This week, lawyers for the U.S.-owned Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline are fighting hard in a Vancouver courtroom to keep the project moving forward.

The Kispiox Band of the Gitxsan Nation, alongside local community groups, is challenging the bizarre process used by the BC Energy Regulator to fast-track construction last year.

The BCER secretly split up the project permits to hide the planned start of route clearing from everyone except the Nisga’a treaty government, guided by then-owner TC Energy.

The regulator then skipped a legally-required Cumulative Effects Assessment that would have triggered consultation with the Gitxsan and other neighbouring nations.

Just months before the project certificate expired, TC Energy sold PRGT to the Nisga’a government and a Texas-based shell company called Western LNG.

Contractors then assembled a temporary work camp and logged sections of the pipeline right-of-way, trying to prove the project was “substantially started” before it expired.

We now know Western LNG, and the PRGT pipeline, are entirely funded by Wall Street private equity firms managed by billionaire allies of Donald Trump.

That’s who stands to benefit if B.C. cabinet ministers agree with the American investors and give the pipeline a permanent environmental certificate.

Thank you to the Kispiox Band, Kispiox Valley Community Centre Association and Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition for trying to force PRGT to follow the law.