Thank you, Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to speak today.
My name is Stephen Buffalo. I'm the president and CEO of the Indian Resource Council of Canada. Our organization represents over 130 first nations that produce or have direct interest in the oil and gas industry. I'm also the chairman and a founding board member of the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation, a Crown corporation of the Province of Alberta, which provides loan guarantees for equity ownership. Our mandate is to advocate for policies that improve and increase resource development opportunities for first nations and their members.
This topic, energy exports, is one that we've followed for many years. We hosted our first pipeline gridlock conference back in 2016 to bring indigenous people, government and industry together to discuss long-term solutions to the challenge of getting indigenous support for pipelines.
Unfortunately, the projects we discussed, like energy east, Keystone XL and northern gateway, still got cancelled. I say “unfortunately” because I think a lot of first nations would have benefited from those projects if they have gone ahead, with more jobs and own-source revenue and opportunities. This week it is especially obvious that Canada and its allies would have benefited too.
Nonetheless, we did a lot of work to develop a framework for first nations to have increased economic participation and to gain more benefits in linear infrastructure. I'm pretty proud to say that the work paid off.
In the past seven years, pipelines have gone from being a lightning rod to a model of how economic reconciliation can work. Equity, backed by loan guarantees, has changed the conversation and made first nations partners in pipelines and the creation of wealth for first nations. In fact, the Canada Energy Regulator just put out a brief last month showing how indigenous groups have acquired ownership interest in over 5,000 kilometres of pipelines in Canada.
We took a bad situation and turned it into a huge success story, and now we have industry and indigenous groups from around the world asking how we did it. Well, the Trump threats, the energy shock and the Canada-Alberta MOU have brought attention to export pipelines again.
We hosted another pipeline gridlock conference this past November to bring first nations from British Columbia and Alberta together to talk about a new oil pipeline to the coast. We didn't want to have a discussion about us versus them. Instead, we shared perspectives about what the legitimate environmental concerns were, the negative experiences and polarization associated with northern gateway and other pipelines, the ways in which first nations could be involved in monitoring and the mitigation of risks and accidents, and the economic, social and environmental benefits that could be negotiated.
It became clear that the best way to gain the trust of nations so they know that a pipeline can be safe is to meaningfully involve them in the development and operation of those activities. Now is not the time to convince anyone to accept a pipeline and port. It's time to have discussions and provide as much information as possible. However, let's all remember that the Trans Mountain expansion and Coastal GasLink did ultimately get built with majority indigenous support, and both are now operating safely.
Building a new export pipeline with indigenous support is not some insurmountable task. I'm confident that we can get majority indigenous support for a new northwest pipeline, but it must start with building relationships, having conversations, looking for solutions in good faith and giving everyone reason to trust the process.
At the Indian Resource Council, we will do our part to facilitate that dialogue and find an outcome where everyone can win. I ask the federal government if it can do the same.
I look forward to answering some of your questions. Ekosi.