Madam Speaker, all the Liberals had to do was enforce federal jurisdiction and assert the rule of law. Kinder Morgan did not ask for one single cent of taxpayer dollars. All the Liberals had to do was provide certainty that this big project, which had gone through the most rigorous of regulatory standards and received support from every single indigenous community it crossed, could go ahead. However, they did not.
I will mention that the vice-president of the Métis National Council stated “The vast majority of first nations are supporting [the Trans Mountain expansion]. We all look at it from an economic standpoint. It's going to change the opportunity for us that now exists. We have 70%-80% unemployment, and it's going to have a definite economic spin, which will give opportunities for new business to be created.”
The real loss here is that $4.5 billion in Canadian taxpayer dollars were given to Kinder Morgan to build pipelines in the U.S., while Kinder Morgan removed its $7.4-billion private sector investment to build the expansion on which 43 communities were indeed depending for the $400 million worth of mutual benefit agreements attached to that expansion.