David Anderson, who served 10 years in the cabinets of prime ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, sent letters to six members of Trudeau's cabinet this week asking them to dismiss the pipeline proposal.
Anderson holds a law degree and served eight of his 10 years in cabinet as the senior federal minister for British Columbia. While he was environment minister in 2002, Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. He is now an honorary director of West Coast Environmental Law and has previously spoken out against the Trans Mountain project.
Anderson wrote that Asian refineries have better supply options than Alberta. Compared with conventional light and medium crude oil from Nigeria and the Middle East, Alberta bitumen is expensive to produce, hard to handle and provides no security of supply advantages, he said. Canada's two major competitors are Venezuela and Mexico and they've faced the same low demand and low prices that have eroded the value of Alberta bitumen, he added.
Trans Mountain Corp. has said the expansion will inject $7.4 billion into Canada's economy, boost federal and provincial tax coffers by $46.7 billion and increase revenues for producers by $73.5 billion over 20 years. "The only question around the economics of the pipeline that matters is will there be barrels shipped in it, not where those barrels go. That will potentially even change from one year to the next," he said, adding the United States and British Columbia are other possible markets.
What is wrong with these guys on the left coast?