Trudeau must make good on his Trans Mountain pledge

The top priority for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today, next week and next month must be to get Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline up and running. The $7.4-billion megaproject - designed to carry Alberta bitumen to the Pacific coast - is vital to Canada’s future.

But faced with entrenched opposition from a vocal minority in British Columbia, a beleaguered Kinder Morgan Inc. is ready to kill the project.

Without an absolute guarantee by May 31 that the pipeline can be built, the company will walk away from it.

For this country, that would be an unmitigated disaster.

So far, the prime minister has said all the right things, insisting last week that “this pipeline is in the national interest and it will get built.”

Unfortunately, words aren’t bulldozers. It will take courage, a plan and, above all, action to kick-start the project. And Trudeau must deliver because he’s correct - this pipeline is in the national interest.

Right now, almost all Alberta oil is shipped south of the border to the United States where it’s sold at a steep discount. This costs the Canadian economy an estimated $15 billion each year.

If Kinder Morgan could twin its pipeline, which already runs to Burnaby B.C., more of this lucrative natural resource could be sold to foreign markets at a higher price.

That would be a stimulating tonic for the Canadian economy, creating new jobs and pouring cash into government coffers for hospitals, schools and social services.

And while it might seem contradictory, the pipeline expansion would also be good for the environment. Both the federal and Alberta governments sold controversial plans to fight climate change and bring in carbon taxes with the promise that energy projects like Trans Mountain would be built.

If this pipeline dies, expect a furious pushback to carbon taxes.

Be prepared, too, for collateral damage to democracy and the rule of law in this country.

In late 2016, Trans Mountain won the full backing of the federal government which, according to Canada’s Constitution, has supreme authority for such interprovincial ventures.

Moreover, Trans Mountain has gained the National Energy Board’s approval, and courts have so-far ruled in the pipeline’s favour.

If an intransigent B.C. government and defiant protesters can overrule the federal government on this, our legal and regulatory processes for approving major energy projects are worthless.

And if all this wasn’t bad enough, the shelving of this project after two other proposals for pipelines from the oilsands were cancelled would ignite a national unity crisis that would start with an ugly trade war between Alberta and B.C.

These are the high stakes for Canada and a federal government that so far speaks loudly but carries a little stick, frightened, it seems, of alienating the environmentalists and First Nations communities it has wooed.

Sorry, Mr. Prime Minister. It’s time for fewer platitudes, more guts and more action. Kinder Morgan needs a guarantee it can take to the bank before May 31. If that means Ottawa or the Alberta government must put up a hefty financial stake in the pipeline, so be it.

Trudeau’s government is trying to do the right thing for Canada while somehow pleasing everyone.

If it wants to provide responsible leadership and serve “the national interest,” it can’t do both.