Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Feb 07/00) - "Ladies and gentlemen, we are embarked on a consideration of a great river valley and its people. This inquiry is a study whose magnitude is without precedent in this country. I have been guided by the conviction that this inquiry must be fair and it must be complete. We have to do it right." -- Justice Thomas R. Berger March 3, 1975.

Following his speech that night at the Explorer Hotel in Yellowknife, Justice Thomas R. Berger set out on a 21-month inquiry, meeting with the people of the North to gather opinions on the proposed pipeline in the Mackenzie River Valley.

Berger compiled 281 volumes from 40,000 pages of testimony during the course of the inquiry. He condensed it into 248 pages called Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: The Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, Volume One.

Volume Two was released several months later, in which Berger recommended a moratorium on pipeline development in the North for 10 years and rejected any plan to build a pipeline across Northern Yukon.

The inquiry was "not simply a debate about a gas pipeline and an energy corridor, it is a debate about the future of the North and its peoples," Berger wrote in Volume One.

"We look upon the North as our last frontier. It is natural for us to think of developing it, of subduing the land and extracting its resources to fuel Canada's industry and heat our homes," he wrote. "But the native people say the North is their homeland ... They claim it is their land, and they believe they have a right to say what its future ought to be."

Contacted last week in Vancouver, the former Supreme Court justice says he's just "Tom Berger" now and works as a lawyer. Among his clients is the Nisga'a First Nation -- which he has represented since 1967.

He was not aware of the recent meeting where First Nations leaders met to reconsider the Mackenzie pipeline.

Berger would not speculate about the future and declined comment on his inquiry. He did say the time spent in the North was an eye-opening two years for him.

"It was a great experience and I learned a lot about the Western Arctic and the Mackenzie Valley," Berger said. "I heard from about a thousand people throughout the valley and I did my best to write a report that would be useful."

It is clear that times have changed since the Berger Inquiry. Aboriginal people have staked their claim to the North and are prepared to determine its future.

One of the thousand people who spoke with Berger in the 1970s was a then 35-year-old Vince Steen. He stood out as one of the best witnesses who spoke to the inquiry.

A reporter from The Albertan, called Steen's testimony "electrifying."

The young chief took every opportunity to speak to the inquiry, drawing huge laughs when he said, "Mr. Berger, I'm Vince Steen and I'm back."

Today, Steen is MLA in Nunakput and said any questions he and his people had back then, have been answered and he believes the pipeline is long overdue.

"I think whatever concerns we were expressing during Berger, time has addressed them if nobody else has," Steen said. "The opportunity to prepare, the environmental concerns have all been addressed, long ago.

"We've had plenty of opportunity to address our concerns and if we haven't, it's nobody's fault but our own," he said.

"In the Beaufort we've been ready to go a long time now so, I would say, 'Go ahead,'" Steen said. "A long time ago we should have been proceeding with this pipeline business.

"Even the concerns we were expressing offshore about the oilspill and whether the oil company or the government would be able to handle such a disaster -- if you want to use that word -- I'm sure people are confident now that it's no longer a worry."

Beyond the environmental concerns of the pipeline, much of the dissention towards a pipeline in the '70s was based on unsettled land claims and Steen said for the people of the Delta and Sahtu, that is no longer a concern.

Because of the existing oil pipeline south to Zama, Alta. from Norman Wells, Steen said the outstanding claim from the Deh Cho should not be much of an issue.

"The only group of people who don't have a claim, has the oil pipeline go right through their land, so I don't know what would be the point of making a noise about it now," he said.

Deh Cho

Bill Laferte was MLA at the time Berger visited Fort Simpson.

Laferte was in favour of the pipeline then and he's in favour of it now. He said the pipeline would have brought work and education to the Deh Cho, but said his position cost him his job.

"Being an MLA and in favour of the pipeline is what killed me in politics," Laferte said. "In spite of strong opposition, I was in favour of economic reform in the Mackenzie Valley, because the days of trapping and the old traditional life was gone."

"(Inquiry witnesses) still said that a lot of people were living on the land and that the pipeline would go through their backyards, when their wasn't a God-darned soul on the land since 1954," he added.

Laferte said the press only focused on the witnesses who were opposed to the pipeline, he said there were many who wanted the big project to go through, but were their voices went unheard.

"I made it a point to go to as many of those meetings as I could," Laferte said. "The Dene people who were in favour of the pipeline were never mentioned."

The economic benefits could still help the Deh Cho people, he said, but worries politics might stall any pipeline before it gets started.

"It's not too late, if there are no impediments, but there is an impediment and that is through the political power block that the Dene people are exercising," he said.

"You can't develop any worthwhile economy through isolation," he added.

Fort Liard

Harry Deneron was a young chief at the time when Berger's commission came to Fort Liard. When he spoke to the inquiry in July 1975, Deneron said his people worried the new pipeline would be just like the Amoco line that runs south out of Liard -- a project Deneron said brought no new jobs or wealth to the community.

"People said that they came in very quickly and were gone the next day," he said.

"They were extracting something from the land and the whole issue was uncertain. People didn't know what was going on and even to this day, those guys never gave us any jobs."

Liard is sitting on some of the biggest pools of natural gas ever discovered and Deneron is working hard to get that gas working for the people of Liard.

"We weren't ready then, but today is different," he said. "We're not going to say no this time."

The proposal faces some regulatory hurdles ahead -- see story on page A4.