Enbridge lies to you.

Enbridge is acting in typical 'big oil' fashion. Invent a debate, then skew it. This is classic deception, and in perfect correlation with Stephen Harper and the 'economy trumps everything' philosophy. Will people die over this debate? Possibly. Protests will be large, both side have irreverent resolve, and both sides will not give in as they share the commonality of believing their cause is dire. Conservative supporters see oil as fuel for a strong economy and a means to healing society's calamities, First Nations supporters see oil as fuel for destruction of the natural world and a means to creating deeper calamity.

In the end judgment is left to the children, both current and unborn. If history is any indication, the children will place culpability upon us just as we have placed culpability on our great-grandparents for the societal mistakes of their time (eg: residential schools, denying Jewish immigration to Canada during Nazi rule, corporate hegemony, imperialist foreign policy, etc etc), yet it seems we are indifferent. It seems we don't really care what happens after we are dead. Whether we are in the ground or in some ethereal after-life we don't seem to mind if future humans suffer. It doesn't seem to matter to us that generations after us will suffer from the decisions of our dead hands. It's almost like we believe so devoutly in the Gods of economics that we can create human life and then die peacefully so long as the dollar is doing well...

And so we relinquish our personal conviction to Harper and Enbridge with the deluded belief we are not immoral or unethical.

But what is actually happening here? We are empowering ourselves to be deceived by allowing ourselves to be ignorant, and Enbridge knows this and is capitalizing on it. In the same way many oil companies finance studies which yield their desired results and then claim that climate change is still debatable, Enbridge is misrepresenting the opinions of First Nations people as a means to eroding the environmentalits' solidarity.

It's a classic divide and conquer technique that has worked to oil companies' advantage for decades. Check it out:

Read this first.

Then read this.

...and for more info:

'On the Line' trailer from Frank Wolf on Vimeo.