The British daily said every member of the Lax Kw’alaams First Nations community voted with a resounding “no” against the project, which came at the hefty price of C$1.15billion (RM3.56 billion).
The paper reported that the community decided to turn down the offer to preserve the Skeena river, where hundreds of millions of young salmons travel to annually before maturing.
“Opportunities like that don’t come to your door every day,” the community’s hereditary chief, Yahaan, was quoted as saying. “But I give my people credit for taking that bold step. They showed their love and their passion for the land and water. No amount of money can compare to the richness of the river and what it gives us.”
This was despite the community’s poverty and lack of employment prospects, said the report.
Petronas’s multi-billion LNG export terminal project lies at the mouth of the Skeena, an area lying within the community’s traditional grounds.
The project was approved by the British Colombian state government despite the Lax Kw’alaams rejection. Since then, Yahaan and other members of his community have been turning Petronas workers away from sensitive areas at the river while camped on Lelu Island.
According to Yahaan, Canadian policemen escorting workers from the oil firm had issued threats against his community, saying they were being constantly watched and that they had refrained from acting against the activists only because they did not want to be seen as “protecting the corporations.”
Yahaan’s community has been getting increasing backing from other aboriginal groups, local Canadian groups and opposition politicians alike, who have all signed the Lelu declaration calling for protection of the area from economic exploitation.
Petronas’s three-year wait for a permit to build the LNG terminal encountered a further delay last weekend when the Canadian government decided to give its environmental agency three more months to complete a study on the impact of the project. The initial report was supposed to have been tabled on March 22.
The Canadian government has said that it would make its decision known three months after the additional information is handed over, which would further stretch the timeline to the end of this year.
This hiccup comes as Petronas sees a reduction in its profit due to the drop in global crude oil prices.