CLICK HERE - My Professional Website
I have witnessed our government commit numerous blunders and waste vast sums of money. Worst of all, I have seen it pilfer our grandchildren’s future through relentless borrowing. Time and again, the government fails its fundamental responsibilities—from national defence to disaster preparation. For fifty years, experts have warned us to diversify our markets, yet we remain dangerously dependent on a single trading partner. Our leaders govern without a long-term plan, completely failing to build cross-party consensus on critical trade and energy policies. Nowhere is this lack of foresight more glaring than the recent decision to expand a pipeline’s capacity that was literally just finished.
If the Trans Mountain pipeline is the answer to greater
volume today, it should have been built to handle that volume from the start.
Instead, we are digging up the exact same ground just two years after
completing the last expansion. This isn't planning; it is a frantic reaction. It
proves we have a government more obsessed with political survival and
re-election than the long-term well-being of our country. This kind of folly
would be funny if it weren’t so terrifying.
Canada desperately needs an efficient way to get both oil
and gas to global markets. We need proper processing facilities at the
pipeline's end to get these resources ship-ready. Prince Rupert is a
world-class, deep-water port that sits completely underutilized. Why are we
routing pipelines into parts of British Columbia that already have high shipping
traffic? Prince Rupert is the closest North American port to Asia—three days
closer than Vancouver. From there, tankers head straight out to the open ocean,
away from our coast. Instead, the government chose Roberts Bank, forcing
tankers to navigate a crowded waterway just to reach blue water. Prince Rupert
offers undeniable practical advantages, but our government would rather
squander them than confront political friction.
Some thinking from 2015 - wish we had got on with things
Rural British Columbia is hurting economically. We have a
duty to bring meaningful, lasting development to these regions, and a pipeline
to Prince Rupert would revitalize the entire northwestern economy.
Instead, Canadians face the shuddering prospect of another
government-“de-risked” project. The Trans Mountain pipeline began with a $6
billion private sector budget. Today, its actual commercial value is roughly
$14 billion, but it cost taxpayers a staggering $35 billion. The TMX project
was a financial catastrophe—massively over budget and years late. How can
Canada progress when we refuse to learn from our mistakes? We are simply
stumbling from one fiscal disaster to the next.
This “de-risking” process is code for making Canadians
overpay for government incompetence. It is entirely unnecessary. What we
actually need is for the government to step up and govern. Leaders must have
the courage to declare a project in the national interest and draft specific
legislation to get it built. Better yet, they should legislate permanent
certainty into our general regulatory process. We must be a country that can
get things done. We must stop frittering away billions of dollars.
The Liberal government held the perfect hand—enjoying a
functional lack of opposition in the House of Commons and the backing of most
Canadians to do the right thing. Yet when it came time to act, they lacked the
will to press forward.
