There are a lot of wild cards at play with the future of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, but Clayton Thomas-Muller believes Indigenous peoples and their allies have the upper hand.
“We forced the government to nationalize this pipeline with taxpayers’ dollars,” Thomas-Muller tells Host Dennis Ward on Face to Face which airs Tuesday night.
“We’ve kicked Kinder Morgan out of the country, sent them back to Texas with their tail between their legs.”
Thomas-Muller, is a member of Mathais Colomb Cree Nation in northern Manitoba and a campaigner for 350.org. The organization uses online campaigns, grassroots organizing and mass public actions to oppose new coal, oil and gas projects.
Thomas-Muller says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a big problem ahead of him going into the next federal election as he and others are planning to rock the vote in 2019.
“Indigenous peoples need to take a good hard look at the failures of Justin Trudeau in delivering on water, access to clean water, delivering on adopting and ratifying or ratifying the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and on completely shattering his promises to be a real climate leader by approving pipelines and the expansion of the tar sands.
“We can do better and we can do that by the way we show up at the polls this year.”
Indigenous peoples are believed to have helped elect Trudeau and the Liberal Party in the last federal election and a record number of Indigenous candidates were elected.
But Thomas-Muller warns just because a candidate is Indigenous does not mean they’re not going to “support this very pro-development agenda.”
Thomas-Muller points to Winnipeg Centre MP Robert Falcon Ouellette.
“This guy rode the wave of white liberal guilt coming out of the Idle No More movement and got into office.”
He also discusses the Line 3 pipeline and cleaning up the oil sands on Face to Face.
