"Trans Mountain Expansion a Money Loser for Taxpayers"

"Independent parliamentary budget officer warns soaring costs means Trudeau’s 2018 purchase of the pipeline has gone wrong."

"The soaring cost of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion has pushed the uncompleted megaproject Ottawa bought to satisfy Alberta further into the red, says a report released Wednesday by the parliamentary budget officer.

This quickly earned the project the uncomplimentary sobriquet “boondoggle” from Environmental Defence’s national climate program manager Julia Levin.

The Trudeau government decided in 2018 to buy the 70-year-old pipeline that runs 1,150 kilometres from Alberta to Burnaby, B.C., from Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd. It also took on the cost of tripling the pipeline’s capacity, which the company had first proposed in 2013.

It’s the only pipeline carrying Alberta’s petroleum products to the Pacific Coast, and Ottawa was clearly responding at the time both to pressure from the NDP provincial government of then-premier Rachel Notley and threats by Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd. to pull the plug on the project in the face of environmental and political opposition in British Columbia. "

David Climenhaga reports for The Tyee June 23, 2022.

Source: The Tyee, 06/24/2022