In Northern British Columbia, a First Nations territory in the Cariboo region, otherwise erased from the urban consciousness as part of Canada’s endless hinterland, has become the site of an ongoing international geopolitical conflict between traditional First Nations hereditary chiefs, the government of Canada, and the seemingly brute power of oil supermajors invested in resource extraction from the region. As the battle for control over rights to land use rages on, it brings with it another unseen catastrophe: Covid-19.

Demonstrations in Wet’suwet’en protesting the Coastal GasLink Pipeline project have been halted due to the pandemic, for the health and safety of the First Nations communities already rendered perilously vulnerable from a targeted history of infrastructural disempowerment. Remote First Nations communities are uniquely at risk from the novel coronavirus due to a combination of factors: unreliable access to rural healthcare facilities, a persistent and disproportionate lack of clean running water (many northern First Nations communities in Canada have been under decades-long boil water advisories), a longstanding history of intergenerational trauma inflicted by Canada’s Residential Schools program, and its resulting ongoing healthcare crises within. First Nations communities are particularly vulnerable to the devastation possible from the coronavirus due to disproportionate rates of the kinds of pre-existing health conditions known to render those infected with a more serious course of the disease.

While protests have stopped due to the pandemic, pipelines have been deemed by the Canadian government as critical infrastructure, with workers traveling into Kitimat and through the Cariboo region to continue with construction of the pipeline, leveraging the deadly disease as a menace against those who would otherwise not have been exposed to the virus. The Canadian government in partnership with the Coastal GasLink pipeline is essentially weaponizing Covid-19 by continuing to bring in workers from urban areas with widespread transmission of the disease to rural areas that would otherwise not have been exposed during the pandemic. Similarities to the smallpox epidemics of the late 18th- and 19th-centuries echo eerily in the background of this infectious disease. Intentional spread of the infectious disease decimated populations of First Nations communities across North America.¹

Construction on the Coastal GasLink project proceeds despite the ongoing threat from the pandemic. A 46-meter wide corridor allowing for the ‘Right-of-Way’ clearance for the pipeline continues to be clear cut through the B.C. wilderness. Progress of the construction has failed to stop, or even slow, since the official government approval of construction in September 2019. On a report dated as recently as April 17th, more than 76% of the route has been cleared so far.²

Coastal GasLink has alleged a sharp decline in workers on-site in Northern B.C. between the months of March and April 2020, decreasing from 1130 employees in March to just 130 the following month in official reports. However, levels of productivity have appeared to remain consistent with previous months, which calls into question the legitimacy of either the reporting of employees or of the pipeline’s ongoing construction. Chetwynd Lodge and Huckleberry Lodge are two camps that are currently still under construction, with Coastal GasLink proposing to fulfill peak occupancy of all finished campsites by the summer, at a maximum occupancy of 3670 employees, including Chetwynd Lodge, Parsnip Lodge, Vanderhoof Lodge, 9A Lodge and P2 Lodge. ³

The Gidimt’en Access Checkpoint, 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) east of the Unist’ot’en camp on the Wet’suwet’en territory has been and continues to be a site of active conflict between the Wet’suwet’en people and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police following multiple court injunctions against the Wet’suwet’en blocking access to pipeline construction vehicles from crossing the two-lane bridge on Moice West Forest Service Road. This checkpoint, fortified by a gate in response to the injunctions, is the only point of land access into the Wet’suwet’en territory. Upon reaching the checkpoint at Wedzin Kwa Bridge, guardians of the Wet’suwet’en territories perform a traditional consent of access protocol before granting passage over the bridge. Among the questions asked, one is: have you worked for resource extraction companies?

The proposed terminus point for the Coastal GasLink pipeline is at a Northern coastal town in British Columbia called Kitimat, founded in 1953 by an aluminum manufacturing company. The port town is home to less than 9,000 residents, including members of the nearby Haisla First Nation, after which the town is named: Kitimaat. The town itself, while being host to a lucrative international port of trade, suffers from distinct social and economic equalities. Kitimat endures frequent boil water advisories, which prevents residents from safely drinking their own tap water, in addition to ongoing environmental pollution caused by local industries. The threat of tanker spills and burst pipelines hangs in the air with the recently proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline project.

The new construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal is currently under construction just outside of the town centre of Kitimat, and is part of a proposal to connect the port to the larger North American network of TC Energy pipelines. The terminal is located in a remote part of the Northern B.C. coast, in the deepwater port of the Elmsley Cove, and will be the only fully-permitted LNG terminal on the West Coast of North America.

Like its southern coastal metropolitan neighbour Vancouver, Kitimat is host to a port that situates Canada on the Pacific Rim, connecting the countries bordering the Pacific Ocean through an international maritime trade economy. In the last twenty years, regasification terminals in Asia have rapidly expanded beyond the steady growth of terminals in Japan and into countries that are home to companies directly invested in the Coastal GasLink project. China, South Korea and Malaysia are all experiencing an explosion of regasification import terminal projects, with China taking the lead in the current growth.

Although we cannot predict the exact locations of the ports that will be receiving the oil tankers departing from Kitimat, we know that the tankers will transport the natural gas primarily to ports built in Asia, and specifically ports built on the Northern China coast. The above illustration shows a pattern of explosive growth in natural gas import terminals along the Asian coast of the Pacific Rim.

Since the Coastal GasLink pipeline provides a cheap source of natural gas, there has been an exponential demand in the Asian LNG market. Over the last decade, new import regasification terminals have been constructed at rapidly increasing rates throughout China, South Korea, Malaysia and Japan.

The weight of foreign investment is reflected in the financial estimation of the project. During the first phase of project investment, the money will lean heavily to foreign land, with $7 to $11.1 Billion coming from outside investment, and only $2.5 to $4.1 Billion from B.C.

Canada has historically relied on the United States as the number one importer of Canadian liquefied natural gas, hovering at approximately 50% of all of Canada’s natural gas exports. In the last few decades, the United States has begun emphatically and systematically moving towards a goal of “energy independence” under the notion that oil sovereignty will guarantee more stable and profitable markets for the American economy. In the mid-2000s, commitment to energy independence was so cherished by US politicians that energy economists for the White House were tasked with eradicating the phrase “dependence on foreign oil” from any official White House correspondence, including all speeches prepared for the President of the United States.⁷

At the same time, Asian demand for oil has been increasing exponentially, with China being a particularly fast-growing market. As China moves away from coal-powered energy towards “cleaner” energy resources, Canada’s attention has been held captive by Asian markets seeking oil and gas imports. As imports of LNG decrease in the United States, Canada’s exports have correlated in a decrease as well, leaving the industry scrambling to find new customers to maintain economic feasibility.

Coastal Gaslink Pipeline will operate between Dawson Creek and Kitimat, both small Northern towns in British Columbia, transporting liquified natural gas from Dawson Creek to the ports in Kitimat, where LNG will be loaded onto tankers as long as six football fields and exported to Asian markets.

The original proposal for the Coastal GasLink pipeline was designed by TC Energy in 2012, and was presented for consultation with local First Nations elected councils for the territory that the pipeline was proposed to cross. The proposed route crossed twenty unceded First Nations territories, and was given approval by the elected councils of all bands.

The governance of First Nations is contested between elected councils and traditional hereditary chiefs. The elected councils are both elected and selectively recognized by the government of Canada, while the hereditary chiefs are given their titles through a process of lineage that predates the colonization of North America. The Wet’suwet’en’s hereditary chiefs withheld their approval on ecological grounds, and protested the pipeline by organizing a blockade of construction on the Wet’suwet’en traditional lands.

There are twenty unceded First Nations territories on the proposed route between Dawson Creek and Kitimat. All except one have made agreements with Coastal Gaslink allowing the pipeline to cross their landーthe Wet’suwet’en have consistently maintained that they will not permit the construction of the pipeline as proposed by Coastal Gaslinks on their land. Outlined is the Wet’suwet’en Territory, which is still in disagreement with Coastal Gaslink.

The pipeline, while formally rejected, was counter-offered by the Wet’suwet’en with an alternative route for TC Energy to build through their land. On the basis of wracking irreparable damage to ancestral migration patterns of animals that the Wet’suwet’en depend on for their livelihood, the hereditary chiefs proposed alternative routes more than six year prior to the initial construction of the project. All of these proposals were rejected by Coastal GasLink. The basis of these rejections included: longer pipeline distances, unsuitability for pipeline diameters, closer proximity to urban communities, requirements to consult with additional First Nations territories, and the threat of an additional single year added to the development of a decades-long project.

Gidim’ten Checkpoint serves as a de facto border regulating the access to the Wet’suwet’en territory from external influence. In the case of the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, threat to the communities extends beyond development of land. With all-male, mostly white workers coming to Northern B.C. from predominantly urban centres to campsites dotting the pipeline trail, they bring with them a multitude of potentially distressing factors. Covid-19 is the only the most recent troubling vector knocking at the door of the Wet’suwet’en territory. Longstanding ties to drug and alcohol abuse within the camps, and a dire correlation between camp locations and rates of incidents of murdered and missing Indigenous women further contribute to the local fervor in fortifying a border.

The Office of Wet’suwet’un proposes a route where it would be away from the cultural centre of the communities where that land is used for harvesting and hunting, and closer to an existing highway within Wet’suwet’un territory that is already heavily disturbed.¹²

Although Coastal GasLink claimed to have made concessions to appease the demands made by the Wet’suwet’en to alter the proposed route of the pipeline, the final amendment after consultation shows a difference of no more than 3.5 kilometres (2 miles) north at the most modified segment.

The Coastal Gaslink pipeline connects into the larger TransCanada Energy pipeline network that reaches across Canada and into the United States. The particular geological and infrastructural advantages of Kitimat have made the town into a strategic gateway.

The town of Kitimat has suffered profound social and economic inequalities while simultaneously playing host to a lucrative port of trade. Problems with essential infrastructure, such as frequent boil-water advisories across the region, endanger the health and safety of locals on a daily basis, in addition to other ongoing factors that mitigate the well-being of residents, such as pollution from local industry and lack of access to adequate healthcare. The ongoing global pandemic, tearing through areas with even the most sophisticated emergency medical response programs, promises to decimate the vulnerable communities it reaches.

The Coastal GasLink Pipeline project brings with it new worries to a vulnerable community. In the bays and straits that connect Kitimat to the Pacific Ocean, the threat of tanker spills hangs in the air. In the local communities, Covid-19 is an unseen threat with frighteningly familiar historic parallels. The pipelines that cross territorial Indigenous land risk bursting and wreaking havoc on the prevalent natural ecologies, including the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, but also the territories of nineteen additional Indigenous First Nations of the Cariboo Region: Stellat’en First Nation, Saik’uz First Nation, McLeod Lake Indian Band, Saulteau First Nations, Kitselas First Nation, West Moberly First Nations, Lheidli T’enneh First Nation, Nadleh Whut’en Indian Band, Burns Lake Indian Band (Ts’il Kaz Koh First Nation), Blueberry River First Nations, Halfway River First Nation, Doig River First Nation, Cheslatta Carrier Nation, Yekooche First Nation, Nee Tahi Buhn Indian Band, Skin Tyee First Nation, Witset First Nation, Nak’azdli Whut’en and Haisla Nation.