Poll reveals uneasiness at Ottawa’s $4.5B deal

Most British Columbians felt uneasy about their tax dollars being spent on the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion even before Ottawa announced this week it would buy the project outright for $4.5 billion, according to a new poll.

Research Co. surveyed 1,255 adults in B.C. between May 25 and 28 and found that 76 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement “I am uncomfortable with the idea of the federal government using taxpayer money to subsidize a foreign company if the project does not go through.”

The poll, conducted ahead of the federal government’s announcement on Tuesday, also found that 57 per cent of residents thought Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government made the wrong decision when they announced in May that they would use taxpayer money to indemnify Kinder Morgan backers for any financial loss incurred due to politics delaying the project.

Nearly half of the respondents (49 per cent) said they would be less likely to vote for the Liberals in the next federal election, including 36 per cent who cast a ballot for them in 2015.

Meantime, Kinder Morgan’s proposed project had the support of 52 per cent of survey respondents, compared to 44 per cent who disagreed with the proposal. Polls conducted in April by the Angus Reid Institute and Insights West gauged support at 54 and 55 per cent, and opposition at 26 and 36 per cent, respectively.

Research Co. said its data was statistically weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender and region in B.C. with a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.