No wine today until we get our way.
Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline is a go. Approved by Canada’s Federal Government as a project as, “being in the national interest,” and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said the “pipeline in going to get built.” However, the BC government has other ideas and, to be fair, it looks like a significant proportion of BC’s population don’t want it either.
The trouble with being landlocked is that Alberta needs the will and the way of neighbours to get raw bitumen to market. South is maybe, east is no, north good be go but there doesn’t seem to be the drive to go that way, leaving west. An approved project that has, at the moment anyway, bitter opposition from BC’s current government.
The Alberta government is facing an election soon and Premier Rachel Notley had to react strongly to BC’s move to restrict bitumen and thus kibosh the Trans Mountain pipeline. And, in true punishment era for getting one’s own way, Notley reacted by halting talks on buying BC power and now banning wine imports.
BC Premier John Horgan’s NDP/Green party government is tenuous on its grip on control and another seat could be added to the Liberal’s tally on Feb. 14. Next year, it’s the political dance for everyone and one might be forgiven for thinking that the stances of the two premiers are somewhat focused on their prospects at the polls. The pipeline has been and continues to be a political football except there is collateral damage on both sides of the mountains now. Horgan has said that he won’t be escalating the dispute but has indicated that he would prefer it went through the courts, something that would likely take a very long time indeed.
My take on this is that the pipeline has been approved by Federal Government, the Prime Minister has said that it will be built. Therefore, it is up to the Federal Government to step in and make it so. That doesn’t mean that environmental concerns should be ignored. There is a government mechanism to get the pipeline build going, it just hasn’t been exercised for decades I believe. Now is the time. Punishing unrelated small businesses in the BC wine trade is not something to be proud of.