This is a chronical - a story of personal impressions and reactions to the twin-tracking dispute in the spring and summer of 1985. My role at that time was as a "facilitator" appointed by the federal Minister of Transport to attempt to find means of reconciling the differences between CN Rail and the Alliance of Tribal Nations.
The government of Prime Minister Trudeau had given the project an imprimateur of national interest, decreeing by cabinet order that the twin-tracking should proceed. Thereafter, the project became a management problem for CN Rail and government agencies. This was the first stage of government response to the twin-tracking project.
What stood between the parties and an agreement was their different perceptions about their rights and responsibilities. CN Rail perceived its project to be in the national interest, with a full legal mandate to proceed with construction according to efficient economic and engineering standards. It would meet
environmental impact design requirements within reason, and it recognized a responsibility, specially endorsed by the federal cabinet ministers, to try to accommodate Indian concerns, but it acknowledged no legal rights on the part of the Indians, and would not agree to design changes requested by the Indians if these changes would result in substantially increased costs. For example it would not agree to side cuts into the mountains to enable the second track to be located on the up side of the existing main line because the side cuts would cost in the order of ten times the costs of dumping rip rap into the river.
Alliance members believed fundamentally in their ownership of the bed and banks of the river and of the right to fish at customary times and places. They owed it to future generations of Indians to preserve the rights which their fisheries and engineering consultants said were threatened if the second track was to be built by filling in the river bank. They also had in mind that CP Rail would be twin-tracking its mainline on the other bank of the rivers, and that highway straightening and widening, pipelines and transmission lines would place future demands on the corridor.