Just had the pleasure of reading a letter addressed to environmental warrior Leonardo DiCaprio and published in the National Post of Nov. 27. Written by Ellis Ross, a member of the Haisla First Nation who was elected to B.C.’s Legislative Assembly in 2017, it took issue with a recent tweet by DiCaprio condemning the “militarized raids” conducted against protesters attempting to disrupt the Coastal GasLink project in Northern B.C.. The term “militarized,” of course, typical of the rhetoric relentlessly used by the hysterical Left, suggests B.C.’s legally mandated police in their attempts to enforce the Law, were agents of some illegitimate, Fascist regime. Quite aside from the illegality of the blockades in question, Ross asserts they were dangerous and simply had to be removed.
In 2006 Chief Ross was integral to a 50 million dollar deal allowing a Natural Gas Plant to be built on one of the Haisla Nation’s reserves. It was a project offering employment and prosperity for those thousands of his people who had languished in poverty for decades if not centuries. It was a project supported by the democratically elected chiefs of twenty Indigenous B.C. bands. Yet a number of unelected “hereditary chiefs,” spurred on by environmental radicals often funded by American dollars, sought to spread the narrative that such projects were an abomination to every Indian in the province. It was a narrative, Ross suggests, that was a lie, that indeed represented a Fascist attempt to sabotage the Democratically expressed will of the majority of B.C.’s Indigenous.
Yet, one might ask, had not Ross sold out the Environment for vile Capitalist reasons? It is an accusation he finds absurd, pointing out that the Liquefied Natural Gas being produced by the B.C. project is in fact inestimably cleaner than the “heavier carbon emissions” produced abroad: “We have the strictest environmental standards and our clean products like LNG help reduce global emissions from dirtier jurisdictions like China, India, and Russia.”
It is a truth of which both DiCaprio and the self-righteous simpletons of the Biden administration are apparently unaware, the American president having cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office, thereby making his country dependent on nations with no environmental conscience whatsoever. In his final paragraph Chief Ross takes a jab at the equally absurd orientation of DiCaprio, begging him, should he choose to visit Canada, not to use his private plane, an extravagance which gives him a carbon footprint inestimably greater than those he so loves to lecture.