Whose side are you on? Question to the Prestige Hudson Bay Lodge

Letter to Editor

I respectfully request you publish this letter as the consequences of what I am about to disclose will effect all of us.

Sometimes I wonder about local businesses who seem to forget who is buttering thier bread.

Recently someone from the Gidimt’en house group contacted me with a concern about how someone who was Gitxsan and also represents the environmental group SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, funded by the Tides Foundation is organizing an event to support the people who are trying to blockade industry, first and foremost the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline.

Without question Witest (Moricetown) Smithers, Houston and almost every town between Kitimat and Alberta is benefiting from the billions of dollars being pumped into our communities.
The Wet’suwet’en people, hundreds of them are employed by CGL and many of them are lucrative contracts that bring a decent living wage to people who struggled to get by.

I would be remiss to overlook that Chief Kloum Khun’s wife worked as Executive Director for Witset First Nation, Lucy Gagnon said the band is partnered with companies Kyah Resources to create jobs for the project. That is a contract between Kyah Resources and CGL that Lucy manages. The community received $1.5 million to sign onto the project and an additional $1.5 million after it started.”

So we are talking about massive funding that is a benefit to both aboriginal and non aboriginal communities.

So it begs the question of why a local business that depends largely on the resource industry would agree to host a publicity stunt, that does not even include anyone of the hundreds of Wet’suwet’en people who support the CGL Pipeline Project. Look at the list of speakers, not one inclusion from the other side of a clearly two sided issue.

So why is the Prestige Hudson Bay Lodge hosting an event that does not allow both sides of the debate to be tabled, and why would industry support the Prestige Hudson Bay Lodge for hosting this event that clearly targets jobs and local business? Its not like they could not have put 50 people into the Wet’suwet’en Community Multiplex, or Dze L K’Ant Friendship Centre.

It also begs the question of do they really need that money so bad that it worth taking at any expense?

Thank you for the opportunity to publicly ask the Prestige Hudson Bay Lodge for an explanation.

Name withheld by request over serious safety concerns
and if your asking, yes it is that bad

attached are two letters that explain what I am referring to.