One of the biggest issues in Canada with respect to the First Nation people is the Northern Gateway pipeline. The Northern Gateway pipeline is an attempt to transport oil from the Alberta oil sands to tankers that are connected to Asia. The main issue that is preventing this from occurring is that a lot of the pipeline will go through First Nation land. People automatically associate profit with success in business, but sometimes it is hard to see a company’s failures on a balance sheet when it comes to their social and environmental responsibilities. The main argument for this pipeline is that it will create lots of jobs and promote economic growth, but at what expense to the stakeholders? To the First Nation people their land is sacred to them and the Northern Gateway will destroy a large part of it. Another cost they have to think of is the possible environmental effects of this pipeline. If there were any leaks in the pipeline it could cause disaster and huge costs to clean up the leakage. “We call this beautiful B.C., and that is what we want to keep it as,” said Martian Louie, Chief Councilor of the Nadleh Whut’en. For a company to be sustainable they have to insure that they are sustainable in an economic, environmental, and social sense to truly be sustainable. The Northern Gateway is only concerned with the economic side.
Laanela, Mike. “Northern Gateway pipeline: First Nations outline constitutional
challenges.” CBC. , 5 Oct. 2014. Web. 6 Oct. 2014.
<http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/northern-gateway-
pipeline-first-nations-outline-constitutional-challenges1.2706376>.
