Mr. Speaker, the great Ronald Reagan once said of Liberals and their view on the economy, “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” That is what we have today: a government that has so weighed down our energy sector with rules, regulations, uncertainty, and taxes, that it is not economical for it to build a pipeline with its own money. Therefore, the government has to build it with other people's money.
We know governments are not particularly good at this. The government paid more money for this pipeline project than anyone in the marketplace was prepared to pay. In other words, it obviously paid more than the market value. The government paid twice as much as the seller said was the book value of the project, and that is just to buy a pipeline that has existed since 1953. The $4.5 billion purchase price does not build a single centimetre of new pipeline capacity. This is a government bailout quickly transforming into a government boondoggle.