A former Skeena Liberal M-L-A, who once worked for Enbridge, feels the pipeline company has taken the wrong approach in trying to sell the Northern Gateway project to northwest residents.

    Roger Harris, who was the company's vice-president of aboriginal and community partnerships from 2008 to 2010, told CFTK-TV's "Open Connection" Enbridge would have been better off sitting down and meeting their opponents head-on, rather than giving speeches to people who were already in favour of the project.

    "This is a project where you go into a room and don't tell people what you're going to do TO them, but ask them what it is you can do WITH them;  don't tell them what's in their best interests but find out what's of interest to them," said Harris.  

   He feels a couple of things Enbridge did were "terrible:  when they announced they were gonna do a 500-million-dollar improvement in the line -- well, all that happened was, I think that James Moore, the federal Conservative minister, was the first one to stand up and say 'well I guess they were trying to build it too cheap!'.   Instead of coming up with solutions that just become the next target, they should be sitting down with people and asking them 'what do you think we should do that actually makes it better?'  So when they ran an ad that say they're the safest company out there because they spill one-tenth-of-one percent, if you've got a thousand barrels of crude in your back yard, you really don't care about statistics."

    Harris says Enbridge has missed too many opportunities to engage the public in a meaningful dialogue on the project, and now faces a pretty tough hurdle to overcome. 

    You can watch the full interview with Harris on CFTK-TV's OPEN CONNECTION with Tyler Noble, Wednesday at 5:30.