Prophets, Pastors and Public Choices: Canadian Churches and the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Debate

Eileen Goltz is Public Documents Librarian at Laurentian University.

When, in 1974, 27 oil and gas companies sought permission to build a gas
pipeline through the Mackenzie Valley to southern Canada, a controversy
known as the Mackenzie Pipeline Debate began. Many northern Native
peoples advocated a moratorium on pipeline construction until their land
claims had been settled, whereas oil companies and many southern
Canadians disagreed and advocated immediate construction. Project
North—an interchurch coalition—was formed to help northern Natives
express their points of view to the Berger Commission and to Canadians
in general.

Hutchinson—a professor at Emmanuel College, Toronto School of
Theology, who teaches ethics at the University of Toronto—focuses on
the churches’ role in the debate. His book is a case study in
comparative religious ethics and is directed at a very select audience
(one that would be familiar with various aspects of comparative ethics
and with the multiplicity of writers he quotes). Although the audience
may be limited, the value of the book rests in its being the first
in-depth study in comparative ethics to focus on the role played by
Canadian churches in the Mackenzie Pipeline Debate. Hutchinson tries to
explain the stands taken by the various debating factions, and how,
within a single church, several points of view could be expressed and
accepted.