This is the third post in a series on the fiftieth anniversary of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, edited by Mark Stoller. This is a two-part post from Tina Loo, and you can read the second part here.
The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry – also known as the Berger Inquiry – is widely seen as a landmark in environmental impact assessment, particularly because it took Indigenous perspectives and rights seriously.1 But how did it come about? The evidence I’ve found suggests it was a strategic state response to growing Indigenous and environmental activism, aimed at maintaining federal control over northern development.
The story begins in 1968 with the discovery of the largest oil field in North America at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. This raised economic, political, and environmental concerns in Ottawa: Alaskan oil threatened Canadian energy exports to the US, and transporting Prudhoe Bay crude either through the Northwest Passage or down the west coast of British Columbia raised concerns about sovereignty and spills.

In response, government officials proposed an alternative pipeline route to American producers that would run from Alaska, through the Yukon, and down the Mackenzie Valley to Chicago. Getting the Americans to contribute to building such a pipeline would protect Canadian interests. A joint venture was also a more economical way to deliver Canada’s Arctic energy – when it was tapped – to southern markets.2
Even after the US approved the controversial Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) in 1973, Ottawa remained committed to the Mackenzie Valley route to transport natural gas from Prudhoe Bay and the Mackenzie Delta and Beaufort Sea.3 Energy Minister J.J. Greene, Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chrétien, and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau publicly supported it.4 But in March 1974, the government announced there would be a separate inquiry into its impacts in addition to the hearings held by the National Energy Board (NEB). Why the extra scrutiny, which could only delay approval and construction of a project the government supported?
Contrary to the belief that the shift was due to political compromise with the NDP, evidence suggests the trigger was mounting Indigenous and environmental resistance.5 In 1973, sixteen Dene chiefs filed a legal challenge claiming that Treaties 8 and 11 were peace and friendship treaties, not land surrenders. Chief Justice of the Northwest Territories William Morrow ruled in their favour, casting legal doubt on any development proceeding without addressing land rights.6
About the same time the Dene were organizing to raise their concerns, the newly formed Canadian Arctic Resources Committee (CARC) came together to condemn Ottawa’s narrow energy agenda. Influenced by rising global environmental consciousness – shaped in part by massive oil spills off the UK, California, and Nova Scotia – CARC criticized the lack of public debate and pursuit of alternatives.7 It discovered that the NEB wouldn’t consider land claims, social impacts, or environmental risks in its pipeline assessment process, seeing them as outside its jurisdiction.8
To CARC and Indigenous organizations like the Committee for Original Peoples Entitlement, this was unacceptable. They argued that the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), which had jurisdiction over northern lands, couldn’t do the job either, not least because of the inherent conflict of interest in its mandate. How could it promote and regulate northern development as well as protect Indigenous interests? When Ottawa approved offshore drilling in the Beaufort Sea in 1973 without an impact assessment and despite the concerns of Inuit and environmentalists, suspicions and fears only deepened.9
Within DIAND, officials recognized this growing dissent. As Ian Waddell, Special Counsel to Berger, later noted, “the pressures of outside groups do get through to government.” Rather than let the NEB expand its authority into social and environmental domains – “a highly undesirable extension,” as one internal memo warned – officials supported the creation of a separate inquiry to do so. It would be in addition to the NEB’s proceedings and thus keep the department’s control over “its turf,” northern lands.10
In March 1974, Justice Thomas Berger was appointed to lead the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. The government may have hoped a narrow, regionally confined process would deflect opposition.11 Berger had other ideas.
He transformed the Inquiry into a broad national conversation about democracy, development, and “progress.”12 Hearings were held not only in Yellowknife and Whitehorse but also in Indigenous communities across the North and cities across Canada. (For a detailed story map following the movement of the Inquiry, see my subsequent post, “Travels with Tom,” in this series.) CBC North broadcast reports each day the Inquiry sat, making Indigenous perspectives, environmental critiques, and democratic questions visible to the nation.
Berger’s 1977 report made two key recommendations. First, that a pipeline through the Mackenzie Valley could and would be built – eventually. He recognized that “the industrial system will require the oil and gas of the western Arctic,” but that a pipeline should proceed only after Indigenous land claims were settled. Second, he opposed a pipeline across the northern Yukon due to its environmental fragility.13
The NEB’s report, issued shortly after Berger’s, recommended against a Mackenzie Valley pipeline, largely for technical reasons. Although it acknowledged Indigenous rights, it didn’t think unresolved claims were sufficient reason to delay development, particularly in light of national energy needs.14
While the Inquiry has been praised for foregrounding Indigenous voices and rights, its legacy is more complex. Just four years later, in 1981, the NEB and federal government approved a pipeline that ran through Sahtu Dene territory, from Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories to Zama, Alberta – without applying the same participatory standards or honouring Berger’s call for delay.15 The Inquiry’s high profile may have inadvertently obscured this development from later assessments of it.
When pipeline plans resurfaced in the early 2000s, the political terrain had shifted. The NEB approved the Mackenzie Gas Project (MGP) in 2010 with the support of the leadership of some of same Indigenous groups and individuals that had opposed the project in the 1970s, including the Inuvialuit, Gwich’in, and Sahtu.16 The difference lay in what had changed since the Berger Inquiry.
Section 35 of the Constitution Act (1982) recognized existing Aboriginal and treaty rights. Key land claim settlements with the Inuvialuit (1984), Gwich’in (1992), and Sahtu Dene and Métis (1993) confirmed Indigenous jurisdiction over land use decisions. The Inuvialuit, Gwich’in, and Sahtu were now pipeline proponents, part of the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, which had a 33 percent share of the project. In addition, individuals from each of these nations, as well as the Dehcho, were part of the seven-member Joint Review Panel struck in 2004 to assess the social, cultural, and environmental impacts of the project. While not all Indigenous peoples were supportive of the MGP, the Panel recommended it go ahead, seeing it as the “foundation for a sustainable northern future.”17
That future remains elusive. Despite support for the pipeline, the project was cancelled when Imperial Oil, the other major proponent, pulled out in 2017 thanks to a decline in natural gas prices and cheaper supplies available elsewhere. The mobility of capital and its placelessness is something that no assessment process or government, regardless of its inclusiveness and commitment to Indigenous rights and regional and national needs, can readily control.
- Frances Abele, “The Lasting Impact of the Berger Inquiry into the Construction of a Pipeline in the Mackenzie Valley,” in Commissions of Inquiry and Policy Change: A Comparative Analysis, ed. Gregory J. Inwood and Carolyn M. Johns (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 88–112; Rabel J. Burdge and Frank Vanclay, “Social Impact Assessment: A Contribution to the State of the Art Series,” Impact Assessment 14, no. 1 (1996): 59–86; D.J. Gamble, “The Berger Inquiry: An Impact Assessment Process,” Science 199 (1978): 946–52; Stephen Goudge, “The Berger Inquiry in Retrospect: Its Legacy,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 28, no. 2 (2016): 393–407. ↩︎
- On Prudhoe Bay and Canadian concerns in general, see Edgar J. Dosman, The National Interest: The Politics of Northern Development, 1968-75 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975), Chapter
2. On threats to Canadian oil exports to the US, see Cordell Moore to Robin H. Abercrombie, Vice-President of the Independent Petroleum Association of Canada, n.d. [ca. 1969], 2. Task Force on Northern Oil Development, file 1135-T1, part 1, vol. 267, RG 21-C-2-a, LAC. On Ottawa’s efforts to promote a Mackenzie Valley pipeline, see House of Commons Debates, 28th Parliament, 3rd Session, volume 4, 3 March 1971, 3912. Acting Prime Minister Mitchell Sharp reported that the US Secretary of State had agreed to consult with Canada about TAPS. House of Commons Debates, 28th Parliament, 3rd Session, volume 4, 5 March 1971, 3993. After a lunch with “high-ranking Nixon administration officials” at which he pushed the Mackenzie route, Greene told reporter that ‘The Mackenzie line is very worthy of investigation from an ecological standpoint.’” Terrence Wills, “Greene presses US on Mackenzie route for Alaska oil line,” Globe and Mail, 3 March 1971, B1. A few days later, Greene told the Commons that a month after the Prudhoe Bay discovery, the Chairman of the NEB – the arm’s length body that would assess any pipeline proposals – met with North Slope producers and pointed out the advantages of a Mackenzie Valley pipeline. See House of Commons Debates, 28th Parliament, 3rd Session, volume 4, 12 March 1971, 4223. Greene and Chrétien also met with American oil executives to make the case for a Mackenzie Valley pipeline. House of Commons Debates, 28th Parliament, 3rd Session, volume 4, 12 March 1971, 4238. ↩︎ - Peter A. Coates, The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Controversy: Technology, Conservation, and the Frontier (Bethlehem, PA: Leigh University Press, 1991), Chapters 7 and 8. ↩︎
- John R. Robinson, “Policy, Pipelines, and Public Participation: The National Energy Board’s Northern Pipeline Hearings,” in O.P. Dwivedi, ed., Resources and the Environment: Policy Perspectives for Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980), 181-182. Robinson notes that between March 1971 and January 1974, “at least five federal cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Trudeau, gave speeches endorsing the idea of a frontier gas pipeline.” See 181. ↩︎
- Jean Chrétien denied there was a “deal” with the NDP, which held the balance of power in the House of Commons, to strike an Inquiry and to appoint Berger. Interview with Jean Chrétien, 12 February 1985, 6. File 4, Box 3. Carol Swayze Fonds, RBSC-ARC-1541, University of British Columbia Rare Books and Special Collections. ↩︎
- Re Paulette’s Application to file a Caveat [1973] 6 WWR 97 (NWTSC). See Ronald H. Pearson, “Native Rights in the Northwest Territories – the Caveat Case,” Alberta Law Review 12, no. 2 (1974): 278–90 and William G. Morrow, Northern Justice: The Memoirs of Mr. Justice William G. Morrow (Toronto: Osgoode Society, 1995), 172-175. ↩︎
- “The Last Frontier,” Northern Perspectives, vol. 1, no. 1, January 1973, 1. The oil spills I’m referring to were the Torrey Canyon tanker disaster (1967), the Santa Barbara oil spill (1969), and, closer to home for CARC, the SS Arrow grounding (1970) that released bunker oil in Chedabucto Bay, Nova Scotia. ↩︎
- “Preamble to the Hearings,” Northern Perspectives, vol. 1, no. 6, June 1973, 1. ↩︎
- The Scramble to Prepare for Drilling,” Northern Perspectives vol. 2, no. 2 [1974], 2. ↩︎
- “Why did the government of Canada decide on an inquiry?,” nd, 3 and 5, file 22, Box 14. Ian Waddell Fonds, University of British Columbia Rare Books and Special Collections, RBSC-ARC-1798. ↩︎
- This was Robert Page’s speculation. See Page, Northern Development: A Canadian Dilemma (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986), 92. Page was involved in the Committee for an Independent Canada, a group that opposed the pipeline. ↩︎
- See Tina Loo, “Pipe Dreams: Imagining Different Futures for Canada in the 1970s,” Canadian Historical Review. https://doi.org/10.3138/chr-2024-0065 ↩︎
- Berger, Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland, xvi-xvii, viii, and xiii. ↩︎
- National Energy Board, Reasons for Decision, Northern Pipelines, volume 1 (Ottawa: National Energy Board, 1977), 1-58 and 1-159. ↩︎
- Sean Kheraj, “Indigenous Voices and Resistance in Oil Pipeline History: The Dene Tha’ and the Norman Wells Pipeline,” NiCHE Blog, 18 November 2016. https://niche-canada.org/2016/11/18/13462/ and Petroleum Histories Project Team, “A Century of Petroleum Extraction at Tłegǫ́hłı̨ (Norman Wells),” NiCHE Blog, 12 December 2023.https://niche-canada.org/2023/12/12/a-century-of-petroleum-extraction-at-tleg%c7%abhli%cc%a8-norman-wells/ ↩︎
- National Energy Board, Respecting All Voices: Our Journey to a Decision – Mackenzie Gas Project, Reasons for Decision GH-1-2004, volume 1 (Ottawa: National Energy Board, 2010). The title of the NEB’s report and its format – lots of colour photographs and pull quotes from the hearings – echoed the format of the Berger Report. ↩︎
- Carly Dokis examines Sahtu opposition to the MGP and shortcomings of the participatory process in When Rivers Meet: Pipelines, Participatory Resource Management, and Aboriginal-State Relations in the Northwest Territories (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015). On the approval of the project, see Joint Review Panel for the Mackenzie Gas Project, Foundation for a Sustainable Northern Future: Report of the Joint Review Panel for the Mackenzie Gas Project (Inuvik: Joint Review Panel for the Mackenzie Gas Project, 2010). ↩︎