Congrats on buying your new pipeline, Canada

Congratulations on your purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline!

When the project is complete, each Canadian will own 5.87 centimetres of the 2,130 km of pipeline carrying diluted bitumen from Strathcona County, just outside of Edmonton, to Burnaby, B.C.

Don’t get too excited — it’s only a sliver of the entire thing. Maybe you can name it Dilbert or something. Sing it a song. Wrap it in ribbon. You do you, fellow Canadian.

The federal price tag on your pipeline comes to $4.5 billion (that’s $124 per person). The expansion, which twins an existing pipe, is estimated to cost an additional $7.4 billion. All told, that’s around $328 per Canadian for your piece.

Premier Rachel Notley announced Alberta would invest up to $2 billion to get the project built. That can be converted to equity if necessary, she said.

The original 1,150-km Trans Mountain Pipeline was built in 1953. It was expanded in 1957, then again between 2006 and 2008. The $7.4-billion twinning would run pipe over a slightly shorter 980 km.

This expansion adds 12 new pump stations, along with 19 new tanks to an existing storage terminal in Burnaby, one tank in Sumas and four tanks in Edmonton.

It will boost capacity from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day. That’s enough oil to fill more than 56 Olympic swimming pools. It’s also equivalent to hundreds of millions of bottles of wine (from B.C. or otherwise).

Your pipeline — let’s call it Dilbert — also comes with a lifetime guarantee of controversy, garnering the attention of the prime minister, premiers, industry, activists and everyone else. Hooray!

Since rumblings of an Alberta-B.C. trade war started in February, the ongoing political standoff included a B.C. wine ban in Alberta, a sudden trip to Ottawa, court cases and an ominous deadline set by pipeline owner Kinder Morgan.

Plus, don’t forget the legislation to turn off the taps to B.C. That bill — which gave unprecedented authority to Alberta’s energy minister — is no longer likely to be enacted, Notley said.

Keep in mind, fellow Canadian, Dilbert might not always be yours. Ottawa plans to find a buyer for the pipeline when market conditions allow it to get the best price, said federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau.

And one more thing — there’s no return policy.