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The Hupacasath’s own project now hangs in the balance, waiting to hear whether its contract will be renewed when it expires in 2025. If not, the nation will have little chance of selling its existing infrastructure, said Sayers. “Who’s going to buy a project that has no financial returns on it?”
Adding to that is the fact that Utilities Commission Act makes it impossible for First Nations to sell power beyond reserves or designated treaty lands, a limitation that makes the economics generally prohibitive (see sidebar).
“First Nations started talking amongst themselves,” she said. “‘How can we fix this situation?’” That’s when conversations about First Nations power utilities — bodies that could sell power produced by First Nations — began. “BC Hydro doesn't want our power, you know. Who else does?”
‘It’s erasure’
Cole Sayers strolled through Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood last December as a light rain turned to deluge. He shrugged. “I don’t mind it.” He pointed to the electrical powerlines above his head. “There's a lot of power in that water.”
Wearing a wool overcoat over a black T-shirt, Sayers spoke calmly, his tall frame moving down the puddling sidewalk as he discussed the personal path that led him here.
Sayers and his family learned about the costs of B.C.’s hydropower early on. There is a photo of his great grandfather, he said, standing next to petroglyphs imprinted on rocks in his territory. Those rocks are now submerged by a hydroelectric dam. “We don’t know where they are,” he said. Once, during treaty negotiations, the nation tried to find the markings in order to help prove their case. They were unsuccessful. “It’s erasure,” said Sayers.
“Infrastructure is how the state makes itself known,” he said, explaining that projects like dams and railways helped create B.C.’s national identity at the expense of nations like his own.
Sayers’ elementary school was housed in an old residential school — the same one where his grandmother suffered abuse. The dorms are gone now, but the school building remains.
Determined to find answers to the pain he’d witnessed from an early age, Sayers pursued a degree in business. “I thought capitalism was going to save us.”
He then transferred to the former Indigenous governance program at the University of Victoria, which exposed him, he said, to “heavy hitters” in the world of Indigenous rights and jurisdiction. "It was a great environment for intellectual development."
After graduation, Sayers worked as a researcher with the Toquaht Nation before tracing his mom’s footsteps into the renewable energy business. “It felt like a lot of responsibility,” to do so, said Sayers. His aunt, Brenda Sayers, is a former Green Party candidate and represented the Hupačasath for the Canada-China FIPA court challenge. His sister, Alana Sayers, is a writer with a PhD in literature. Sayers is quick to point out that he’s been influenced by the courageous women he grew up with.
In 2017, Sayers took a position at the New Relationship Trust, a non-profit that funds First Nations initiatives. There he oversaw their clean energy programming, which administered millions of dollars’ worth of provincial and federal grants to Indigenous communities. Most of the support was limited to remote, off-grid communities building small-scale renewable projects. It’s important work, said Sayers, because many rely on diesel-powered generators, which are expensive and polluting to run. But when it came to grid-connected projects by First Nations aiming to sell their electricity, those doors were closed by the province and BC Hydro. “They don’t want other players in the game,” Sayers concluded.
A monopoly with ‘huge’ debt
It didn’t help that under the BC Liberals, creating a market for private or “independent” power had sparked a lot of controversy, even dividing environmental advocates who might be assumed to embrace ways to create more clean energy.
Most IPP projects consist of run-of-river hydro projects, which divert river water into turbines before getting redeposited downstream, and that has undeniable impacts on river systems. Some early critics projected the industry would lead to death by a thousand cuts — less harmful than mega hydro dams, but still liable to create a large cumulative impact by reducing river flows, spiking water temperatures and damaging fish habitats. And transmission lines built to service the projects deforested land in their path.
Two decades ago, most run-of-river projects (below a certain size threshold) weren’t required to undergo environmental assessment, and there was little planning in place to quantify the cumulative impacts of such a large new industry imposed on B.C. rivers. Okada notes that this has changed in years since. “Regulations and the knowhow is dynamic and changing all the time,” he said, pointing to a recent run-of-river project he worked on that is built above a waterfall so fish cannot reach it. Still, he acknowledged that some impacts on the river are inevitable.
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