Across so-called Canada, and around the world, we are finding ourselves navigating a period of enormous uncertainty. The cost of living remains painfully high. Long-standing trade relationships are changing. Friends become foes, and geopolitical tensions are deepening. Governments are under pressure to create jobs, attract investment, diversify partners, and make Canada more competitive in an increasingly unsettled global economy.
It is against this backdrop that we elected a central banker, an accomplished economist-come-reluctant politician. It is against this backdrop that the language of urgency is most powerful, where we are told that we must compete, grow and secure our place in the new world order. And it is against this backdrop that we are being persuaded that to achieve economic prosperity, we need to build, and build quickly.
There is a real anxiety around what comes next.
But when that anxiety becomes the lens through which the federal government defines the “national interest,” we should be extremely careful about who and what Carney is willing to sacrifice. That is the question at the heart of the Pacific Link pipeline.
This approach is not new. It’s a tried and tested colonial one, dressed in the language of unity and nation-building: extract resources from Indigenous territories without consent… and call the resulting disruption the price of progress.
Pacific Link would carry up to one million barrels of oil a day from Alberta to a new export terminal near the Fraser River, and cost as much as $44 billion in taxpayer dollars. The federal and Alberta governments will share 90 per cent ownership, while impacted Indigenous communities are being offered a 10 per cent stake financed through government loan programs. Oil companies will profit off its operation.
The pipeline is presented as an opportunity to build national prosperity: to move Canadian resources to new markets, create jobs and strengthen our economy. Its designation as a project of “national interest” comes with accelerated approvals and a rushed consultation process with Indigenous communities. It bulldozes Canada’s commitment to the United Nations Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), while creating a pathway to bypass the Species At Risk Act for already endangered orcas.
It doubles down on fossil fuel infrastructure at a moment when the climate crisis is already delivering record-breaking temperatures and increasingly devastating wildfires, floods and storms. All this sets a dangerous precedent for what “Building Canada” truly means.
But this approach is not new. It’s a tried and tested colonial one, dressed in the language of unity and nation-building: extract resources from Indigenous territories without consent, build infrastructure to move them to global markets, and call the resulting disruption the price of progress. It tells us that we must move aside hard-won laws and rights meant to protect people, nature and future generations, because the government decided to.
But what, exactly, are we being asked to sacrifice?
Building a pipeline to the Fraser River Estuary — a critical habitat for wildlife — would bring more oil tankers to the fragile Salish Sea, putting salmon and the Southern Resident orcas at greater risk. Just 74 Southern Residents remain in the wild. And they have names: Tahlequah, Phoenix, Mako. They have families, matrilines and relationships that span generations.
For a population already on the brink, more tanker traffic means more noise, pollution, disturbance, and a greater risk of a catastrophic spill. This is what extinction looks like in real-time.
But there is another kind of extinction at work here: the erosion of Indigenous rights and the government’s refusal to respect the relationships between nations, their territories and the living world.
The federal government gave 130 Indigenous communities just two months (initially one, before pushback forced an extension) for consultations on Pacific Link’s designation as a project of “national interest.” Many communities decried the lack of information about the project, which made it extremely difficult to assess the impacts. Yet the government pressed ahead on their political timeline, asking Indigenous nations to respond to a decision that was already being framed as essential to Canada’s economic future.
This matters because for nations whose territories, rights and titles are directly affected, the “national interest” cannot be defined without them.
Just 74 Southern Residents remain in the wild. And they have names: Tahlequah, Phoenix, Mako. They have families, matrilines and relationships that span generations.
In response, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) passed a resolution rejecting the designation of Pacific Link as a project of national interest, citing that the absence of the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of affected First Nations “would be inconsistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and vulnerable to legal challenge,” states to Gitxaala Chief Councillor and UBCIC Vice-President Linda Innes.
The message was clear: economic urgency does not erase Indigenous rights.
Nor can a promise of ownership substitute for consent.
And this is where the two extinctions meet.
For many Indigenous nations, the living world is not simply a collection of resources to be extracted, managed, transported and processed. Orcas, salmon, rivers and forests exist within relationships that carry responsibilities across generations.
When the government treats those relationships as obstacles to an economic project, it is imposing a colonial mandate that overrides the laws, rights and relationships of the nations whose territories it crosses. Carney’s pipeline dream is doing exactly that.
The concerns about Pacific Link extend far beyond the nations directly affected. More than 43,000 people across Canada have voiced their opposition to the pipeline. Scientists and environmental groups have warned about the risks to nature and climate. And yet, the federal government still went ahead with the project, creating its own tale of two extinctions.
One is the decline of the Southern resident orcas. The other is the erosion of Indigenous rights and sovereignty, and the relationships between nations and the lands and waters that sustain us all.
The government calls this “national interest.” But those words cannot erase the risks to an endangered wildlife, the impacts on climate, the opposition from civil society, or the constitutionally protected rights and title of Indigenous nations.
We do not have to accept that vision of the future. We can invest in an economy that makes life more affordable, protects the natural world and respects Indigenous rights and sovereignty. Building Canada should not mean choosing between a healthy environment, a just economy and Indigenous rights. It should mean building a future in which people and nature can both flourish.
Salomé Sané is Nature and Biodiversity Campaigner with Greenpeace Canada, and Sheila Sampath is the Head of Nature and Biodiversity at Greenpeace Canada.
