Chief Judy Wilson of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs is in Houston, Texas this week to remind Kinder Morgan shareholders that local First Nations, including the Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish, remain opposed to the pipeline expansion project.
Wilson and lawyer Eugene Kung of West Coast Environmental Law plan to tell shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting on Wednesday that they have not been properly advised about how Indigenous rights pose a real risk of scuttling the project.
Rueben George, spokesman for the Tsleil-Waututh’s Sacred Trust Initiative, was also scheduled to attend the meeting, but was forced to cancel over health issues at the last minute.
George has appeared twice before at the Kinder Morgan AGM, with a similar message that the pipeline is not a good investment.
Wilson is being given proxy status to speak on behalf of a large New York pension fund which is an institutional investor in Kinder Morgan.
Tsleil-Waututh leaders met with representatives of the pension fund and convinced them to give them a voice at the meeting.
“It’s not always the most welcoming environment,” said Kung. But in speaking for the pension fund, Wilson is “exercising legal rights of shareholders that Kinder Morgan has to respect whether or not they like what we have to say,” he said.
Kung said in legal terms the lack of meaningful consultation and consent from indigenous people is a significant hurdle for the project, even though some First Nations have signed benefits deals with the company.
“It’s not a matter of majority vote,” he said.
Consultations with First Nations by federal bureaucrats were inadequate to meet legal tests established by the courts, said Kung. “It was basically a one-way street.”
