FP: Ottawa has been peddling the notion that lots of companies have been looking at Trans Mountain, and that it may have snapped up “a bargain,” but despite the offer of government indemnities against political risk, nobody has stepped in. Any investor who would do so would be rash indeed, for the more funds the government had to pay out to cover all costs caused by court delays and civil disobedience, the more the investor would be pilloried as an incompetent corporate-welfare bum. Certainly all sorts of investors would be interested in buying the system once — or rather if — the expansion were completed.
It is difficult to imagine how Trans Mountain will not remain an albatross until the next election, although the Liberals obviously made the political calculation that buying it was better than simply having the project die immediately due to their startlingly muddled policies on energy and the environment.
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