Editor:
Regarding the Canadian Press article “Trans Mountain route change will 'desecrate' sacred site,” was a nasty reminder of just how this project became the financial albatross it is today.
To sell the Trans-Mountain pipeline to Indigenous people would have to be ranked as one of the bigger insults Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ever insinuated on Canadian taxpayers.
We are also allowed to consider the main reason for Trudeau’s unyielding opposition to building pipelines in Canada, was to encourage Canadian energy companies to use the pipeline.
Critics of the pipeline are conveniently ignoring it is revenues generated by that pipeline governments need to build critical infrastructures like roads, schools, airports, hospitals, water treatment plants, and provide critical social services, to help Indigenous people transition into the 21st century, and to enjoy a better quality of life.
Blockades, legal and illegal, and countless frivolous lawsuits have had a devastating impact on the timing and costs of completing this project. Whether or not our land is holy and sacred is a moot point, as most likely all of us have had occasion to say a prayer at some point in time, insinuating the land may be holy and sacred to all of us.
Radical increases in costs, caused by un-timely, frivolous, and lengthy delays, have sent the finished cost into orbit.
It would be a travesty to arbitrarily divest of this pipeline at this point in time, especially considering about 80 per cent of the capacity has been negotiated and committed, based on the originally anticipated costs to build this project.
By the time the first barrel of oil flows through that pipeline, the cost will have been inflated to about five to six times the original estimates, almost all absorbed by Canadian taxpayers.
Every single revenue and royalty dollar collected should be dedicated to returning all that money to the taxpayers, long before selling any parts of it, as an essential part of reconciliation.
Andy Thomsen,
Kelowna, B.C.
