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It was not inevitable that we should arrive at such a pass over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion: province divided against province, First Nation against First Nation, with the economic union and the rule of law as potential collateral damage. A debacle this big does not come about without years of hard work on all sides.

We should be clear on one thing: this is not a debate about a pipeline, or not any longer. It is about who decides.

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Reasonable people will differ on the merits of Trans Mountain. But whatever anyone’s opinion, there is a lawful process for deciding these things, and lawful authority to decide them. In the present case, those lawful authorities are the National Energy Board, the federal cabinet, and the courts.

Whatever anyone’s concerns — economic, environmental, Aboriginal or other — that is the process by which those concerns are adjudicated. And that is the process that approved the pipeline: the NEB, the cabinet and the courts, all ruling in its favour (though not every legal appeal has been exhausted: a case is still before the Federal Court of Appeal on behalf of seven First Nations arguing they were not adequately consulted).