The approaching final investment decision on the PRGT pipeline brings concerns about the risk of aggressions against land defenders
Photo: In June 2025, PBI-Canada and PBI-Colombia visited the site of the Gitanyow blockade against the PRGT pipeline.
A spokesperson for Texas-based Western LNG recently stated they are aiming to make a final investment decision (FID) on the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline by the end of this year that they would be starting construction on it in northern British Columbia soon thereafter.
Last year, The Narwhal reported: “After closing the Nass Forest Service Road to all pipeline vehicles on Thursday [August 22, 2025], two chiefs of the Ganeda (Raven/Frog) Clan, Gamlakyeltxw Wil Marsden and Watakhayetsxw Deborah Good, set up a checkpoint where the road meets Highway 37, about 170 kilometres north of Terrace, B.C. The road is the shortest route to transport heavy equipment and supplies for a sprawling work camp being built to support pipeline construction.”
Around that time, Marsden told journalist Brandi Morin via telephone from that blockade: “This project doesn’t make any sense.”
The imminent final investment decision and the probability of Gitanyow blockades leads to concerns for the safety and security of Indigenous land and environmental defenders who oppose this pipeline on their territories.
These concerns include PRGT project manager Bechtel’s previous use of former SAS soldiers, the role that C-5 major project “fast-track” and “national interest” legislation and C-2 security and surveillance legislation could be used to criminalize Indigenous land defenders upholding their rights, and the likely deployment of militarized Royal Canadian Mounted Police CRU-BC officers against future blockades.
Bechtel
In August 2024, Western LNG announced: “Bechtel, a leading engineering, procurement, and construction company, has been selected to oversee and manage the execution of the PRGT natural gas pipeline.”
Dogwood has highlighted: “The Times reports Bechtel hired ex-special forces soldiers to protect its construction managers in Iraq. This is now common practice in pipeline construction. When the Coastal GasLink project was forced through Wet’suwet’en territory, the security team included ex-soldiers and reservists who had fought in Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.”
C-2 and the repression of land defenders
Furthermore, Greenpeace has raised concerns about the powers outlined in new federal legislation, C-5 and C-2, commenting: “History tells us that these powers will be misused to surveil and repress land defenders.”
They also note: “One of the issues of concern is how the lines between peaceful, democratic protest and violent extremism are deliberately blurred to ‘conflate social movements with extremism and criminality’.”
The RCMP CRU-BC
Additionally, there is the concern about the deployment of Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Community Response Unit-British Columbia (CRU-BC) officers on Gitanyow territory. This RCMP unit, was rebranded in January 2024 after the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC) launched a systemic investigation of the Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) in March 2023.
Tara Marsden, sustainability director for the Gitanyow hereditary chiefs, has told CBC News: “From the Coastal GasLink pipeline we learned that companies will do whatever it takes, they will bring in militarized police and they will remove Indigenous people from their lands.”
Marsden also told PBI-Canada: “Our learning is that consent only works when we say yes, if we say no, even if we say no with science behind us, and our knowledge and our laws behind us, then we will be met with force from the C-IRG, from militarized invasion and occupation and intimidation and harassment.”
In February 2025, ruling on an abuse of process petition that included comments made by RCMP C-IRG officers who arrested land defenders and journalists on Wet’suwet’en territory n November 2021, BC Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen noted: “I found those comments to be grossly offensive, racist and dehumanizing.”
We continue to follow this with concern.
For more, please see the Flying Frogs Awakened website, a land-based initiative guided by Wilp Simogyet Watahayetsxw.
Video (with language warning): The Juice Media has produced a 4-minute satire video that notes “expanding police powers to treat land defenders as terrorists”.
