Deal won’t solve feds’ pipeline problems By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, May. 30, 2018 Last Modified: 8:00 PM CDT Wednesday, May. 30, 2018 Updates

Opinion

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This article was published 30/05/2018 (2685 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Picture, if you can, a trick rider in a big-top circus — standing defiantly as two horses below him gallop in unison around the centre ring, the rider balancing with one foot planted on the saddle of each of his equine charges.

It’s a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, but if at any point the horses’ cadence or relative in-motion positioning changes, the rider will be forced to make a choice by jumping to safety on one horse or the other.

In political terms, Justin Trudeau has reached that moment in his prime-ministerial performance. And the saddle into which he’s settled for the rest of his sure-to-be-bumpy ride sits astride an oily nag named Kinder Morgan.

For many months, the prime minister has tried to maintain the precarious illusion that he’s both an environmental advocate and a champion of the country’s petroleum-resource industries. But with Tuesday’s announcement that the federal government will purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline project from Kinder Morgan at a price of $4.5 billion in order to ensure the project’s controversial expansion gets completed, Mr. Trudeau has chosen his landing place.

He has, for all intents and purposes, staked his government’s future to the outcome of the pipeline saga. And the simple fact of the matter is that it was never going to end any other way.

For as hard as he has worked to position himself as an eco-friendly prime minister — with his hard-line strategy on carbon pricing, his oft-stated commitment to the Paris Agreement’s climate goals and his apparent dedication to building relationships with Indigenous communities — Mr. Trudeau has made it very clear during the past few months of pipeline-related strife that his first loyalty was going to be to moving Canada’s resources to international markets and the completion of the Trans Mountain expansion his government has declared to be “of vital interest to Canada and to Canadians.”

And now, as the federal Liberal government pushes ahead with the Trans Mountain project, with the ultimate goal of selling the pipeline to private interests — hopefully, at a profit — once it’s completed, Mr. Trudeau will no doubt find himself face to face with many of the environmentalists, scientists and Indigenous leaders whose favour he has previously sought.

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These will not be comfortable moments. 

Nor will the conversations and confrontations that will inevitably await the 42 West Coast Liberal candidates seeking to help Mr. Trudeau retain power in the next federal election. At present, the PM counts 18 British Columbians among his majority caucus; it’s entirely possible that the Kinder Morgan decision will cost him most, and perhaps even all, of those seats.

And there is no reason to believe those losses could be offset by a sudden groundswell of Liberal support in neighbouring Alberta, where the pipeline push-through is more likely to help Premier Rachel Notley than it will the federal government.

In the short term, more challenges are coming Mr. Trudeau’s way. B.C. Premier John Horgan has vowed to continue his province’s efforts to block the project, and it’s guaranteed that protests — some, most certainly, of the non-peaceful variety — await the construction crews tasked with pushing the pipeline expansion through B.C.

By bankrolling the Kinder Morgan pipeline with an as-yet-undetermined amount of Canadians’ money — the $4.5-billion price does not include future construction, legal and environmental costs — Mr. Trudeau has declared his government’s priority. But he has hardly begun to solve its pipeline-related problems.