PM’s pipeline expansion vow prompts range of reactions
The reaction ranged from business as usual to outrage on both sides of the Kinder Morgan controversy following Sunday’s meeting in Ottawa between Premiers John Horgan and Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is of vital strategic interest to Canada,” Trudeau said after the two-hour meeting. “It will be built.”
To which Greenpeace responded: “This pipeline isn’t going anywhere.
“The federal government can’t buy off the opposition to this failing pipeline,” Greenpeace campaigner Mike Hudema said, “as it is grounded in a commitment to action on climate change, reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples and protecting the B.C. coast.”
Trudeau said private, financial discussions will be held with Kinder Morgan in the coming days to remove uncertainty over the project. He also promised legislation to “reassert and reinforce” the federal government’s role and jurisdiction.
Alberta has promised to introduce legislation of its own on Monday or Tuesday, without providing details.
Horgan said he reminded Trudeau that his pledge of reconciliation with Indigenous communities is not aided when there are Indigenous communities that don’t support the Kinder Morgan project.
Horgan also would not elaborate on the “legislative and financial measures” promised by Trudeau to push the project forward.
“Despite all of the commonality between the three of us, we continue to disagree on the question of moving diluted bitumen from Alberta to the Port of Vancouver,” he said.
“We had a discussion about options; the federal government laid out their plans over the next number of days ... and we had a discussion about what role British Columbia
could continue to play to protecting and defending our coast.”
Horgan said that Trudeau made no threats and made it clear he had no intention of punishing B.C. residents. Horgan’s opposition to Trans Mountain — rooted in part in the fact his tenuous NDP government depends on the support of the Green party, which staunchly opposes the project — is the main reason Kinder Morgan put the brakes on non-essential spending on the project a week ago.
The Independent Contractors and Businesses Association meanwhile insisted: “Premier Horgan is effectively ripping up a contract which Kinder Morgan negotiated in good faith with the federal and provincial governments of the day,” said ICBA president Chris Gardner. “That’s not how we must do business in Canada.
“It’s not right, it’s not fair, and it’s not legal.”
Political scientists were happy to
see there was no federal bullying, no threats to withhold transfer payments aimed at infrastructure projects in B.C. for instance.
“Everyone wins in the sense it could have been much more belligerent,” said David Moscrop, a political theorist who specializes in democratic deliberation and political decision-making at SFU.
Except Indigenous communities, he added, who as usual were not at the table.
“But, at a day-to-day level, it still seems like a 50-50 shot,” that the Kinder Morgan expansion will go ahead, Moscrop said.
One thing Moscrop does find troublesome is the agenda looks like it was sped up after Kinder Morgan announced last week it was suspending all non-essential work on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which would add a bigger pipeline adjacent to the existing one between Edmonton and Burnaby.
“I don’t think their announcement was entirely arbitrary,” he said. “They do have quarterly reports to do, but it did speed things up.
“I do think it’s disconcerting the timeline came from a Texas-based company and not a sovereign government.”
Kathryn Harrison, a UBC political scientist and senior associate dean of arts, said no one was really expecting much out of the meeting.
“We learned about a couple of things that aren’t going to happen and one thing that is going to happen, and it’s all what I expected.”
One thing that didn’t happen, she said, was a promise or threat by Trudeau to withhold federal transfer payments to B.C.
“That would have been extraordinary. It’s one thing to withhold health dollars if a province isn’t following the health rules ...”