KILLING CANADIAN PIPELINES

Effectively what the Federal Court of Appeal did on Thursday was kill the Trans Mountain pipeline and all future pipelines.

Oh, it could say it hasn’t raised an impossible bar to pipeline construction. And it might argue it hasn’t handed the most militant First Nations and environmentalists a veto over future projects. But that is effectively what the justices did.

The only real hope now is that the federal government (which by the end of Thursday should be the proud owners of Trans Mountain) will appeal this decision to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court will somehow decide next year or in 2020 (or 2021), that the Federal Court was wrong.