Chantal Hébert: Justin Trudeau has little to show for his efforts to reach a deal on the Trans Mountain pipeline
(The Star Food)

A month after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped in to resolve the impasse between British Columbia and Alberta over the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline his government has little to show for its efforts.Trudeau’s offer to compensate Kinder Morgan — the parent company of the pipeline — for any financial losses resulting from the opposition of the B.C .government to the project has yet to be taken. With less than two weeks to go to a company-set deadline of May 31 to decide whether to fish or cut bait on the expansion, Kinder Morgan remains coy as to its intentions. On Wednesday a meeting of its shareholders lasted little more than 15 minutes and featured no public discussion of the issue. In a statement, the company indicated that negotiations were ongoing. At a Parliament Hill press conference held mere hours before the shareholders’ Calgary meeting and presumably designed to put pressure on Kinder Morgan’s board, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau said if it decided to take a pass on the federal offer and walk away from the pipeline expansion he would look for another taker.The minister seemed convinced one of Kinder Morgan’s competitors would be willing to overlook the deteriorating political environment that caused the company to suspend all non-essential work on the expansion earlier this year, and pick up where its original architects left off.For notwithstanding Ottawa’s willingness to backstop whatever extra costs (to a yet unspecified level) could be incurred as a result of “politically motivated� delays, the clouds hovering over the project remain intact.Federal pressure on B.C.’s government to drop its opposition to the pipeline has yielded no positive results for the pipeline proponents. NDP Premier John Horgan’s government has now referred the issue of whether the province has the power to regulate the amount of diluted bitumen oil that transits through its territory to ...