CROWN PIPELINES?

The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion would be dead were it still in private hands when the Federal Court of Appeal quashed its federal approval last week. That’s what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Edmonton this week. Many would agree, but not for the reasons Trudeau thinks.

The prime minister intended to pat his own back for buying the pipeline and expansion project from an increasingly fed-up Kinder Morgan to ensure its construction.

In reality, it’s an admission the federal government has not only bungled the Trans Mountain file but muddied the process of vetting energy projects — so much so that it’s uncertain industry will ever again invest in a major natural resources project in Canada. Already, Suncor says it won’t expand until pipe goes into the ground.

The problem is that companies now face a Sisyphean task to build new lines. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king condemned to roll a boulder uphill, only to helplessly watch it tumble backward time after time as he neared the top. For Kinder Morgan, the metaphor is particularly apt. Its Trans Mountain project — what should have been a straightforward twinning of an existing line — was approved two years ago by the federal government following a gruelling 29-month regulatory and environmental review. It survived 17 legal challenges until last week’s federal court ruling sent it rolling back to start anew.

There’s plenty of blame to go around, starting with the Harper government which reformed environmental protections to ease the way for pipelines, and allowed the National Energy Board to disregard tanker traffic in its review of the project — an unintended fatal flaw in last week’s court ruling.

For its part, the Trudeau government didn’t heed the lesson from a similar court decision in 2016 that found there was inadequate consultation with First Nations on the Northern Gateway pipeline and repeated the mistake despite its lip service on reconciliation.

In the span of two years, the private sector has been stymied in attempts to build two separate pipelines that would have shipped Alberta oil to tidewater. Trudeau’s government killed Northern Gateway while Trans Canada pulled the plug on its Energy East line after the NEB suddenly moved the regulatory-review goalposts.

Now, as Trudeau points out, the only thing keeping the last remaining hope for a new pipeline alive is his government’s outright purchase of Trans Mountain. That’s cold comfort for Canadians left wondering what comes next in this fiasco — the spectre of a Crown corporation to build pipelines industry won’t touch?