Podcast: The Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline

Can the economy and the environment exist together as PM Justin Trudeau is fond of saying or do you have to settle for one or the other?  

The Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion from Edmonton to Vancouver is a $7 billion plus project that would see the current pipeline twinned with a new one to more than double the capacity to get the oil sands or bitumen to markets other than the US. That would mean a sevenfold increase in tanker traffic out of Berard Inlet, which environmentalists worry about the impact on the aquaculture.  Of course, visions of the Exxon Valdez dance in their heads.  

The premiers of both Alberta and BC are turning up the heat on the issue to get their point across. Alberta's Rachel Notley signed on to the Federal governmen't's climate change plan in exchange for approval of the pipeline.  BC NDP Premier John Horgan is against the pipeline as is the BC Green Party which is propping up Horgan's gov't. PM Trudeau held a tete-a-tete with both to try and get concensus but nothing was resolved.   And, to add more gasoline to the fire, Kinder Morgan is suspending any more spending on the project as it grows frustrated with  the political tug of war, musing aloud that the project may never happen.