Part two of a two-part series from The Tyee. Read the first part of this story: B.C. First Nation’s Four-Decade Fight for Diesel-Free Clean Energy Caught in Bureaucratic Limbo.
By the time the Great Recession of 2008 hit, Hartley Bay’s decades-long struggle to shed its reliance on diesel was in a precarious place. The complexity of navigating multiple funders and governments with limited funds and human resources was becoming overwhelming.
Then Enbridge came to town.
Roger Harris, a former BC Liberal MLA and Enbridge’s Northern Gateway point man for aboriginal relations, visited the isolated reserve, 140 kilometres south of Prince Rupert on British Columbia’s north coast, in February 2009. He arrived knowing the community of fishermen, dependent on salmon and eco tourism, was vehemently opposed to his company’s plan to turn their coast into a high-traffic oil tanker route.
At a private meeting between Enbridge and Gitga’at leaders in February 2009, according to several band members, Harris argued that the Gitga’at rely on diesel for electricity, so why shouldn’t people in foreign countries who need fuel for electricity be able to have that as well?