Thank you. I'm John Helin, the mayor of Lax Kw'alaams. It's normally the chief councillor but in my community I'm called the mayor.
We're a band of approximately 4,000 members on the north coast of B.C. We have lived from the sea for thousands of years like other first nations in the country. We value our environment whether it's water, sea or air. We have the biggest gillnet fishing fleet on the coast that can't make a living anymore, so we have to look at other opportunities that present themselves.
We disagree with the tanker moratorium that's going through the process now. We were not consulted. What they are using as guidelines to impose that on us is the Great Bear Rainforest. It's another piece of legislation in B.C. that we were not consulted on. At the end of it all, we'll probably end up in court fighting it. It's not the place we want to be. We want to be able to make a decent living in our traditional territories as some of court cases that have been won by first nations groups say we should.
When the Prime Minister talks about consultation, reconciliation, self-reliance, something like the tanker ban closes doors for us. I think it's incumbent upon me as a leader in my community to go to my membership and ask them what they want. It shouldn't be imposed on us by the government in Ottawa.
It's important that we do look at other opportunities. I met with the Province of B.C. recently. We will meet again soon on a northern energy strategy in B.C. For those of you who don't know, there was a study done a few years ago by the federal government on ports in B.C. around oil. The safest ports, there were two of them, one right across from my community, Grassy Point, and the other one in the Prince Rupert area of Ridley Island. The worst port is Burnaby. That study pointed this out very clearly.
Again, it should be the people in the area. We're not all going to agree as first nations people or the general public on what we want to deal with in our traditional territories, but we shouldn't let NGOs come into our territories and divide us. That was very clearly done on the PNW project. I had members from my community who were on Lelu Island and saying that they were hereditary leaders. We know our community. We know our membership. Clearly there was money parachuted into that project and it divided people. It's very real. What I would like to do as an elected leader of my community is get valid information on whatever project is going to be proposed, get that out to our membership and let them decide in a referendum. We treated that PNW project exactly like a regular election for my position where everybody got the same information. It was independent information that went to all community members, and that changed the vote from just 100% no to over two-thirds supporting that project. That's how we would like to handle anything that's being proposed in our traditional territory.