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OTTAWA — Leaders from several north-coast B.C. First Nations say if the Senate doesn’t approve a bill banning super-sized oil tankers from the region, their thriving but fragile marine-based economies will die.

The bill is already a sore point between the federal government and Alberta. Indigenous communities also disagree on the ban: nearly three dozen First Nations are behind a $16-billion pipeline proposal that has no future if supertankers can’t carry Fort McMurray oil from the port in Prince Rupert.

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Marilyn Slett, chief of the Heiltsuk Nation and president of the Coastal First Nations alliance of nine B.C. bands, said Tuesday that coastal B.C. nations have been speaking out against tankers in their waters for decades.

“We are salmon people, we are ocean people and our way of life depends on a healthy ecosystem,” she said.

Photo by CHAD HIPOLITO / THE CANADIAN PRESS

That ecosystem could be destroyed by a single major oil spill, the risk of which she says is significant if massive oil tankers are not legally banned from the narrow passages along the B.C. coast between the north tip of Vancouver Island and the Alaska border.