4 ~ Wadnesday, October 20, 1993 - North Shore News IF ANYBODY is still looking for reasons not to vote Tory, let me refresh your memory about Kemano 2, the $1 billion hydroelectric project being constructed on the Nechako River by Alcan Aluminum Ltd., whose board of directors is intimately tied to the Conservi itives. Alcan has been getting favor- able treatment from Ottawa ever since Brian Mulroney swept to power in 1984. Prior to that, the company had been running into heavy opposi- tion from scientists at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), who stated flatly that the completion of the Kemano 2 project would ‘‘signal the end of the chinook salmon run in the Upper Nechako.”’ Said former DFO fisheries scientist Dr. Don Alderice: ‘If they go ahead with Kemano 2, there won’t be enough water to float a salmon,” The problem was that the com- picted power project would syphon off no less than 87% of the flow of the Nechako River. It was widely assumed in the mid-’80s that the project would never pass a federal Environmen- tal Assessment and Review Pro- cess (EARP). - But on Sept. 4, 1987, then-DFO Minister.(now Defence Minister) Tom Siddon signed the Kemano Settlement Agreement, effectively bringing to an end a seven-year battle between DFO scientists and Alcan over what constituted an ‘tacceptable level of certainty” for ‘the survival ‘of salmon ‘stocks on ’ the Nechako River. | ; _. The means by which the agree- ment was reached led to an RCMP investigation to find out if there were any grounds for charges of breach of trust, secret commissions, influence peddling, fabricating evidence, perjury or obstruction of justice. : _, The investigation, which lasted - seven months, came to focus on allegations that senior DFO scien- tist Dr. J.H. Mundie was pressured to change his testimony in a court case against Alcan, and .. who was dropped as a witness . when he refused to make the re- quested changes. : ‘According to DFO documents obtained by the Cheslatta t’en Carrier Nation from the RCMP and DFO under Access to Infor- FULL HOUSE DEAL Ask about the additional savings on custom bhind orders for 8 windows or more. fh #30RTH VANCOUVER 1226 Marine Drive 984-4407 — STRICTLY PERSONAL mation legislation, and passed along to me, Mundie was ordered by DFO Director General Pat Chamut to go along with what ~ minister Siddon wanted, and basically to ignore his own research showing the fisheries to be at risk if the project went ahead. Former Skeena MP Jim Fulton sought an RCMP probe in 1991, describing the Kemano 2 deal as a “situation where someone at a high level in the bureaucracy: (1) atternpted to tamper with court evidence, {2) set up a secret pro- cess which excluded advisers to the Crown, and (3) provided an -agreement to Alcan which, ac- cording to scientists, is unsafe:’’ The RCMP investigation, ac- .cording to Sgt. Gordon White, failed to identify any form of é corruption. - “It was a political decision on the part of Mr. Siddon ... to allow Alcan to have its flow regime.” Alcan still faced the En- vironmental Assessment, and Review Process. Or. at least it did until Oct. 2, 1990, when Kemano 2 was suddenly exempted from the review process by Cabinet order, the only time such a megaproject has been Jet completely off the hook. CUSTOM LIN Choose from a wide variety of Mini, Micro and Vertical blinds from our WINDOWWEAR collection. WEST VANCOUVER COmiQue SEF%éis POMS OME WS TON Se Kim Campbell was minister of justice and attorney general at the time. She was in on the decision, and had, in fact, been a staunch de- fender of the £987 Settlement Agreement. She went out of her way to tell the Vancouver Sun that the Cabi- net was on ‘‘sound”’ grounds to reject an environmental assessment of Kemano 2. How could that be, when the DFO’s own scientists had opposed it up until the moment they were frozen out and silenced by their political masters? Not content to have provided Alcan with a rubber stamp of ap- proval through the 1987 settlement and carte blanche for ecological rape of the Nechako through the Cabinet exemption, the Mulroney government reached at least six other behind-closed-doors deals with the company between 1989 and 1990, according to award- winning journalist Dana Wagg and Cheslatta researcher John Hummel. Transport Minister Benoit Bouchard got into the act by ex- empting Kemano 2 from the Navigable Waters Protection Act no fewer than six times. Then-justice minister Campbell joined forces with then-environ- ment minister Jean Charest and then-fisheries and oceans minister John Crosbie to take Alcan’s side in an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1992 to block a Kemano 2 review. Despite all this frenetic work on Alcan’s behalf, in June of this year, the Conservative-dominated “ House of Commons itself sup- ported, without dissent, an all- party, Senate-Commons report slamming the assessment exemp- tion as being illegal and un- constitutional. As things stand now, the Department of Justice has slapped a lid on release of information about Kemano 2, while Alcan has Oo vote gone ahead and spent $500 million on its half-built project, while hiding behind the legalistic shield thrown up by the Tories to protect the company. The B.C. government has been advised that Ottawa may stop past or present federal employees from testifying at any provincia! hear- ings into Kemano 2, and prevent them from being subpoenaed as witnesses, Most Alcan documents are to remain confidential, along with any DFO research papers critical of the project. A specific question that should be asked of the prime minister is whether she knew of the RCMP investigation into Siddon and Alcan that was taking place in 1991, because it turns out that Department of Justice officials in Vancouver circulated a memo back then advising anyone in the DFO who had been contacted by the RCMP to refer the officer to the justice department. Did Campbell know of this ad- visory, with its potential to hamper an RCMP investigation? In other words, did the RCMP have a chance to do a thorough investigation? Or was sotaething else being hidden? 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