Pipeline plan ‘may be untenable,’ CEO says, April 19

Now it’s getting weird. It’s bad enough that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cannot see the difference between building another bitumen pipeline and carbon pricing, but now he wants taxpayers to pay for it.

Let me try to explain things simply. The purpose of carbon pricing is to make fossil fuels more expensive, thereby reducing demand. The purpose of building a pipeline is to increase supply of fossil fuels.

Now here’s a question for all you students of economics. When demand sinks and supply increases, does the price go up or down? And when the price goes down below the cost of production, should you a) stop production or b) grab more subsidies from taxpayers?

As long as the Trans Mountain project was 100-per-cent privately financed, then Kinder Morgan could run with whatever business model suited them. But if my tax dollars are going in, and since I don’t recall pipeline nationalization mentioned in the Liberal election platform, I have a few requirements off the top of my head: Carefully defined pricing and volumes to ensure long-term profitability, following a review of the $7.4-billion capital cost estimate, and guarantees that it wouldn’t inflate once it becomes a government project.

Wait! Someone checked the market — there are many lower-cost producers and demand for oil is expected to dive once the dangers of climate change become obvious.

No, not with my tax dollars!

John Stephenson, Etobicoke

The Liberal plan to push through and fund the Kinder Morgan pipeline is the final betrayal for this past Liberal supporter. The Liberals have not reinstated environmental examination of projects and have not allowed electoral reform. I wish to leave a livable planet for my grandchildren and have no ability to elect politicians that reflect this desire. I have lost my faith in the existing political system and it appears my only remaining choice for protecting the planet is civil disobedience.

Douglas Wade, Toronto

Realizing of course that democracy remains the best form of government we can hope for, and that Canada by world estimation abides the near the top of preferred democracies, it seems that our admirable good fortune in assembling and preserving our cunningly crafted mosaic is escaping the attention of many Canadians.

Two Green Party members of B.C.’s legislature are, in effect, holding the Canadian economy, federal government and oil-producing provinces hostage to their purist environmental ideology. No new pipeline, ever, in our province.

In this, they are directly aided and abetted by their grateful friends, the thereby governing NDP party, assorted First Nations and Quebec.

It’s been awhile, but this must be Canada. The peaceable kingdom is once more squabbling on all fronts.

This is nuts. Two members of one province’s legislature? Surely it’s time to run the risk and decide if we are a country, a workable federation with sensible who-does-what power prerogatives conceived now, not 1867. Let’s open up the Constitution and start to grow up.

P.D. Brown, Toronto