The town that said “No” to the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline: The Kitimat plebiscite of 2014

Abstract

In April 2014 the residents of the district of Kitimat in northwest British Columbia voted in a plebiscite to oppose the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline designed to transport bitumen from Canada’s oil sands to the west coast for export to Asia. This was remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, exercising direct democracy through the holding a plebiscite is a rare event in Canada, even more so for a project over which the district actually has no jurisdiction even though Kitimat is the proposed pipeline's terminus. Secondly, the planned industrial town, built in the 1950s to support Alcan's smelting operations, has historically been a “pro-industry” town. This paper examines (i) how Kitimat became the only community on the proposed pipeline route to hold a plebiscite; (ii) how a small, local NGO opposed, and defeated, the world's largest oil pipeline company in the plebiscite; and (iii) the implications of this case for our understanding of scale and jurisdiction.