Some First Nations leaders and citizens in Manitoba say they’re concerned by the province’s recent push to create new energy, trade and resource extraction projects in the north.
Shortly after the Liberals won a minority government in last April’s federal election, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew sent a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney to pitch five major resource projects in the province that could be fast-tracked.
At the top of Kinew’s list was a project he called the “One Canada Trade Corridor,” which would create a potential hub for critical minerals and fossil fuel exports through northern Manitoba’s Port of Churchill to diversify Canada’s trade relationships.
The existing port, accessed via the Arctic Gateway railway system, promotes itself as the shortest link from the Prairies to the Atlantic Ocean, offering access to the Arctic, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South America.
Talks of critical mineral exploration and potential oil shipments in northern Manitoba aren’t new, but Kinew has been increasingly vocal about a renewed case for the port as a way to ease trade tensions with the United States since President Donald Trump returned to office last January.
However, Garrison Settee, the grand chief of the northern First Nations advocacy organization Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, says any new projects must respect and protect treaty rights, which are “inherent rights [that] have been there since time immemorial.”
He’s also concerned about those in north who have already suffered negative impacts from hydroelectric projects.
“There’s always that rush, telling us that there’s only a limited opportunity” to get involved in resource extraction projects, Settee said at a Friday news conference, adding he doesn’t believe it to be true.
“The minerals will always be there, and nothing will happen unless the First Nations in those territories say it will happen.”
The Hudson Bay Railway, which opened in 1929 and was privatized after the federal government sold the Canadian National Railway in 1995, is the only land link between Churchill and the rest of the province, running through remote, boggy terrain.
The rail link has endured lengthy service disruptions in the past, including an 18-month shutdown under its previous U.S. owners after severe flooding in 2017.
Last year, the federal and provincial governments announced each would chip in $30 million to improve the railway — now owned and operated by Arctic Gateway Group, a partnership of dozens of First Nation and Bayline communities — and start to redevelop the port. Prior to that, the federal government had put in a total of more than $215 million toward railway improvements.
In his letter to Carney, Kinew said his government is seeking investments in icebreakers to expand the shipping season through Hudson Bay — which is currently only operational in warmer months — and for new “energy generation and transmission to power the project.”
“Our skilled workforce and true nation-to-nation partnership with Indigenous governments allows us to get shovels in the ground faster,” Kinew wrote to Carney.
Kinew also said his government is taking a “Crown-Indigenous partnership approach … to engage the private sector” for an expansion to the Port of Churchill.
Meanwhile, next door to Manitoba, controversial legislation that aims to fast-track resource development in the name of “unleashing” Ontario’s economic potential is rubbing some the wrong way.
Ontario’s Bill 5, or the Protecting Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act, was passed last week. It will allow Ontario to create special economic zones, where companies or projects can be exempted from having to comply with a provincial law, provincial regulation or municipal bylaw.
Over the past several weeks, dozens of First Nation leaders and conservation groups have been speaking out against the bill, arguing it tramples on treaty rights and weakens environmental protections.
The Assembly of First Nations says it’s hosting a virtual forum for chiefs across the country on Monday to discuss the Ontario legislation and broader implications of similar legislation across Canada.
The forum was announced a day after AFN National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak met with Carney, who repeated his government’s intention to introduce federal legislation to fast-track federal approvals for certain infrastructure projects deemed in the national interest, the assembly said in a news release.
The AFN is “deeply concerned about the lack of time and appropriate process to carry out the Crown’s consultation and consent obligations, especially given the potentially massive impact on the rights of First Nations,” it said.
Mihskakwan James Harper, a Manitoba-based board member of the non-profit Indigenous Clean Energy and the Pembina Institute, a clean-energy think-tank, says talks of shipping oil through northern Manitoba are closely connected to Ontario’s Bill 5.
However, he says the federal government’s push for new resource projects appears to be at odds with its own target of reducing net carbon emissions to zero by 2050, and that could leave First Nations communities who take part ownership of gas and oil infrastructure hanging in the future.
“That makes these pipeline investments potential stranded assets,” Harper told CBC News in a statement Friday. “Indigenous communities may be left holding the bill — not only for financial losses, but for the costly cleanup of projects abandoned by industry.”
Whether by pipeline or by rail, Harper says oil shipments through northern Manitoba would threaten surrounding lands and waters with spills, leaks, and other irreversible damage.
The Port of Churchill is “already ecologically vulnerable,” and “could become another site of risk for the sake of a project that does not serve the long-term well being of northern communities,” he said.
Jerry Daniels, grand chief of the Southern Chiefs’ Organization, which represents 32 First Nations in southern Manitoba, says leaders need to be in tune with the lands that are eyed for resource projects — especially as out-of-control wildfires have driven thousands from their homes in northern Manitoba in recent weeks.
“In rushing to build oil pipelines or energy corridors, you have to recognize that the land is alive, so whatever we do has to respect the long-term sustainability of the land,” he said Friday.
“The fires [are] already hugely damaging to the north, so we have to keep that in mind when we’re talking about large-scale development projects.”
A Cree advocate from northern Manitoba says the wildfire situation shows how “delicate” the ecological system of northern Manitoba’s boreal forest is.
“These wildfires are part of climate change, and in this day and age of climate change, why would you continue looking at resource extraction projects that would speed up the process of climate change?” Lisa Currier, who grew up in Nelson House, told CBC News on Friday.
She opposes any new resource extraction projects in the north, saying Manitoba is not a “blank map for industrial exploitation.”
“These are living territories, not stockpiles, and treating them as commodities erases our responsibilities and our inherent rights,” she said.
Attempts to fast-track resource extraction projects could spark protests across the country down the line, Currier said.
“Our resistance to this is not radical. It’s our responsibility to the Earth and to our inherent right as Indigenous people, the original people of this land.”
