Victoria’s secrets

When Environment Minister George Heyman announced the NDP’s new plan to fight Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, he was asked about all those workers who would be out of a job if the project is stopped.

The Alberta-to-B.C. oil pipeline — scheduled to start construction in just a few weeks — was supposed to employ 15,000 construction workers.

“This government has many plans for capital infrastructure, plans that we will proceed with over the coming months and years,” Heyman said.

In other words, those unemployed pipeline workers could get a job building a new Pattullo Bridge or rapid-transit lines, both promised by the NDP government.

But those would be public-sector projects. And you can bet the New Democrats will insist on “project labour agreements” that favour unionized workers.

Where does that leave massive private-sector investments like the $7.4-billion Kinder Morgan pipeline?

According to Liberal Leader Rich Coleman, big private-sector investments could dry up in British Columbia, given the early signals coming from the NDP.

“They are very quickly sending an international message that B.C. is not a good place to invest,” Coleman said.

Coleman said he recently had a meeting with a “senior vice-president of a Canadian chartered bank” who told him an investment chill has already fallen over the province.

“He said, ‘Money is sitting on the sidelines right now when it comes to B.C. because of this uncertainty — that you can’t get a major project done in this province,’” Coleman said.

In addition to the Kinder Morgan pipeline, Coleman pointed to the $8.8-billion Site C dam (under review and threatened with cancellation by the new government), the