The West Coast Oil Pipeline is NOT of national interest.

Submission to the Major Projects Office of the Government of Canada

Aug 06, 2026

The following article inspired me to post this letter to the Major Projects Office of the Government of Canada:

Carney is quietly pushing ahead with plans to fast track a pipeline as Canada burns

On the Saturday of what was, for many Canadians, a long weekend, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government quietly took a major step forward in its push to build a new oil pipeline to West Coast…

Listen now

15 hours ago · 67 likes · 3 comments · Rachel Gilmore

Context

Map illustrating the Pre-1975 Treaties of Canada

When the Dominion of Canada was created by the British Parliament though British North America Act 1867, it was in the context of an understanding that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 applied and that Canada must make treaties with pre-existing sovereign governments, sometimes a mixture of Westphalian and relational sovereign governments. The last of these was concluded with the end of the formal process for Treaty 11 in 1922.

Between 1922 and 1973, Canada took the position that Aboriginal title was not a legally enforceable right and that treaty-making was finished.

Two major events altered this paradigm:

The Calder Decision (1973): The Supreme Court of Canada recognized for the first time that Aboriginal title existed in Canadian law prior to colonization and independent of Crown legislation.
The James Bay Dispute (1973–1975): When Québec attempted to build the James Bay Hydroelectric Project without negotiating with the Cree and Inuit, the courts briefly granted an injunction. This forced Canada, Québec, and Hydro-Québec to the negotiating table, resulting in the JBNQA in 1975.

Following this, Canada established its own formal Comprehensive Land Claims Policy. This forms a contractual agreements between a Canadian Crown and a Canadian corporation. While Canada claims that this conforms to Section 35 of its own constitution and UNDRIP, this is yet another controversial claim made by the Canadian Crown that will likely eventually be striken down by domestic or international courts.

With that context out of the way, here is the letter:

Letter sent to the Major Projects Office

In reply to: https://gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2026/2026-08-01/html/sup1-eng.html

Copy to my MP in Ottawa Center

TL;DR : The West Coast Oil Pipeline is NOT of national interest.

I’m a settler Canadian of Scottish, Irish and French (New France era) descent who was born in Sudbury and currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario. I have lived on the lands of the Anishinaabe peoples my entire life.

The most simple economic analysis shows that it makes absolutely no sense for Canadian citizens, so the purpose must be something else entirely. It feels like an attempt to appease economic and political elites that formed around the resource extraction entity known as Alberta that the Federal Government in Ottawa created in 1905 with Alberta Act 1905.

I know there is an unlawful referendum being pushed forward for that corporation to separate from Canada and retain land claims, but it is past time for the Dominion of Canada institutions to put the notion that these subsidiaries can separate without FPIC from the indigenous nations (treaty or not, Canada has obligations). While international law protects the rights of Indigenous nations to separate from Provincial crowns, there is no method other than violent revolution, force, or an unconstitutional Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) for a province to do this.

Rather than trying to appease these economic and political elites, whether in Alberta, Saskatchewan or Quebec, through projects that oppose the National Interest, the Dominion of Canada government should move forward with processes to defang special interests.

It is obvious to me that the creation of new provinces, and the extension of existing provinces, into the North West Territories was a policy similar to “gerrymandering” to grant distant southern settler capitals control over northern lands. With the direct involvement of treaty nations for the numbered treaties, to redraw the boundaries of these “Provinces”.

When I was born in Sudbury in 1968, I was told I lived in Northern Ontario. While that region may have appropriately been considered Northern Ontario in 1867, territorial expansions made in 1874, 1889 and 1912 that should be rescinded to allow the True North to become Strong and Free, and for the distant southern capitals of Toronto and Ottawa to no longer invalidly control northern territories.

The same is obviously required for other provinces, especially BC and Quebec which do not have nation-to-nation treaties, and where Canada falsely claims that agreements between Canadian crowns and Canadian corporations are treaties (and conform to either Section 35 or UNDRIP).