It’s when things get tough that you see who is who and what is what – and it was all laid wide open in April. Kinder Morgan showed yet again that it is a greedy oil corporation which will use every trick in the book to force through dangerous projects, the Trudeau government showed that it prioritizes the profits of these corporations over the interests of people and the planet. Most importantly though, the opposition to the pipeline showed going toe to toe with this team of supposed giants doesn’t phase them one bit. Kinder Morgan and the Canadian government have the beginnings of a crisis. We have the beginnings of a powerful climate justice movement.
You couldn’t blame someone for checking, but it was a week late for April Fools Day when Kinder Morgan released an incredible press release announcing it was suspending all “non-essential spending” on its 7.4 billion dollar Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project. Blaming big delays due to the opposition, they said they would be meeting with investors and stakeholders to decide by May 31 regarding the future of the project.
There could be a lot of factors involved in this announcement, but the bottom line is that Kinder Morgan is not happy with the project’s progress and is pressuring governments to do more of the dirty work and heavy lifting.
True Colours Coming Through
This is where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals showed their true colours. Like a bunch of circus animals gathering at the crack of the ringmaster’s whip, the Liberals immediately held an emergency cabinet meeting. They emerged promising to meet behind closed doors with Kinder Morgan to try and figure out the government’s next moves to push the project through.
Very much on the table is at least a $2 billion government bailout of the project. Incredibly, the $1.6 billion Kinder Morgan Canada raised by selling stocks already went to paying off debts of its parent company. Kinder Morgan Canada has arranged $5.5 billion in construction facility loans from Canadian banks — but only if they can raise another $2 billion in equity for the project. With investors understandably standoffish, this two billion could very likely be on the table as a government bailout.
Always in the Pocket
None of this should be that surprising. PM Trudeau’s first scandal was just before he was elected in 2015. His national campaign co-chair Dan Gagner was forced to resign when it was discovered that during the campaign he was also being paid to advise people behind the Energy East pipeline on how to lobby a new Liberal government.
As Andrew Nikifork wrote in a recent article in the Tyee, “Canada has already granted Kinder Morgan several subsidies. In 2011 the National Energy Board (NEB) granted Kinder Morgan a special fee of approximately $1.45 a barrel to help fund the company’s participation in the regulatory review of the Trans Mountain pipeline. By 2014 Kinder Morgan confirmed that it had collected $132 million in fees.”
So, the government gives the oil corporation our tax dollars as subsidies, so it doesn’t have to spend any of its own money going through the necessary review process? Economist Robin Allan has also pointed out that Trudeau’s promise to fund a $1.5 billion ocean protection plan to cope with increased oil tanker traffic if the pipeline is built is another clear taxpayer subsidy for Kinder Morgan. They create the risk, we pay for it.
Who’s Driving This Thing?
Recent revelations have even further shown how far on board with Kinder Morgan the Trudeau government was before the approval. Reporting by the National Observer has revealed that on October 17, 2016, weeks before the Trudeau government approved the pipeline, assistant deputy minister Erin O’Gorman of the Department of Natural Resources instructed her staff to, “give cabinet the legally-sound basis for saying yes to Kinder Morgan’s pipeline.’” This was literally as the government was meeting with representatives of impacted indigenous nations and promising that no decision had yet been made on the pipeline.
The National Observer also recently released documents showing that despite warnings from colleagues, federal officials sped up their timeline for the review of the Trans Mountain project following a phone call from Kinder Morgan Canada President Ian Anderson. According to the federal lobbying registry, Kinder Morgan Canada also reported lobbying federal officials more than three dozen times in 2016 before the approval.
Meet the Kinder
“We wanted to drive home one culture here: Cheap. Cheap. Cheap,” - Richard Kinder, CEO of Kinder Morgan
Kinder Morgan is the biggest pipeline company in the US. Richard Kinder and Bill Morgan are ex-Enron Executives. Enron is the infamous energy trader whose collapse after being found guilty of account fraud and corruption cost shareholders $74 billion and killed 20,000 jobs. Kinder himself has a net worth of $8.2 billion.
That’s who PM Trudeau is going to bat for, with possibly billions of our tax dollars.
Meet the Opposition
“There is the real threat. Regardless of any future court resolutions or accommodations worked out between the BC and Alberta governments, there remain the ninjas of extreme environmentalism”. - Rex Murphy’s National Post Column, April 21, 2018
There’s a dual game of dismissal of the opposition to the Kinder Morgan pipeline going on. Kinder Morgan, for its part, refuses to acknowledge the mass opposition movement which is currently focused on the company’s tank farm and marine terminal at the foot of Burnaby Mountain. Mass rallies of thousands, over 200 arrests for defying a court-imposed 5-meter “buffer zone” around Kinder Morgan’s property, and ongoing actions by an Indigenous-led movement that shows no sign of backing down.
On the other hand, right-wing commentators like Rex Murphy try to dismiss everyone as “the ninjas of extreme environmentalism” or as sheep organized by shadowy foreign billionaires for “less than salubrious” agendas he fails to define.
Anyone who has been to any action regarding Kinder Morgan can tell you the opposition is much broader than that.
>> The Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish nations, whose territories the pipeline would terminate on, are leading organizing on Burnaby Mountain.
>> The 200 people arrested are from a diverse cross-section of people. There have even been specific actions organized by youth, elders, religious leaders and artists.
>> Two Members of Parliament, Elizabeth May and Kennedy Stewart, were both arrested for defying the injunction.
>> The Burnaby Deputy Fire Chief has released a damning report on the safety concerns of the Kinder Morgan tank farm expansion, “We don’t believe they have any firefighting capabilities. When I asked specifically for the details on the storage tanks and written protocols for how they plan the fire protection for the storage tanks, I was told by Kinder Morgan that they have none.”
>> The BC Teachers Federation passed a resolution to, “encourage all locals to stand in solidarity with Indigenous water and land protectors in opposition to the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion by lobbying their local politicians and by participating in any protests or actions.”
This is just a small cross-section of who has been involved. It is impossible to ignore and has shown itself time and time again to be large and committed.
Who Are the Extremists?
Is it so extreme to demand that a government follow through on its promises to prioritize the environment and respect the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People? To demand that government represents the interests of people above billion dollar oil corporations? To point out the failures of the “market” – where the corporations we are told, are providing us with all the jobs and prosperity need billions of our tax dollars to stay afloat? How extreme is it to point out that human beings have developed technologically and socially to a point where we don’t need to destroy the environment, don’t need to accept poverty and don’t need to bow down to capitalism as the pinnacle of human development?
The real extremists are Kinder Morgan, Prime Minister Trudeau, and whoever else in positions of power who are trying to force us down the proven road of environmental, social and political degradation. The opposition to the Kinder Morgan pipeline is, however, extremely committed. The battle is far from over but the pipeline has not been built, and no one is giving up on stopping it any time soon.
Follow Thomas Davies on Twitter: @thomasdavies59
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