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The leader of a Canadian Indigenous group seeking a stake in the government-owned Trans Mountain Pipeline said First Nations organizations should work together on a single proposal to take over the conduit, but doing so won’t be easy.

So far, at least three different groups in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan are seeking full or partial ownership of the controversial pipeline, which carries crude from Alberta to Canada’s Western coast, but the government hasn’t made any decisions yet.

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“I don’t think the government is going to look at any group and pick one over the other,” said Delbert Wapas, former chief of Saskatchewan-based Thunderchild First Nation and head of Project Reconciliation, an early and aggressive participant in the effort to acquire a stake in the project.

The groups competing for the project have different notions of who should benefit from it. Alberta-based Iron Coalition sees ownership reserved for First Nations and Metis communities in B.C. and Alberta, where the pipeline and a planned expansion would be located.