"So why the gift to Kinder Morgan? What is it about this pipeline that is driving the Trudeau Liberals to desperate measures to get it built at high political cost, high environmental risk and now high economic cost?"

Remember back at the beginning, when the “sunny” new government told us Canada was back and immediately started showing us the socially progressive actions that proved that.

Remember the effort to get Syrian refugees in and how proud we all felt as our photogenic dynamic young cool prime minister met with one of the first plane loads of refugee families. And remember the diverse, gender balanced cabinet because it was 2015.

Yeah, well here we are in 2018 and the government now is busy spinning that the Saudi Arms deals is still okay because the Saudi government isn’t mistreating civilians too badly. And the problem for First Nations water treatment extends even to Southern Ontario where most of the over 12,000 people in Six Nations have to boil their water while 10 miles away Caledonia has no problem supplying water to their population of 10,000.

So what is the aging Trudeau government doing with its progressive agenda? Well apparently there is a real problem with pipeline corporations not making enough money. Specifically the Trans Mountain expansion project (TMX) where there is a good chance it isn’t needed and it’s definitely not wanted by the community that has to take the environmental risk of dilbit spills. So let’s not worry about First Nations water or human rights in Saudi Arabia, our top priority is giving money to a corporation, one who took a known risk when it put the pipeline forward as a project.

It isn’t like Kinder Morgan wouldn’t have expected this risk. People were chaining themselves to the White House fence back in 2013 to protest Keystone XL which was running through relatively unpopulated areas. And then there was Standing Rock., a lightning rod for political protest for a pipeline which involved First Nations territory in the Dakotas, not exactly a big US population centre. But people flew in from long distance to protest and set up camps. Then the pipeline company set dogs on protestors and the area was cleared by soldiers and police in riot gear with military equipment.

We all watched that. You can bet Kinder Morgan did too. So if you were going to build one of these things though one of Canada’s most populous centres with a very activist environmental populace would you expect there might be problems? Jim Carr did. Even prior to Standing Rock, he suggested we should use Canadian armed forces personnel to suppress protest in B.C.

But despite this being a known risk Bill Mourneau just offered Kinder Morgan a cheque for 4.5 billion dollars saying “Make no mistake: this is an investment in Canada’s future.”

Nice work Trudeau and company. Reminiscent of the guarantees Pierre gave Enbrdige for Line 9, the government of Canada paying virtually the full cost of a pipeline that was empty for many years. But it’s even worse in Kinder Morgan’s case, the government can’t articulate a rationale for this action that makes any kind of sense.

Once again, let’s reiterate — the TMX expansion might also not be needed. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producer’s (CAPP) own, likely optimistic, forecast shows 1.2 million barrels of oil sands growth between now and 2030. Enbridge Line 3 and Keystone XL supply that volume. So why the gift to Kinder Morgan? What is it about this pipeline that is driving the Trudeau Liberals to desperate measures to get it built at high political cost, high environmental risk and now high economic cost”

If only Jim Carr and Justin Trudeau could explain this to us. There is no volumetric case to be made given the CAPP forecast. The new markets justification is pure nonsense as movement to the US Gulf Coast opens up the world to our crude via marine. The oil sands lack of growth is not due to lack of pipelines but due to lack of economics of oil sands versus shale oil. No major oil sands project has been sanctioned since 2014 and for most of that time everyone thought these pipelines would be built. Meanwhile the U.S. rig count has doubled from a couple of years ago. That is where the smart money is headed not Alberta, pipelines or no pipelines.

Ridiculously some have suggested that it is a ploy to keep Rachel Notley in power to promote the Trudeau government’s climate change action agenda. Really? Notlely’s plan is essentially to not increase emissions much. Hardly a reason for a pipeline. And Trudeau, after trying his best to keep Christy Clark in power, now knows that such efforts can prove futile. Jason Kenny and Doug Ford are possibly next in line to be his partners in evolving the confederation in the near future. That kind of reasoning for building a pipeline is absurd. Equally absurd is throwing your BC MP’s under the bus in the hopes of securing Alberta seats.

Here we are in 2018. The Trudeau government is entering the home stretch of their mandate. Trudeau’s climate change action plans will not meet our Paris target, which can be demonstrated just through the use of simple arithmetic. The government just opened the country’s till to a foreign corporation. Canada’ is back alright, back to the bad old days of nationalizing resource assets, ignoring First Nations concerns and pretending targets will be met on climate action.

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