White elephants and golden idols

Re: “Trudeau faces a tough balancing act,” column, April 6.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can’t state with certainty that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will be built.

Trans Mountain is a private enterprise, not a federal project, which means that cold economics — not politics — will decide its fate. And the portents aren’t good. Trans Mountain will have to spend upwards of $7 billion to bring heavily polluted bitumen to Vancouver, a product requiring expensive refining before it is usable, and one that can be shipped only in the smaller Aframax tankers able to enter the Port of Vancouver.

By contrast, sweet, easily refined oil from fracked shale deposits in the U.S. is pouring into existing pipelines bound for the new deep-water port in Louisiana, there to be loaded onto supertankers three times the size of an Aframax.

Even setting aside colossal environmental risks, Indigenous rights, court challenges, looming carbon taxes and the fact that expanded oilsands production will destroy Canada’s Paris climate commitments, the bottom line is simply this: The business case for Trans Mountain is becoming weaker by the day, and investors know it.

Ultimately, neither Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s fundraising efforts nor Trudeau’s wishful thinking are likely to change a white elephant into a golden idol.

Mike Ward Duncan