Editor:
As many have cynically suspected from the start, former cabinet minister Barry Penner confirmed on Sept. 14 in a meeting with local residents that the contentious Pender Harbour Dock Management Plan (DMP) is a strategic legal move by Premier Clark to end a string of lost Supreme Court decisions stretching from Calder, Delgamuek, Haida, to the recent Chilcotin verdict.
Penner underlined the intention of the province to demonstrate a reasonable attempt at accommodation with First Nations because a number of developments along the Fraser and Howe Sound are vulnerable to tenure challenges. Without tenure certainty, financial investments are on hold. The only avenue to overcoming the legal barrier is a clause in the Chilcotin decision leaving the door open to some form of reasonable act of reconciliation with First Nations from both the province and local citizens.
Climate activists are sympathetic to First Nations when it comes to protecting the coast from the danger of tankers, pipelines and coal ports. Just what will be acceptable to reach an accommodation is an open question.
Certainly Pender residents are feeling let down by their elected representatives. Penner implied that local folks shouldn’t be too hopeful of changing what appears to be a done deal.
Penner will submit his recommendations to Premier Clark after the federal election on Oct. 19 when the political landscape will be different. Meanwhile local residents are looking at the DMP from the point of view of pawns in a chess game by B.C. to cosmetically dress up its legal groundwork in its struggles over land claims.
Hardly a principled approach to public transparency and democracy!
Joe Harrison, Garden Bay
