TransMountain Delays Aren’t Just Hurting Alberta
Did you know that for every day the Trans-Mountain Pipeline Project is delayed, the Canadian economy loses $80 million dollars in revenue? That’s over $29 billion dollars a year. In fact, in the two minutes it takes to read this article, we’ll have lost over $110,000. Since January 1st, the delays have cost our economy over $19 billion dollars in revenue. That’s $19 billion dollars that could go towards new roads and schools, social programs, and employment benefits.
Instead of a private sector company building a brand-new pipeline with private money, Trudeau single-handedly bungled the Trans Mountain project and put $4.5 billion of your dollars nationalize it – only to slow it to a complete halt not long after. Just to be clear; we’re not getting a new pipeline for that money, we’re getting the same old one that has existed since the 1950’s. That’s $4.5 billion dollars of your money directly thrown away, given to a private company that turned around and used your money to build pipelines in the US.
At the same time, the Liberal government has given $250 dollars to the China-led Asian Investment Bank – to build pipelines in China. Your tax dollars are being used by the Trudeau Liberals to build pipelines in China and the US.
Each year Alberta contributes over fifteen percent of the national GDP, equaling to over $331 billion dollars to Canada’s national economy. The oil sands alone have injected almost $13 billion dollars into the economy in 2017.
Unfortunately, we are faced with a Liberal government run by ideologues that do not support our energy industry and the jobs and prosperity it brings. They actively work against our province and ruin major energy projects. Since winning in 2015, Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government have displayed their traditional interest in fighting against Alberta and our energy industry by allying themselves with foreign-funded anti-oil radicals. They killed the Northern Gateway pipeline which would have brought our oil to a deep-water port for export, and killed Energy East, which would have brought our oil to eastern Canada, thus displacing oil imports from some of the world’s worst human rights abusing regimes. They have introduced the discriminatory anti-Alberta Bill C-48 and the job killing no-new-pipeline Bill C-69 and of course the carbon tax.
The way they have treated Alberta is discouraging, but we won’t give up. My Opposition colleagues and I will continue fighting to hold the Liberal government to account for the lack of support for Albertans every step of the way. If, like us, you’re fed up with this government’s double speak, you can add your voice to the tens of thousands of Canadians who want the Trans-Mountain pipeline built. My colleague Shannon Stubbs has launched a petition calling on the government to take immediate action and I encourage you to sign it here: https://www.shannonstubbs.ca/buildtmx. Help us get this project done.