Trans Mountain will be Trudeau’s toughest test

Now comes the hard part. The headwinds of opposition Justin Trudeau endured before announcing his government’s $4.5-billion purchase of Trans Mountain Pipeline last week will seem like nothing compared with the perfect storm he’s heading into.

Buying this critical piece of infrastructure, once the decision was made, was easy, given Ottawa’s deep pockets.

Building and managing its expansion to triple the amount of Alberta crude oil it carries to the British Columbia coast will stretch Trudeau’s political skills to their limit. Meanwhile, the future of this megaproject will determine the future of Trudeau and his Liberals after next year’s federal election. It’s that big.

First job is standing up to the project’s political foes. Those include the federal Conservatives, New Democrats and the Green party’s sole MP in Ottawa as well as the provincial New Democrats and Greens running B.C.

Federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer — who should be backing Trudeau — did the federal Tories and their Alberta allies no favour when he foolishly slammed buying the pipeline with public money.

But the question for Scheer and his ilk is not whether nationalizing Trans Mountain is the wrong thing to do. The question is: What would they have done?

Is it better for Canadians to own this pipeline or to bid adieu to a project its private-sector owner, Kinder Morgan, was ready to abandon?

We say Canada needs Trans Mountain. In an era of economic anxiety when Canada’s free trade deal with the United States could unravel and our steel and aluminum are being hit by American tariffs, this country needs the jobs, money and tax revenues the expanded pipeline will generate.

We need the pipeline to prove the rule of law, our Constitution, our mandated process for approving megaprojects and, yes, the federal government’s authority to act in the national interest are all alive and well. International investors, who will shun Canada if this project dies, need to hear this message.

And even the most ardent environmentalists need to understand the federal government’s ambitious plan to fight climate change with nationwide carbon taxes depends on Ottawa meeting its commitment to get Alberta crude to international markets.

Making the pipeline a Crown corporation should make it easier for Trudeau to withstand the court challenges B.C. Premier John Horgan has launched against him.

Facing down the looming protests from environmentalist and Indigenous opponents will take more resolve.

Protracted anti-pipeline demonstrations will eat into Trudeau’s support in B.C. and threaten his reelection hopes. This will be particularly so if the public regularly sees pictures of telegenic activists being led off in police handcuffs or, far worse, if the protests turn violent and people are hurt.

Trudeau may not win over the environmentalists. But 43 First Nations groups have signed mutual benefit agreements that would allow the pipeline to be built. Trudeau should consider ways for the remaining Indigenous opponents to buy a stake in the project and benefit directly from it.

Even if he achieves all this, Trudeau faces a steep learning curve in getting the thing built, which could cost the public another $7 billion. This is, after all, the government that has failed miserably to fix the system that pays its own employees. We can only hope.

Good luck Mr. Trudeau and prepare to learn what many distance runners have long known.

The easy part of any marathon is entering it. What’s tough is finishing the race.