More than 250 people attended the ‘LNG Pipedreams: Fracked Futures and Community Resistance’ counter-forum in Vancouver organized by the Council of Canadians and the Wilderness Committee.
Our BC-Yukon regional organizer Leila Darwish, who MC’d the evening, says, “What a great night — thanks to all you fine folks who came out to the event tonight! Standing room only! A very special thanks to our amazing speakers for an incredible evening exposing the true impacts of fracking, fracked gas pipelines, and LNG: Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, Treaty 8 Tribal Chief Liz Logan, Shannon McPhail, Joyce Williams, Tracey Saxby, Damien Gillis, and Susan Spratt. And many thanks to Linda Williams from Skwxwu7mesh (Squamish) First Nations for a wonderful welcome and opening.”
Organizing assistant Brigette DePape adds, “Government and industry are pushing their fracking plans hard here. It’s a plan that most people are not being told about. Chief Stewart Phillip said it’s worse than Kinder Morgan and Enbridge. It was hard to hear him talk about how when he flies over communities in the North now, he no longer sees the life there that he once did. Not a single moose, he said. He says it’s his grandchildren that give him a reason to get up in the morning. He’s grateful to live in the beautiful place that is B.C., and he wants his children to be able to do the same.”
Our forum coincided with a large LNG summit sponsored by Chevron, Shell, Spectra Energy and other corporations. Speakers there included federal, provincial and corporate representatives all promoting fracking and LNG terminals. In an article about that pro-LNG summit, CBC reported, “Organizers of what’s being called a ‘counter summit’ at Simon Fraser University, say people from northwestern and northeastern B.C., where all the LNG activity is taking place, are not seeing the guarantees they need. ‘What a lot of the community folks are saying is that there are problems associated with this, and they do not feel their government is listening’, said Leila Darwish of the Council of Canadians, organizer of the counter summit.”
Among those in the audience at our forum were David Suzuki, three Chiefs from Treaty 8, and Jasmine Thomas of the Yinka Dene Alliance. If you weren’t able to attend the forum, a 2-hour video of the whole evening is now available online. Watch it here or go to LNG Pipedreams event at SFU.
