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House Hansard - 52

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 4, 2022 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 52 - Apr/4/22
Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)
  • Apr/4/22 6:44:26 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, I begin this evening's Adjournment Proceedings by acknowledging that we are here on the territory of the traditional unceded lands of the Algonquin nation. To them, I say meegwetch. I raised this question initially on February 9, 2022, and it relates to the Trans Mountain pipeline. It is amazing, the timing, but that day marked exactly two years since there had been any public accounting of the costs to the Government of Canada and the people of Canada on the purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Actually, the Prime Minister did respond to my question and say that the Government of Canada believed that the oil and gas sector and profits to its pipeline were still important in making the transition away from oil and gas, but within, I think, 24 hours later, the question and the Prime Minister's answer were rather overtaken by events, as I had foreshadowed. We were overdue for a financial accounting on the Trans Mountain pipeline. I think it was the very next day when that accounting came forward, and Trans Mountain Limited reported that they were, in fact, way over budget. Let us just review where we are. By the way, the same day that report came out, our Minister of Finance said there would be no more public money into Trans Mountain, so in the time that I have tonight I want to canvass two things. This is an economic loser and, in light of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report today, we need to cancel this project. First, let us start out where we were. When it was a Kinder Morgan project before the National Energy Board and I was an intervenor, Kinder Morgan's estimate of costs of construction were $5.4 billion. By the time we bought it, like a bunch of suckers, it was up to $7.4 billion estimated costs. That went to $9.3 billion. By 2020, it was over budget to $12.6 billion. That was our last update. When it was updated once again, we were now over $21 billion with over another year to wait. We say we are not going to put any more public money into it, but this has been purchased by a Crown corporation. The Crown corporation borrowed $15 billion against the Canada account, which means we are already spending $700 in interest a year. Beyond that, the people of Canada are going to be on the hook forever if this thing is allowed to be built because Trans Mountain's deal with its customers, in terms of the tolls it charges, only allow the customers to be charged for 25% of any cost overruns. The 75% remaining will come back to the people of Canada once again, so we know this project is massively over budget, massively costing too much and that the Crown corporation itself has said that we are in the vicinity of over $21 billion. The project is still not even half complete. With the remaining less than a minute I have, let us just drill down on the obvious. With today's report plus those before it from the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world has a consensus that if we are going to hold to what we promised to do in Paris and hold no more than 1.5°C global average temperature increase, we must massively reduce our emissions of fossil fuels. We must, according to today's report from the IPCC, make sure that 2025 is the peak of our emissions forever and come down from there. Building this pipeline will destroy our Paris commitments. Building the pipeline is a threat to our future and will inevitably involve more costs to the people of Canada.
635 words
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