Culture Minister Marc Miller ahead of a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
New cabinet minister Marc Miller says his colleagues must meet face-to-face with Indigenous communities to discuss the prospects of a new pipeline – and that work is already behind schedule.
“If everyone thought Thursday was difficult, that was probably the easiest day in the life of that pipeline,” Mr. Miller told reporters Tuesday on his way into his first cabinet meeting since being sworn in as Culture Minister the day before.
Thursday was the day Ottawa and Alberta announced a sweeping new energy accord that, among other things, lays the groundwork for a new bitumen pipeline to the B.C. coast.
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The project would require the approval of First Nations and the B.C. government, neither of which are currently on side.
The accord cost Mr. Carney a cabinet minister – former culture minister Steven Guilbeault quit cabinet, saying the deal undercut efforts to combat climate change.
Mr. Miller was appointed to replace him in a small cabinet shuffle.
He had held three different cabinet jobs in the Trudeau government, including the Indigenous services and the Crown-Indigenous relations portfolios.
He said getting First Nations to say yes to the pipeline project will be complex, adding that conversations “should have started yesterday.”
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“It can’t be done from a desktop,” Mr. Miller said.
“It has to actually be done face-to-face in a respectful way with the people in charge showing a personal commitment to making sure they are improving lives of communities and getting benefits into communities if and when a pipeline is to be approved.”
The B.C. government and Coastal First Nations were frustrated because they were not at the table for talks leading to the new energy accord.
After it was signed, Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson told CBC he would meet with First Nations via video conferencing – a comment he later walked back, saying it was a poor choice of words.