally but to delay in hopes something will turn up to defeat the pipeline. We have turned to the courts to sort out confusions between Ottawa and the provinces, with attendant delays and costs.

Inter-provincial conflicts: I am not going to dwell on the venomous conflicts between Alberta and B.C. You know them well. I would merely observe a few political points. First, support for the Trans-Mountain pipeline is 50-50 in the polls in the Lower Mainland but strongly supported in the rest of the province.¹² A majority of British Columbians therefore report they favour the project¹³, but the minority NDP government, propped up by the Greens, gets most of their support in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, so it’s where the support and opposition come from, not the aggregate amounts, that dictate political considerations. Another political point. You can understand how Alberta feels when B.C. goes full steam ahead for a natural gas pipeline to supply B.C. gas to an LNG plant, but uses every trick to stop a pipeline bringing Alberta oil to the B.C. coast. And you can imagine further Alberta’s unhappiness with the dismissive attitude of the Quebec government to the Canada East project when, as I said before, Quebec is getting its oil from nasty regimes outside Canada.

Regulatory Institutions: The institutions governing natural resource development were created to de-politicize decisions, and to put experts to work to decide on the many technical issues surrounding the projects. The National Energy Board (NEB) and provincial environmental assessments bodies are two examples. These, however, have become political targets, mostly from environmentalists who believe the institutions are biased and favour industry, do not hear enough dissident voices and don’t pay attention to issues that are far beyond the capacity or jurisdiction of the institutions to assess, such as the state of global warming.

In the Trans-Mountain case, the NEB granted participation status to 400 intervenors and 1,250 commentators.¹⁴ The hearings went on for months. In approving the application, the board affixed 157 conditions that might have suggested to an objective observer that the board was no pushover.¹⁵ Of course, opponents of the pipeline were not interested in conditions. They didn’t want the pipeline, pure and simple, so their public relations campaign against the NEB resumed within minutes of the release of the board’s report with claims that the NEB was biased, hadn’t consulted enough, hadn’t paid intervenors enough money for their efforts, etc.

The Trudeau government’s response to the criticisms of the existing regulatory process has been to create a new one through legislation for which is now before the Senate. I don’t have time to take you through in detail Bill 69, but in a nutshell the legislation tries to balance environmental, aboriginal and, yes, gender issues with the usual technical ones, but then adds further complications by asking the new regulator to figure out if there were other ways of doing the project — an impossible task without knowing the cost and viability of alternatives. As a report on the bill from the University of Ottawa’s Positive Energy think tank observed: “The overall tone and probable effect appears to have taken an existing process which some critics see as too “industry friendly” and flipped it on its head.”¹⁶ My view is that the regulatory process, which was already laborious, will become even more arduous often to the point of paralysis. And, I can safely predict that if this new beast does favour a project environmentalists and certain aboriginal groups oppose, they will denounce the institution and put up a political fight. In other words, a new process will not persuade die-hard opponents.

Now, we come to the extremely opaque question of indigenous rights, which are often claimed and asserted without having been proven.

Let me give one example in the Federal Court of Appeal decision in the Trans-Mountain case. Thirty-three First Nations publicly supported the pipeline; five opposed and they went to court.¹⁷

The Federal Court decided that the Canadian government had not adequately respected the “honour of the Crown” in its consultations with First Nations. What did that mean? I ask that because, in addition to the NEB hearings, which Indigenous groups participated in, with funding from the NEB, when the decision was announced the government created another consultation process with former Yukon premier Tony Penikett and two prominent Indigenous leaders, Kim Baird and Sophie Pierre, who held more meetings with aboriginal and civic leaders in B.C. and Alberta. The government undertook direct consultations with aboriginal groups. The court rejected aboriginal complaints that the consultation process was inadequate. Said the jurist who authored the judgment: “I am satisfied that the consultation framework selected by Canada was reasonable.”¹⁸ The court said the Indigenous consultation process was “generally well-organized.”¹⁹ It said there was “no reasonable complaint that information…was withheld or that requests for information went unanswered.”²⁰ Cabinet ministers were “available and engaged in respectful conversations and correspondence with representatives of a number of Indigenous applicants.”²¹ Additional funding had been provided for plaintiffs; a four-month extension of the consultation process was implemented.²²

A reasonable person, upon reading how much consultation had occurred, how many opportunities to be heard had been afforded, how much time and money had been spent might have concluded that enough was enough. But this is Canada, and all this was apparently not enough. The court could not have been more positive about the way the government had done its work. And yet, more was required. There had not been, said the court, enough “two-way dialogue.”²³ At which point, a reasonable person might throw up her or his hands and give up figuring out what is the definition of the duty to consult and accommodate.

Confusion reigns supreme. A court that was supposed to clarify merely added to the confusion. And until this confusion is cleared up, we frankly are a mess.

And then there is the question which will loom very large in the form of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of indigenous Peoples (U.N. Declaration). I won’t take you through the history of the declaration. But here is the section where confusion in Canada is complete and might become paralytic. It says that Indigenous groups must give their “free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project.”²⁴

The Oxford dictionary defines “consent” as “permission for something to happen.” In plain English, therefore, “free, prior and informed consent” — the key word being “consent” — means the right to “give permission” or to say no, in other words, a veto. Right now a bill is before Parliament that would incorporate the U.N. Declaration into Canadian law²⁵, which would present a huge obstacle to development. Courts, on the other hand, have said indigenous peoples do not have a veto, provided they have been consulted and reasonable efforts have been made to accommodate their interests. The Supreme Court, in its last two aboriginal rulings, said so. So did the Federal Court in the Trans-Mountain decision.²⁶ The law before Parliament declares a veto exists; the courts say it does not. Aboriginal leaders, without exceptions, have asserted they now have a veto; the courts say no; Parliament says yes. A more muddled situation could scarcely be imagined.

Speaking of muddled, what are we to make of a project involving [the gas] industry: the gas pipeline and LNG project in B.C. in which all 20 Indigenous councils along the line support the project but some hereditary leaders do not, and they purport to speak for the Wet-suisen nation²⁷ not that nation’s elected officials…not the elected officials. I am sorry, but I am offended by this.

Tens of millions of people around the world have died fighting against hereditary rule, be it by sultans or emperors, tsars and kings, princes and nobles. Violent and peaceful ones have turned overturned hereditary rulers. It still exists in remote Pacific Islands, places like Brunei and that lovely Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but elsewhere it has gone the way of all flesh. Everywhere it was defended as the natural order of things, ordained by Gods, ancestors or customs. It has always been this way, said the defenders of hereditary rule, which they do now in a few Indigenous clans, until people revolted. Were I Prime Minister of Canada, I would state clearly: “We live in a democracy where people choose their rulers; as do the vast majority of Indigenous peoples for their governments. My governments will only deal with and recognize elected officials.” Period.

That project not only showed the intra-aboriginal conflicts between elected and hereditary leaders, or purported leaders, but also what can happen even when the federal AND provincial governments agree. The gas link was approved in 2014 by the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office, and it is supported by Ottawa. But here come the courts. Here come the environmentalists. Here come the protestors. And here comes a prominent B.C. environmental lawyer, Mike Sawyer, who applied for a federal review of the project by the NEB. So even when every Indigenous group’s elected council was in favour, and the provincial regulatory authority has okayed the project, there are still legal challenges and political opposition. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, “it ain’t over until it’s over, and then it ain’t over.” This is contemporary Canada, alas. Would you want to invest in such a place?

Social licence: The prime minister has mused on several occasions that projects need “social licence.” The premier of Quebec states no “social licence” exists so an oil pipeline cannot through his province.²⁸ The phrase has no legal meaning, but it can have a powerful political appeal.

How do we determine what is “social licence?” It is one of those portentous phrases, apparently pregnant with meaning that no one can define. How do we determine was is “social licence.” Do we take polls before every decision to determine what the population thinks? Do we take them among people living near a project? If so, how near? What about people in the rest of the country or the province? “Does Not in My Backyard” constitute “social licence?” Do we hold public hearings knowing from vast experience that those who speak at public hearings are often unrepresentative of the entire society? And where do elected officials fit it if their decisions cannot be allowed to stand because someone has defined “social licence” in such a way that it trumps decisions by elected officials? Put simply, the notion of “social licence” is vague, misleading and usually used by people who equate their own point of view of that of the general public. It adds yet another confusion to contemporary Canada.

The last two federal governments had different approaches to environmental policy, indigenous relations, attitudes to natural resources and relations with the business community and provinces. Neither the Harper nor Trudeau governments were able to make progress on finding a balance been development and environmental protection.

The Trudeau government presented what I might call a Grand Bargain. It would toughen environmental standards. It would ban tanker traffic, thereby killing a pipeline to the Pacific Coast. It would go soft-softly on the now-gone Canada East Pipeline. It would change regulatory institutions to make they legally required to pay more attention to gender (whatever that might mean for natural resource development, environment, upstream emissions etc.). It would declare that “reconciliation” with Indigenous people was the government’s most important priority. It crafted a mandate letter for the Minister of Natural Resources that read like one for the Minister of the Environment in previous governments. It signed onto the Paris Climate Change accord. It declared in opposition, and now in government, its support for the UN Declaration. I could go on. The Liberals believed by doing all these things they could win that ephemeral thing called “social licence” that would allow some natural resource projects to proceed. The Grand Bargain did not work. Not one environmental group — not one, and I know them all — was willing to accept the Bargain. Not even the ones that were supposed to be the most “reasonable.” And the same applied to the strident opponents in the Indigenous world.

And so here we are, as a country, confused, conflicted, with our elected institutions, our federal-provincial relations, our courts and civic society unable to come to conclusions in a timely fashion. And yet, I believe this is not what the country wants. All the data I have seen, and all my travels suggests a broad majority of citizens want to see a balanced approach to development and environmental protection. They want governments to work together; they want Indigenous people to participate in development without having a veto; they want co-operation. But the debate has been hijacked by environmental hard-liners and endless court challenges and now federal-provincial and inter-provincial conflicts that are delaying, even paralysing decisions.

And yet, I do see some signs of hope, genuine hope for finding better ways forward.

Most important of all, whereas many Indigenous leaders who wanted their people to participate in projects were afraid to speak out, lest they be accused by prominent aboriginal leaders of selling out their people, cavorting with “settler” governments, abandoning the dream of restoring full nationhood, destroying the environment, betraying Indigenous cultures or whatever; charges echoed strongly in the universities which have become hotbeds for supporting oppositionist Indigenous attitudes towards resource development.

This fear is dissipating, as young chiefs and elected officials look at the limited opportunities for their peoples beyond hunting, fishing and trapping, and view daily the social problems that economic deprivation brings, and want now, their rights being protected to be sure, to participate in a wage economy. I have already noted that a strong majority of bands along the Trans-Mountain pipeline route favoured the project, and now two different coalitions of Indigenous groups want to own a portion of the pipeline. I have already noted how ALL the elected councils along the natural gas line in northern B.C. support the project. Cameco has developed very good working relations with Indigenous peoples in northern Saskatchewan for uranium mining. The Fort McKay and Misisew Cree First Nations have invested in Suncor’s Fort Hills bitumen project.²⁹ The Athabaska Chippewa will become a partner with Teck Resources in developing a bitumen mine.³⁰ In Northern Ontario, a majority of the First Nations, most without road connections, want chrome mines developed since they will get roads, jobs and perhaps royalties, but of course a minority have gone to court to stop development.³¹

I could go on…

Suffice it to say that there is now a much greater awareness among younger aboriginal leaders, often well-educated and not prisoners of old rhetoric, that their people need work, their governments need money, and participation rather than opposition is the most fruitful way forward. This view is not unanimous by any means, and there are still councils and bands that are opposed to any and all developments. But there is now a change in attitude that is very evident, splitting aboriginal Canada over the best way of advancing the interests of aboriginal peoples. And I think there is now an awareness in this industry and others that the legal grounds (despite all the uncertainties about the meaning of title and duty to consult and the U.N. Declaration) for aboriginal involvement mean just that: some form of involvement is the best way forward.

I think you can see a political shift in the country, too, towards development, the flip side of the frustration with these self-imposed obstacles. I note, for example, that in the Maritime Provinces natural gas and mineral projects are by and large moving forward in a timely fashion. The opposition across the country lies in geographic pockets, not the broad swath of public opinion.

And I believe — to return to where I started my remarks — that there is a growing awareness of climate change is an issue, (this being so especially among younger people) and a desire that progress be made; but there is also support for balanced and commonsensical approaches that reject apocalyptic rhetoric, unreasonable solutions and little, if any concern, for people who work in resource-dependent areas where there are few, if any, alternatives, to developing them.

At least that is my hope. Whether the hope is justified, or forlorn, time will tell.

* Jeffrey Simpson is a former national affairs columnist for The Globe and Mail.

1.  This is a transcription of Jeffrey Simpson’s speech that was delivered at the 58^th Annual CGA Gas Measurement and Regulation School (GMRS) held in Whistler, June 2019.
2.  Jeffrey Simpson, Mark Jaccard and Nic Rivers, Hot Air: Meeting Canada’s Climate Change Challenge, (Douglas Gibson Books, 2005).
3.  Ibid ch 7.
4.  See e.g. Jane Taber, “PM brands Canada an ‘energy superpower’”, The Globe and Mail (15 July 2006), online: <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/pm-brands-canada-an-energy-superpower/article1105875>.
5.  International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2018, online: <https://www.iea.org/weo2018>.
6.  Ibid.
7.  Jeffrey Simpson, “The confusion around natural resources in Canada” (30 March 2019), Resource Works (blog), online: <https://www.resourceworks.com/resource-confusion> [Resource Works].
8.  Stewart Fast and Monica Gattinger, Address, (Paper delivered at the Positive Energy’s Trust in Transition workshop, University of Ottawa, 23–24 January 2018), online : <https://www.uottawa.ca/positive-energy/sites/www.uottawa.ca.positive-energy/files/dp_for_trust_in_transition_workshop_final_lettterhead.pdf>.
9.  Reference re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, 2019 SKCA 40.
10.  Reference re Environmental Management Act (British Columbia), 2019 BCCA 181.
11.  Ibid.
12.  Resource Works, supra note 7.
13.  See e.g. Kyle Braid, “Majority in BC Support Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project”, Ipsos (17 July 2019), online: <https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/majority-support-trans-mountain-pipeline-expansion-project>.
14.  Resource Works, supra note 7.
15.  Ibid.
16.  Michael Cleland et al, “DURABLE BALANCE: INFORMED REFORM OF ENERGY DECISION-MAKING IN CANADA” (2018) University of Ottawa Working Paper at 20, online: <https://www.uottawa.ca/positive-energy/sites/www.uottawa.ca.positive-energy/files/180418-db-report-final.pdf>.
17.  Tsleil-Waututh Nation v. Canada (Attorney General), 2018 FCA 153 [Tsleil-Waututh].
18.  Ibid at para 549.
19.  Ibid at para 553.
20.  Ibid.
21.  Ibid at para 554.
22.  Ibid at para 120.
23.  Ibid at para 558.
24.  United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, UNGAOR, 61^st Sess, UN Doc A/RES/61/295 (2007), s 32 (2).
25.  Bill C-262, An Act to ensure that the laws of Canada are in harmony with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 1^st Sess, 42^nd Parl, 2005.
26.  Tsleil-Waututh, supra note 17.
27.  See e.g. Brent Jang, “Canadian musicians sign letter backing opponents of Coastal GasLink pipeline”, The Globe and Mail (21 January 2019), online: <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-celebrities-line-up-behind-pipeline-opponents>.
28.  See e.g. Benjamin Shingler, “Quebec doesn’t want another pipeline, François Legault tells Jason Kenney”, CBC (17 April 2019), online: <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-legault-kenney-pipelines-1.5101793>.
29.  Jeffrey Simpson, “Uncertainty and Confusion in Canada’s Natural Resource Development”, Commentary, (February 2019) Macdonald-Laurier Institute, online: <http://macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf/MLICommentary_Feb2019_SImpson_F.pdf>.
30.  Ibid.
31.  Ibid.