Vancouver — British Columbia's public safety minister has condemned a blockade set up along a forestry road used by construction workers for the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline.
Mike Farnworth says in a statement the province is calling for the de-escalation of the “confrontation” and the peaceful removal of the blockade set up Sunday by members of the Gidimt'en clan, one of five in the broader Wet'suwet'en Nation.
Farnworth says the blockade puts emergency access at risk for more than 500 workers, and threatens “good faith commitments made between the Office of the Wet'suwet'en and the Province of B.C. to develop a new relationship based on respect.”
A statement posted Sunday by members of the Gidimt'en clan gave Coastal GasLink workers eight hours to leave the area west of Prince George before the service road was closed, a move Farnworth says violates a B.C. court injunction.
The minister says the 670-kilometre pipeline project is nearly halfway complete and has all the provincial permits necessary for the work currently underway, as well as agreements with all 20 elected chiefs and councils for First Nations along the route.
Gidimt'en spokesperson Sleydo', whose English name is Molly Wickham, says their hereditary chiefs have never ceded or surrendered the territory, and their opposition to the pipeline project sparked nationwide protests that stopped railways last year.
