Lakeland MP Shannon Stubbs says she fears the purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline by the federal government will set a bad precedent for future private sector investment in Canadian energy projects.
Last week, the Liberal government announced that they are buying the pipeline project for $4.5 billion in order to secure the expansion. Stubbs says Canadian tax dollars have never been used in the past to build pipelines in the country.
“Kinder Morgan didn’t ask for one single tax dollar to be able to build the Trans Mountain expansion. It just asked for the Liberals to enforce federal jurisdiction and enforce the rule of law and provide a certain path forward for the expansion.”
Stubbs says the 60-year-old existing pipeline had gone through years of regulatory processes in order to be expanded and secured support from indigenous communities that would be impacted, yet still had a lot of legal challenges despite being in federal jurisdiction.
“I fear that the Prime Minister is giving the signal that a company can do all that, can meet all those measures, can be wanting to invest billions of dollars into the Canadian economy for a vital infrastructure project and then ultimately can’t go ahead with it and the government then has to come in and nationalize it.”
The Liberals are planning to sell the pipeline once construction gets underway. In the meantime, Stubbs says everyone is waiting to see when and how quickly the expansion will go forward as it is already a year overdue.