 With PETER BLACK Churchill Power Play
Who could forget it? It was supposed to be the opening of the Panama Canal and Armistice Day all rolled into one.
But instead it turned into a full-colour Keystone Kops knee-slapper with Brian Tobin and Lucien Bouchard being chased around the town of Churchill Falls by an angry mob of Innu.
The premiers had hoped to provide a panoramic backdrop of what money and engineering has wrought on the once-thundering but now-trickling Churchill Falls for their announcement of the new phase of the hydro development.
Bouchard was to play the role of magnanimous leader of a still-hypothetical neighboring country. Tobin was to be the Moses who brought financial salvation for his people by parting the waters of Muskrat Falls on the new project and by getting a better deal from Quebec on sales of juice from the existing Churchill plant
Alas for the premiers and the event organizers, the Labrador and Quebec Innu, tipped off by months of crossed-finger denials by Tobin and Bouchard, showed up at Churchill Falls and spoiled the media show
That was almost a year ago, March 9 to be precise, and since that day there has been scant progress in advancing the $10 billion project on the political front.
The Innu Nation of Labrador and the Mamit Innuat of Quebec's Lower North Shore (where the rivers St. Jean and Romaine would be affected) pulled out of talks in January, as a stratagem to get Quebec, Newfoundland, and Ottawa to deal with their land claims before a single bull-dozer shovel is raised for preliminary work on the Lower Churchill project
Both Innu communities have been waiting for action on their claims, which the federal government accepted for negotiation 20 years ago. The Innu Nation has designs on much of central Labrador and parts of Quebec's Lower North Shore, while the Mamit Innuat want 70,000 square kilometres in adjacent territory.
The claims are being negotiated separately, with provincial participation. According to the Feds, 1999 is the target date for getting an agreement-in-principle
The Innu from both provinces have reason to be suspicious of hydro projects, given recent history.
The Labrador Innu were virtually ignored when Joey Smallwood launched Churchill Falls 30 years ago, and the Cree of Northern Quebec nearly got taken for a ride by Robert Bourassa's James Bay mega-project and they still have numerous beefs about being stiffed on that deal.
Both Quebec and Newfoundland Hydro have to be aware of the new armaments in the natives' quill to fight power projects they don't like: witness the death of the Great Whale project, iced largely by the Cree's effective global awareness campaign.
Once Rep. Robert Kennedy Jr. had paddled the pristine Great Whale river and pronounced it sacred, the jig was up for then-premier Jacques Parizeau and Hydro Quebec
Strangely enough, the little preliminary work on the Lower Churchill project that has gone ahead, notably archeological studies, couldn't have come at a better time for the Innu and their land claims. Field work conducted last summer by a team which included Innu researchers discovered a reservoir-full of sites and artifacts that would tend to substantiate native claims, and then some
Allow me to quote from the research report:
Most of these date to the period 2000-3000 years ago. Another site is 4000 or more years old, older than any site previously recorded in the Churchill Valley or Upper Lake Melville region."
Premiers Tobin and Bouchard are supposed to get together soon, reportedly next week, to figure out what to do next on the Lower Churchill project.
The Innu, meanwhile, figure Tobin and Bouchard's power dream can wait; after all, they've been waiting 20 years for theirs.
Copyright © 1999 Peter Black/Log Cabin Chronicles/2.99 |
