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Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr announced May 29 the federal government would buy the pipeline system from Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc. for $4.5 billion.

“So it’s the purchase aspect of this that’s really sunk public opinion in terms of people liking the pipeline. What was a slight majority in favour of the pipeline now has become very negative — and strongly disapproving of that,” Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff said in an interview.

He said the poll shows that a majority of NDP supporters and a majority of Conservative supporters are against the government purchasing the project, and an alignment of those views on the left and right has caused the change in public opinion.

For example, 46 per cent of respondents who said they were likely to vote Conservative said they either disapproved or strongly disapproved of Ottawa’s deal with Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc. Similarly, 74 per cent of people who said they’d vote NDP either disapproved or strongly disapproved.

“We have the previous opposition to the pipeline, based on (views that it is) hurting the environment, and now we’ve got the overlay of the government getting into the pipeline business,” Bozinoff said. “So now you’ve got the left against it for the predictable reasons of the environment and the right against it because it’s not a free market thing.”

But Bozinoff said the federal government could reverse some of that negative sentiment if it is able to sell the project.