Northern Gateway opponent says investor money will ‘sit there and rot’

Opponents of Enbridge Inc.'s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline say the more than $6.5-billion project is a bad investment.

As in previous years, a delegation of First Nations leaders, environmental activists and B.C. community representatives will be speaking out against the project at Enbridge's annual meeting on Wednesday.

John Ridsdale, hereditary chief of the Wet'suwet'en Nation in northern B.C., says his community will never support the project and investor money will "sit there and rot."

Art Sterritt, executive director of Coastal First Nations, says he's attending Enbridge's meeting for the first time this year to tell chief executive Al Monaco the company is wasting its money on Northern Gateway.

A joint review panel said in December the project should be approved, subject to 209 conditions, and the federal cabinet is set to decide in a matter of weeks.

But a litany of legal challenges being mounted by project opponents mean the path forward for Northern Gateway is far from clear.

First Nations in most of British Columbia have not signed treaties with the Crown, meaning they maintain right and title.

There are a number of court cases in which B.C. First Nations have been successful in the past, Ridsdale said.

"We've had the longest winning streak in Canadian jurisprudence, in the history of Canada. And yet here we go again," he said.

"They still haven't listened to us. We've constantly said the answer is still no and we give the reasoning behind it. So we go to court."