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Letter: federal government should not fund pipeline

“I question the sanity of persisting in this doomed project”
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Editor,

I am dismayed to see Trudeau and Notley not only persisting in trying to force their will on the people of B.C., but actually now discussing financing the pipeline with our taxpayer money.

The Kinder Morgan people, who are ENRON people with a different name, must be laughing at Canada. They are a multi-million-dollar company, and somehow we have to bail out and pay for their project? Maybe that is why they haven’t applied for the necessary permits, aren’t even attempting to do the paperwork, so they can then complain they are being obstructed, and our naive “leaders” cough up the funds to appease them. Did they ever intend to pay for the pipeline?

Andrea Nikiforuk reports, “Kinder Morgan Canada has arranged $5.5 billion in construction facility loans from Canadian banks — but only if Kinder Morgan raises $2 billion in equity for the project. Robyn Allan, noted economist, says investors recognized a year ago that the Trans Mountain project didn’t make commercial sense. As investor interest waned, Allan said, Kinder Morgan couldn’t raise debt or equity in the U.S. markets or find a joint-venture partner.

The job of raising money for the project then fell to Kinder Morgan Canada. But the $1.6 billion it raised in 2017 went to pay off debts of its parent company. For the pipeline to be built, it requires the consent of 100 per cent of Nations, tribes and bands along the pipeline and tanker route. It does not have it. Of around 200 groups along the pipeline and tanker route, only 43 have signed agreements, which do not, in themselves, constitute consent.

I question the sanity of persisting in this doomed project, and I definitely object to our federal government spending any of our dollars on it.

Linda Kemp,

Quesnel, B.C.