Pipeline expected to bring gangs, drugs

INUVIK, N.W.T. - Police in Inuvik are warning that if a pipeline comes to the Mackenzie Delta, drugs and organized crime will come too.

RCMP Staff Sgt. Sid Gray says biker gangs like the Hell's Angels are known to operate in boomtowns like Fort McMurray and Lloydminister, Alta.

"It'd be naive of us to think that the organized crime would not show up here – whether to work on the pipeline, or in a business, or operate on the periphery and pick away at people who do have money."

During Inuvik's last petroleum boom, in the 1970s, the drug business boomed too, as thousands of young men from southern Canada came North to make money and party.

Aklavik resident Richard Gordon, who got his first job washing dishes at one of the oil camps in 1974, says narcotics were everywhere.

"I never knew about drugs until I was out on the oil rigs where the southerners come out and talk about it," Gordon says. "You don't want to look dumb so you learn about it pretty darn quick. But it wasn't anything hard – just marijuana."

Imperial Oil has assessed the social and environmental impacts of the proposed pipeline, but it hasn't looked specifically at organized crime.

Company spokesperson Hart Searle says they'll meet with police in Inuvik on the issue.