Today, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals announced their plan to use taxpayer dollars to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion. The Liberals will also take over the expansion project and core assets at a cost of $7.4 billion. 

 

The reality is that Kinder Morgan never asked for one dollar of taxpayer money; they only asked for certainty. Today's Trans Mountain purchase does not end the uncertainty or the active obstruction of the BC government.

 

Even more alarming is the $4.5 billion taxpayer dollars leaving Canada to create jobs in other countries. This didn’t need to happen. The lack of support by the Liberal Government for Canada’s natural resources energy sector has had a compounding effect.

 

Since the Liberals were elected in 2015, the level of drilling dropped from 1800 drills in Alberta to 400. Instead of championing pipeline projects, the Liberals have repeatedly blocked and undermined pipeline projects, leading to layoffs across our country, and risking thousands more jobs, billions of dollars in energy investment and government revenue.

 

Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives believe that low taxes and the elimination of redundant regulations would allow projects like Trans Mountain to be built without a burden to the taxpayer. In fact, under the previous Conservative Government, four pipelines were built without spending one cent of taxpayers’ money.

 

As the MP for Peace River – Westlock, I will continue to hold Justin Trudeau and his government to account and champion Canadian energy and oil workers.