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Six years after that precipitous Supreme Court decision, Alberta oil continues to be sold to gleeful American buyers at huge captive-market discounts. A Fraser Institute study found the discount amounted to $20.6 billion in 2018 alone. And the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers estimates annual industry capital investment declined by $40 billion. Then there’s the human toll. Had those projects moved forward as planned, some 100,000 workers would still have jobs.

This melodrama of endless litigation must not be allowed to continue. But what is the Trudeau government doing to improve the process of gaining Aboriginal consent? Absolutely nothing. In fact, it has compounded the problem by adopting UNDRIP, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. UNDRIP requires “free, prior and informed consent” regarding “legislative or administrative measures that may affect Indigenous peoples, including approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources.”

Our prime minister seems to think the UN is the home of the wise and right. The credibility of that fairy tale was soundly demolished last December when the UN Committee on Racial Discrimination released a directive calling for three major Canadian infrastructure projects to be “immediately” shut down, including the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

The committee’s directive came as an unwelcome surprise to the 20 First Nations who had signed benefit agreements with Coastal. Demonstrating the farcical thoroughness of UN work, the chair of the committee stated he didn’t know most First Nations supported the project because “the role of the committee does not involve investigative work.”