First Nations Treaty Alliance Says Newly-Approved Tar Sands Pipelines Will Not Be Built

Just weeks after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government approved two major tar sands pipeline projects, the Indigenous-led alliance formed specifically to block them says the approvals change nothing — the pipelines, they insist, simply will not be built.

A Treaty Built for This Exact Moment

The Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion was signed in September at simultaneous ceremonies in Vancouver and Montreal, bringing together more than 50 First Nations and tribes from Canada and the northern United States under a single, coordinated commitment to block any pipeline, tanker, or rail project expanding Alberta’s oil sands. By the time of Trudeau’s approvals, that number had already grown to 100 signatory nations — momentum that accelerated further once the federal government approved Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion and Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement pipeline on the same day, alongside rejecting Enbridge’s separate Northern Gateway project.

FSRN spoke with a Treaty Alliance signatory about what the government’s approval actually means on the ground. “Clearly, the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion came as a consequence of the fact that for well over a decade indigenous peoples have become climate change refugees,” the signatory explained, pointing to a pattern of worsening wildfire seasons forcing evacuations from northern Indigenous communities nearly every summer. “It’s not just indigenous peoples that stand in opposition,” they added, invoking the Burnaby Mountain campaign against Kinder Morgan’s earlier survey work, when more than 120 people from a wide range of backgrounds were arrested protesting the same pipeline route now formally approved.

Five Projects, One Unified Line

The Treaty Alliance’s opposition isn’t diffuse — it names five specific projects its signatories have committed to stopping outright: Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion, TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline, Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement, Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project, and the Keystone XL pipeline. “These two pipelines are among five projects specifically cited in the Treaty Alliance as projects that must not proceed,” the interview noted, underscoring that Trudeau’s approval of Trans Mountain and Line 3 struck at exactly the infrastructure the alliance was built to block, rather than some tangential or unrelated development.

Enbridge’s own public framing of Line 3 has drawn direct criticism from Treaty Alliance advocates, who argue the company has understated the project’s real significance by describing it merely as a “replacement” for an aging pipeline. Critics point out that the existing Line 3 carries roughly 390,000 barrels of conventional oil daily, while the new pipeline is designed to carry as much as 915,000 barrels of diluted bitumen — a difference of more than half a million barrels per day, functionally equivalent to the entire capacity the cancelled Northern Gateway project would have added. That gap between “replacement” framing and a genuine capacity expansion is precisely the kind of move Treaty Alliance organizers say justifies treating Line 3 as a new tar sands expansion project in its own right, not a routine infrastructure upgrade.

Confidence Rooted in Standing Rock

The Treaty Alliance’s defiant posture toward the federal approvals draws direct inspiration and, in some cases, direct legal overlap with the resistance then unfolding at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States — the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe itself is among the Treaty Alliance’s signatories. Kanesatake Grand Chief Serge Simon captured that cross-border solidarity when the treaty was first signed: “From Quebec, we will work with allies in [British Columbia] to make sure that the Kinder Morgan pipeline does not pass.”

That confidence has drawn skepticism from industry-aligned observers, who note that Canadian courts have consistently held that Indigenous nations’ constitutional right to consultation on resource projects doesn’t extend to an outright veto — meaning the Treaty Alliance’s claim of authority to simply prohibit these projects rests on a legal theory the country’s courts haven’t endorsed. Treaty Alliance signatories have responded to that critique by framing their opposition explicitly in terms of Indigenous law and sovereignty that predates and, in their view, supersedes the Canadian legal framework being invoked against them.

What “Will Not Be Built” Actually Means

For the alliance, the promise that these pipelines “will not be built” isn’t rhetorical bravado so much as a description of an actual strategy: sustained legal challenges, coordinated cross-border organizing, and a willingness to physically block construction the way protesters did at Burnaby Mountain and, more visibly, at Standing Rock. Whether that strategy can actually stop two federally approved, multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects backed by some of North America’s largest energy companies remained, in December 2016, a test still very much underway rather than a settled outcome — one that would continue playing out in courtrooms, construction sites, and Indigenous territories across two countries for years to come.

For related coverage of Indigenous-led pipeline resistance, see our piece on Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Harold Frazier’s meeting with President Obama over Dakota Access, or browse our full Environment archive.