Vancouver
demonstration in opposition to the Trans Mountain expansion following the Trudeau
government's announced purchase of the pipeline, September 8, 2018.
Opposition to the Trudeau government's purchase of the Trans Mountain
pipeline and the construction of a twin pipeline, the Trans Mountain
Expansion Project (TMEP), is growing in intensity with opponents
bravely facing the violence of the state. The resistance has been
bolstered by recent economic research carried out
at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver that proves the government
purchase was a scam from the beginning and the construction is a
colossal waste of public money, not to speak of the environmental
damage it portends and the trampling of Indigenous rights.
The
Trudeau government used mass media disinformation to push through its
scheme to purchase Trans Mountain from Kinder Morgan in 2018 for $4.4
billion. Cries that it was necessary to move Alberta oil to tidewater
to make it available to purchasers in Asia permeated the monopoly-owned
media. TML Weekly spoke up against it,
pointing out that the entire thing was a scam to pay the rich and
further integrate Canada into the U.S. war economy. The government did
not permit the discussion of any alternative. It did not explain why
the mainly U.S. investors in Kinder Morgan were eager to sell Trans
Mountain and the TMEP and what possible good would come from a
government purchase. Hysteria was spread suggesting the Alberta ruling
elite would revolt and seek to secede if the project were rejected.
The government, as representatives of the global oligarchs,
orchestrated an atmosphere that promoted its plan to pay anxious Kinder
Morgan investors and funnel billions to construction cartels. The
mainly U.S. investors were relieved of a 65-year-old pipeline
and an expansion project doomed as a money loser from the start; and
global
construction cartels were happy to receive billion dollar cost-plus
contracts to boost their fortunes. The deal would assure Alberta heavy
oil for the numerous refineries in Washington State and California,
which supply the energy needs of the U.S. military's massive presence
stretching from Puget Sound just south of Canada to San Diego just
north
of Mexico and across the Pacific to Asia.
Through the pipeline project, the government handed lucrative
cost-plus contracts to global construction cartels such as Ledcor. As
with all government-contracted projects that pay private global cartels
to construct public infrastructure, the original estimate and agreed
price of production has ballooned -- in this case from $5.4 billion
when it
was unveiled by Kinder Morgan in 2014 to the current estimate of $12.6
billion -- and exposed the project as yet another sordid pay-the-rich
scheme. In human terms, the construction has already cost one worker
his life and injured others, resulted in the beating and jailing of
protesters, and seen the refusal to negotiate nation-to-nation
agreements
with the many Indigenous peoples along the route.
Not in Canada's Public Interest! Shelve the Project!
After
an extensive benefit cost analysis, including looking at possible
benefits to the private energy monopolies, the researchers at Simon
Fraser University conclude emphatically, "continuing construction of TMEP is not in Canada's public interest and TMEP should be shelved."
While the Simon Fraser study does not deal with the issue of
Canada's integration into the U.S. war economy, the Communist Party of
Canada (Marxist-Leninist) concurs with its conclusion. It corroborates
working people's experience that such pay-the-rich schemes are a
scourge on the country and examples of the corruption and criminality
of the ruling elite who are not fit to govern. Canadians have a
social responsibility
to sever the ties that bind our resources and many sectors of the
economy to the U.S. war machine. A new direction is possible, one that
uses the country's bountiful natural resources for the common good of
humanity beginning with a self-reliant peaceful economy under the
control of Canadians that utilizes the value to humanize the social and
natural environment and not destroy it.
This article was published in
April 12, 2021 - No. 27
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO08272.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
