A B.C. Supreme Court ruling Wednesday that brought a halt to Enbridge’s $7.9-billion Northern Gateway project could have wider environmental implications for the province.

Justice Marvyn Koenigsberg found the B.C. government abdicated its statutory duties and breached its duty to consult First Nations when it signed and failed to terminate an equivalency agreement that handed the federal National Energy Board sole jurisdiction over the environmental assessment decision-making on the project.

Justice Koenigsberg said the province can’t rely on the NEB for environmental approval.

Lawyer Joseph Arvay, lead counsel for petitioners the Great Bear Initiative Society and Gitga’at First Nation (collectively the Coastal First Nations), said Wednesday the ruling “makes it clear that the province has jurisdiction over this pipeline so long as the conditions reflect its competence over the environment.”

He said the province breached its duty to consult and accommodate First Nations on the project, calling it a “very significant” decision that goes beyond Northern Gateway.

“The court said that the province abdicated, gave away, its powers to the federal government over the Northern Gateway project when it entered into this so-called equivalency agreement with the NEB. But it entered into exactly the same equivalency agreement with the NEB on the Kinder Morgan project.”

Arvay added: “The province should be delighted, even though it was perhaps shown to have failed in its statutory constitutional duties, because we demonstrated that it had more power than it did. So the court essentially gave it the legal backbone that up to this point it failed to use. I hope the province will accept it.”

First Nations hailed the ruling as a major setback for the controversial pipeline plan.

“We’re running out of coffin nails now,” said Gitga’at spokesman and member Art Sterritt. “The reality is if Northern Gateway wants to try to go ahead after all of this, you’re looking at a whole new process whereby British Columbia is going to have hearings and sit down with First Nations up and down the routes wherever there’s any effects, and then decide whether or not Northern Gateway meets the conditions that they put in place.”

“This is a huge victory that affirms the provincial government’s duty to consult with and accommodate First Nations and to exercise its decision-making power on major pipeline projects,” said Arnold Clifton, chief councillor of the Gitga’at First Nation.

The ruling means the province must now make its own environmental assessment decision regarding the Northern Gateway pipeline, and that it must consult with and accommodate First Nations along the pipeline route about potential impacts to their aboriginal rights and title.

Koenigsberg ruled that the province breached “the honour of the Crown” by failing to consult with the CFN, and the Gitga’at specifically.

“The province is required to consult with the Gitga’at about the potential impacts of the project on areas of provincial jurisdiction and about how those impacts may affect the Gitga’at’s aboriginal rights, and how those impacts are to be addressed in a manner consistent with the honour of the Crown and reconciliation,” Koenigsberg said in her decision.