If Canadians are going to have to pay the $10 to $15-billion cost of expanding the Trans Mountain pipeline, it's important they aren't bound by side deals that are not in the public interest made by the project's former corporate owner.
Trans Mountain existing assets valued at $550 million in 2007.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau has proposed sacrificing Canadian taxpayers to bail out an uneconomic U.S. pipeline owned by former Enron executives.
Let’s parse the fantastic numbers, because they will affect all of us. And the bill for taxpayers won’t be $4.5 billion as Morneau claims, but much closer to $20 billion, says economist Robyn Allan.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced on May 29 that the Government of Canada will buy the existing Trans Mountain pipeline system from Kinder Morgan at a price of $4.5 billion.
Three prominent Quebec-area Indigenous chiefs were among the hundreds of people who gathered in Montreal on Sunday to protest the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion.
Assembly of First Nations regional Chief Ghislain Picard, Mohawk Chief Serge Simon and Innu Chief Jean-Charles Pietacho spoke out against the project, citing the need to show solidarity with First Nations and other groups in British Columbia who are fighting against it.
In fiscal year 2008, according to the “upstream development division” of B.C.’s Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, British Columbians received $1.16 billion in royalty revenues. By 2017, however, revenues had fallen nearly 90 per cent to $147 million.
