The Squamish Nation held an internal meeting at Totem Hall Feb. 11 on the proposed Woodfibre LNG plant and FortisBC natural gas pipeline expansion that is within Squamish Nation traditional territory.
The meeting was part of an ongoing independent assessment of the projects being done by Squamish Nation experts.
"It is our future – our decision to make,” said Squamish Nation Chief Ian Campbell in a news release about the meeting.
Campbell told The Squamish Chief that a referendum of the 4,000 Squamish Nation members is not anticipated.
He said the Nation is conducting environmental, technical, cultural and spiritual analysis of the projects, and ultimately, a report will be produced and provided to Squamish chiefs and council for them to vote on.
“It is a process that the Squamish Nation is conducting, it is our own assessment and we want to conclude that assessment in April so that we can correspond with the environmental assessment findings and then reconcile any of our concerns, our comments at that time,” said Campbell.
According to Campbell, the Squamish meeting Feb. 11 was well attended. The chief said the membership was engaged in the process and offered plenty of feedback.
“That certainly provides us a lot of information for our review process to go out now and conduct further analysis and try to correlate all the concerns from the community meetings, and from the focus group meetings and compile and correlate that and use that as a basis for our technical teams to review,” he said.
An EAO open house on the FortisBC pipeline proposal was held at the same time Wednesday night across town at the Sea to Sky Hotel.
"For the Squamish Nation, the Woodfibre proposal assessment represents a real-world exercise in self government…. Our decision will reflect the interests, the will and the beliefs of the members of the Squamish Nation. We won't allow outsiders, whether they support the pipeline or oppose it, to decide for us."
Campbell said he is pleased the proponents, the EAO and governments have agreed to abide by the Squamish Nation review process.
“It took a little while, but we have all parties onside and participating in our process,” he said.
Campbell said it is too early to determine which direction the decision of the Squamish Nation will go, but the hope is that decision will be taken very seriously by all the stakeholders involved.
Four focus groups have been held since November, according to the Squamish Nation, and another meeting for the membership will be held in North Vancouver later this month.
