{"id":50465,"date":"2020-01-07T13:18:44","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T18:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50465"},"modified":"2020-01-07T13:18:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T18:18:44","slug":"trans-mountain-deal-was-structured-to-bleed-billions-finds-economist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50465","title":{"rendered":"Trans Mountain Deal Was Structured to Bleed Billions, Finds Economist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Trans Mountain Deal Was Structured to Bleed Billions, Finds Economist<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Robyn Allan dug into the megaproject\u2019s economics and says it\u2019s already losing money<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Burnaby
Aerial view of Kinder Morgan\u2019s Trans Mountain marine terminal, in Burnaby, B.C. Photo by Jonathan Hayward, The Canadian Press.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When Finance Minister Bill Morneau paid $4.5 billion for the 66-year-old Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018, he vowed the deal would bring cash and smiles to taxpayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost 18 months after the purchase, economist Robyn Allan started looking for evidence of the promised benefits. She didn\u2019t find any.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What she did find should disturb any fiscal conservative, if such a species still exists in Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The existing pipeline is losing money, concluded Allan, the former CEO of the Insurance Corporation of BC and chief economist for BC Central Credit Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proposed expansion to triple the pipeline\u2019s capacity will add to the losses as taxpayers subsidize both construction and the fees companies pay to ship oil.The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, Allan noted, Ottawa has no idea how much the expansion will cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrans Mountain was a profitable pipeline system when Ottawa bought it,\u201d she writes, \u201cbut it is not generating earnings now \u2014 it is booking losses and has been since the government took over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allan\u2019s independent assessment<\/a> is worth your attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, you need to know that you own something called the Canada Development Investment Corp. The Crown corporation, with the unlovely acronym CDEV, was established in 1982 and manages federal investments, including in the Hibernia offshore oil field \u2014 and now the Trans Mountain pipeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among CDEV\u2019s responsibilities are two Crown corporations created as part of the deal to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline. Canada TMP Finance Ltd. borrows the money and pays the interest. And it actually owns Trans Mountain Corporation, which operates the pipeline. (Yes, it takes two Crown corporations to own one pipeline.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trans Mountain Deal Was Structured to Bleed Billions, Finds Economist Robyn Allan dug into the megaproject\u2019s economics and says it\u2019s already losing money When Finance Minister Bill Morneau paid $4.5 billion for the 66-year-old Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018, he vowed the deal would bring cash and smiles to taxpayers. Almost 18 months after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}