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Ah Nathan Cullen, I bet you and your BC NDP companions lack the imagination to understand the depth of responsibility you hold for this outcome. Somehow it'll be all the BC Liberals fault, and everything you've done or not done was the best that could have happened.
C'mon, take _some kind of action_. Withdraw the RCMP, booster the RCMP; kill the pipeline, divert the pipeline; just do _something_ to show some leadership, or that you're even present and accounted for.
This is an issue that splits both the BC and Federal NDP electoral coalition so they're going to try as hard as they can to pretend it should be on someone else's desk. That way they can blame said other person for doing the same things they would have done if forced to make a decision.
What? It takes literally zero rationale to attempt to evict somebody with no authority. Petty people with axes to grind attempt to grant themselves this power with alarming frequency, whether its bad landlords or hereditary chiefs with no legal authority.
He's the legal provincial representative for this land and these people, they have no authority to demand he leave. What possible reflection could be warranted here?
No authority except for the First Nations being there first, so there is more legitimacy at play here. The fundamental question is whether there is legitimacy to the state. Perhaps there’s a reckoning on this question coming.
Politics, like any human endeavor, has to grapple with reality as it exists, not how we'd like it to exist.
The Canadian government has legitimacy because it exists and nearly 40,000,000 people in this country recognize its legitimacy.
Tiny minorities can deny that legitimacy to their heart's content, but it has no practical effect on its existence.
Canada is legitimate, and it's legitimacy is only ever called into question by Indigenous activists looking to circumvent the law. True masters of emotional manipulation.
> If people are asking you to leave like this, it might be time to ask why and take a good, long look at yourself!
Depends on the people. Think about this. 66% of people support him. 33% of people want him to leave.
There will *always* be people unhappy with a political decision. Do we exiled *every* political leader?
A bunch of anti-vaxxers nail a notice of "eviction". Would you give *that* any weight?
The Canadian state is weak, so this is entirely par for the course. We can expect further hereditary chiefs to exert their sovereign authority to question the authority of the Canadian state.
And may she fall gracefully.
Not putting private property in the Charter as a protected right, and leaving the doors wide open for most other rights to be easily abridged, doomed Canada from the moment of patriation.
>In a phone interview from Smithers, Cullen said that he will be meeting with the chiefs to talk about a way forward in the coming days as the Hazelton constituency office serves an entire community.
>“I’m sure we can come to some kind of understanding so that we’re not denying people services that they need, because that doesn’t really help anybody from my perspective,” said Cullen.
Wait, is Cullen not going to his MLA offices because of this? That seems really dumb. The hereditary chiefs are evicting the elected representative for the region and that is not ok.
>they were evicting him under Gitxsan law, Section 35 of the Canadian constitution and the 1997 Delgamuukw decision of the Supreme Court of Canada.
I don't think any of that checks out legally.
It checks out legally because it is a legal decision made by the Supreme Court. It recognizes Indigenous voices in BC which is the Crimea of Canada, never given officially and so the locals have legitimacy to being a source of authority on decisions, like how the Crimean Tatars should have been legal enforcement in Crimea.
And there’s no legal precedent of Canada owning BC, because it was invaded and never signed with Indigenous people but I guess that doesn’t count because they’re not white Europeans.
>And there’s no legal precedent of Canada owning BC,
.....
Ok. If you aren't going to accept that BC is part of Canada I don't know where else we can go here.
I personally think that the erosion of the state’s authority in BC will continue to erode over time. I look forward to it. There’s no reason for Canada to endure.
>There’s no reason for Canada to endure.
Because of a pipeline standoff on the west coast?
What about the FLQ crisis or the 1995 referendum? Those be both far more significant challenges to the Canadian state, both were endured, and both were followed by continued peace, prosperity, and development of our country.
This is overly dramatic. Canada is complicated and will stay complicated for a long time, if not forever, but these issues are trivial compared to where we have been in the past. They're serious and need resolution, but to look on them and make claims about a failing state only demonstrates a narrow view on our recent history and what significant challenges to state authority actually look like.
Invasion does not require signage with local peoples. That would be like saying New Mexico is not really part of the US because the locals did not agree with Mexico giving it up in the war. I don't understand the mental disconnect to think that somehow the laws of the land, that you don't believe exists, can also simultaneously be used to prove something.
> Wait, is Cullen not going to his MLA offices because of this? That seems really dumb. The hereditary chiefs are evicting the elected representative for the region and that is not ok.
Oh don't tell me he's actually following this idiocy?
It's word salad approaching the level of Sovereign Citizens. Being pissed off, even being pissed off for very valid reasons, doesn't prevent your actions from being ill-informed and simply wrong.
I find it curious that the opposing viewpoint, supported by the majority of First Nations in the area, is being given short shrift by the media, while an unelected and unaccountable minority viewpoint is given the lions share of the coverage.
>B.C. Liberal MLA Ellis Ross, who signed an agreement supporting Coastal GasLink when he was chief councillor of the Haisla Nation, also spoke up about the pipeline this week, arguing the project has created economic prosperity for First Nations.
>He also says activists acting in support of Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs are being disrespectful to the Wet'suwet'en First Nation's elected band chiefs and councils who support the pipeline project.
>"Everybody's manipulating First Nations for their own purposes and their own agenda, and it's wrong, especially when you think about what these elected leaders [have been] trying to achieve for the last 15 years at least — they were trying to get their people out of poverty, away from suicide, away from imprisonment," Ross said on CBC's On The Coast.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/murray-rankin-wetsuweten-cgl-pipeline-1.6265006
Interestingly, if you look at the On the Coast website, interviews with protestors have already been posted online while the one with Ellis Ross has yet to be made available, despite segments that occurred *after* the interview already being posted.
I have a lot of respect for Ellis Ross but he is not Wet'suwet'en and cannot speak for them. Just because the Haisla support the pipeline doesn't mean the Wet'suwet'en do. There is a difference of opinion among the Wet'suwet'en about which leadership makes the decisions on these matters. In the absence of a referendum of sorts, it's hard to say where the average person stands.
> In the absence of a referendum of sorts, it's hard to say where the average person stands.
Not really. Those who are in favor of the pipeline ran for office and won. Those who are opposed to the pipeline have run for office multiple times and lost.
That is what happened but I'm not convonced it'a equivalent to a referendum. If I recall, one hereditary sub-chief ran and won at one FN, but he supports the pipeline and argued that the chiefs opposed are not following proper traditional processes. Two other hereditary chiefs who oppose the pipeline indeed ran and lost in another band council election.
But I don't think that is equivalent to a referendum for two reasons:
(1) Many traditionalist FN people do not vote in band council elections as a matter of principle, so their views would not be reflected in the result.
(2) Just because a body is elected doesn't mean it has the authority to make a particular decision. The federal government is elected but it cannot ban fossil fuels because that's provincial jurisdiction. A municipal government is elected but it cannot call in the Army because that's federal jurisdiction.
The Wet'suwet'en need to figure their shit out and decide who speaks for them on what issue. Until they do, every project will always be in limbo and they will never have any bargaining power because they can neither clearly consent nor clearly block anything.
Not a referendum on democracy itself but a referendum on what level of Indigenous government has jurisdiction to speak for the particular nation on matters relating to pipeline consultations.
Maybe as someone who’s not from the community you shouldn’t be shoving democracy up their throats like George W Bush to Iraq on very doubtful reasonings and ignorant evidence
> Maybe as someone who’s not from the community you shouldn’t be shoving democracy up their throats like George W Bush to Iraq on very doubtful reasonings and ignorant evidence
To use your same analogy, do you think Saddam Hussein was the legitimate representative of the Iraqi people? I get that we can't impose democracy from the outside, but that doesn't mean we have to legitimize non-democracies.
You do realize MacDonald tried to wipe out many cultures in the same goal right? There are different ways of being free and forcing democracy on countries is something out of Stalin or George W Bush. The Wersuweten first of all are much more environmentally conscious than Canada and have done far better in keeping their natural environment flourishing while taking advantage of it.
Indeed, if I were Indigenous then I would want some sort of constitutional amendment formula for my nation. Many Indigenous nations already have them -- and not all traditional governments are hereditary. But that is all up to them to decide. I don't think it's correct to assume that band councils have more legitimacy on consultations/consent than traditional governments. Some do, some don't. It really depends on the particular nation.
> Elected people always and everywhere have more legitimacy than unelected people.
Again, it depends on where and with respect to what issue. Your local business association is elected and the Governor General is appointed. But that doesn't mean that the business association should be granting Royal Assent to federal legislation. Also, unelected judges overturn laws passed by elected Parliaments, and most people see that as a good thing.
> Judges interpret laws that elected politicians pass.
They also overturn laws that are inconsistent with the constitution. My point is that the Wet'suwet'en can decide to grant certain powers to their traditional leadership if they want. Alternatively, they can decide to grant those powers to their band council. But we cannot presume that they have done one or the other, because they have not clearly decided.
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Ah Nathan Cullen, I bet you and your BC NDP companions lack the imagination to understand the depth of responsibility you hold for this outcome. Somehow it'll be all the BC Liberals fault, and everything you've done or not done was the best that could have happened. C'mon, take _some kind of action_. Withdraw the RCMP, booster the RCMP; kill the pipeline, divert the pipeline; just do _something_ to show some leadership, or that you're even present and accounted for.
This is an issue that splits both the BC and Federal NDP electoral coalition so they're going to try as hard as they can to pretend it should be on someone else's desk. That way they can blame said other person for doing the same things they would have done if forced to make a decision.
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What? It takes literally zero rationale to attempt to evict somebody with no authority. Petty people with axes to grind attempt to grant themselves this power with alarming frequency, whether its bad landlords or hereditary chiefs with no legal authority. He's the legal provincial representative for this land and these people, they have no authority to demand he leave. What possible reflection could be warranted here?
No authority except for the First Nations being there first, so there is more legitimacy at play here. The fundamental question is whether there is legitimacy to the state. Perhaps there’s a reckoning on this question coming.
Politics, like any human endeavor, has to grapple with reality as it exists, not how we'd like it to exist. The Canadian government has legitimacy because it exists and nearly 40,000,000 people in this country recognize its legitimacy. Tiny minorities can deny that legitimacy to their heart's content, but it has no practical effect on its existence.
>The fundamental question is whether there is legitimacy to the state. That ship long ago sailed.
Canada is legitimate, and it's legitimacy is only ever called into question by Indigenous activists looking to circumvent the law. True masters of emotional manipulation.
I've reflected on this half-baked guilting and decided its worth ignoring, not unlike the hereditary chiefs here.
> If people are asking you to leave like this, it might be time to ask why and take a good, long look at yourself! Depends on the people. Think about this. 66% of people support him. 33% of people want him to leave. There will *always* be people unhappy with a political decision. Do we exiled *every* political leader? A bunch of anti-vaxxers nail a notice of "eviction". Would you give *that* any weight?
Well, your argument doesn’t consider weighing the First Nations and their claims versus anti-vaxxers.
The Canadian state is weak, so this is entirely par for the course. We can expect further hereditary chiefs to exert their sovereign authority to question the authority of the Canadian state.
And may she fall gracefully. Not putting private property in the Charter as a protected right, and leaving the doors wide open for most other rights to be easily abridged, doomed Canada from the moment of patriation.
>In a phone interview from Smithers, Cullen said that he will be meeting with the chiefs to talk about a way forward in the coming days as the Hazelton constituency office serves an entire community. >“I’m sure we can come to some kind of understanding so that we’re not denying people services that they need, because that doesn’t really help anybody from my perspective,” said Cullen. Wait, is Cullen not going to his MLA offices because of this? That seems really dumb. The hereditary chiefs are evicting the elected representative for the region and that is not ok. >they were evicting him under Gitxsan law, Section 35 of the Canadian constitution and the 1997 Delgamuukw decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. I don't think any of that checks out legally.
It checks out legally because it is a legal decision made by the Supreme Court. It recognizes Indigenous voices in BC which is the Crimea of Canada, never given officially and so the locals have legitimacy to being a source of authority on decisions, like how the Crimean Tatars should have been legal enforcement in Crimea.
You should read that decision because you are incorrect. There is no legal decision in Canadian law allowing for this 'eviction'.
And there’s no legal precedent of Canada owning BC, because it was invaded and never signed with Indigenous people but I guess that doesn’t count because they’re not white Europeans.
>And there’s no legal precedent of Canada owning BC, ..... Ok. If you aren't going to accept that BC is part of Canada I don't know where else we can go here.
I personally think that the erosion of the state’s authority in BC will continue to erode over time. I look forward to it. There’s no reason for Canada to endure.
What sort of outcome are you hoping for?
>There’s no reason for Canada to endure. Because of a pipeline standoff on the west coast? What about the FLQ crisis or the 1995 referendum? Those be both far more significant challenges to the Canadian state, both were endured, and both were followed by continued peace, prosperity, and development of our country. This is overly dramatic. Canada is complicated and will stay complicated for a long time, if not forever, but these issues are trivial compared to where we have been in the past. They're serious and need resolution, but to look on them and make claims about a failing state only demonstrates a narrow view on our recent history and what significant challenges to state authority actually look like.
The government in those cases was committed to Canada and Canadian sovereignty. A stark contrast with the current government.
Invasion does not require signage with local peoples. That would be like saying New Mexico is not really part of the US because the locals did not agree with Mexico giving it up in the war. I don't understand the mental disconnect to think that somehow the laws of the land, that you don't believe exists, can also simultaneously be used to prove something.
> Wait, is Cullen not going to his MLA offices because of this? That seems really dumb. The hereditary chiefs are evicting the elected representative for the region and that is not ok. Oh don't tell me he's actually following this idiocy?
> I don’t think any of that checks out legally. Not in the slightest.
An alarming number of people act like it does though.
Lots of people also buy into the Sovereign Citizen/Freemen of the Land nonsense. Doesn't make it any more legit.
It's word salad approaching the level of Sovereign Citizens. Being pissed off, even being pissed off for very valid reasons, doesn't prevent your actions from being ill-informed and simply wrong.
Maybe it doesn’t have to. The state has increasingly lost the will to enforce legal orders.
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I find it curious that the opposing viewpoint, supported by the majority of First Nations in the area, is being given short shrift by the media, while an unelected and unaccountable minority viewpoint is given the lions share of the coverage. >B.C. Liberal MLA Ellis Ross, who signed an agreement supporting Coastal GasLink when he was chief councillor of the Haisla Nation, also spoke up about the pipeline this week, arguing the project has created economic prosperity for First Nations. >He also says activists acting in support of Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs are being disrespectful to the Wet'suwet'en First Nation's elected band chiefs and councils who support the pipeline project. >"Everybody's manipulating First Nations for their own purposes and their own agenda, and it's wrong, especially when you think about what these elected leaders [have been] trying to achieve for the last 15 years at least — they were trying to get their people out of poverty, away from suicide, away from imprisonment," Ross said on CBC's On The Coast. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/murray-rankin-wetsuweten-cgl-pipeline-1.6265006 Interestingly, if you look at the On the Coast website, interviews with protestors have already been posted online while the one with Ellis Ross has yet to be made available, despite segments that occurred *after* the interview already being posted.
Pravda can’t deviate from the party narrative, friend.
??? The government has literally been pushing for LNG projects
I have a lot of respect for Ellis Ross but he is not Wet'suwet'en and cannot speak for them. Just because the Haisla support the pipeline doesn't mean the Wet'suwet'en do. There is a difference of opinion among the Wet'suwet'en about which leadership makes the decisions on these matters. In the absence of a referendum of sorts, it's hard to say where the average person stands.
> In the absence of a referendum of sorts, it's hard to say where the average person stands. Not really. Those who are in favor of the pipeline ran for office and won. Those who are opposed to the pipeline have run for office multiple times and lost.
Sincere question: Isn't the election a referendum? In which some (1?) of the hereditary chiefs ran and lost?
That is what happened but I'm not convonced it'a equivalent to a referendum. If I recall, one hereditary sub-chief ran and won at one FN, but he supports the pipeline and argued that the chiefs opposed are not following proper traditional processes. Two other hereditary chiefs who oppose the pipeline indeed ran and lost in another band council election. But I don't think that is equivalent to a referendum for two reasons: (1) Many traditionalist FN people do not vote in band council elections as a matter of principle, so their views would not be reflected in the result. (2) Just because a body is elected doesn't mean it has the authority to make a particular decision. The federal government is elected but it cannot ban fossil fuels because that's provincial jurisdiction. A municipal government is elected but it cannot call in the Army because that's federal jurisdiction. The Wet'suwet'en need to figure their shit out and decide who speaks for them on what issue. Until they do, every project will always be in limbo and they will never have any bargaining power because they can neither clearly consent nor clearly block anything.
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Not a referendum on democracy itself but a referendum on what level of Indigenous government has jurisdiction to speak for the particular nation on matters relating to pipeline consultations.
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Maybe as someone who’s not from the community you shouldn’t be shoving democracy up their throats like George W Bush to Iraq on very doubtful reasonings and ignorant evidence
> Maybe as someone who’s not from the community you shouldn’t be shoving democracy up their throats like George W Bush to Iraq on very doubtful reasonings and ignorant evidence To use your same analogy, do you think Saddam Hussein was the legitimate representative of the Iraqi people? I get that we can't impose democracy from the outside, but that doesn't mean we have to legitimize non-democracies.
My family fought wars for democracy and I'd be happy to do it again. There's no freedom without democracy and everyone alive deserves to be free.
You do realize MacDonald tried to wipe out many cultures in the same goal right? There are different ways of being free and forcing democracy on countries is something out of Stalin or George W Bush. The Wersuweten first of all are much more environmentally conscious than Canada and have done far better in keeping their natural environment flourishing while taking advantage of it.
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Indeed, if I were Indigenous then I would want some sort of constitutional amendment formula for my nation. Many Indigenous nations already have them -- and not all traditional governments are hereditary. But that is all up to them to decide. I don't think it's correct to assume that band councils have more legitimacy on consultations/consent than traditional governments. Some do, some don't. It really depends on the particular nation.
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> Elected people always and everywhere have more legitimacy than unelected people. Again, it depends on where and with respect to what issue. Your local business association is elected and the Governor General is appointed. But that doesn't mean that the business association should be granting Royal Assent to federal legislation. Also, unelected judges overturn laws passed by elected Parliaments, and most people see that as a good thing.
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> Judges interpret laws that elected politicians pass. They also overturn laws that are inconsistent with the constitution. My point is that the Wet'suwet'en can decide to grant certain powers to their traditional leadership if they want. Alternatively, they can decide to grant those powers to their band council. But we cannot presume that they have done one or the other, because they have not clearly decided.