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“I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.” ~~ John G. Diefenbaker

GLOBAL NEWS: The feds bought a pipeline for $5B. How did the cost balloon to over $30B?

 Construction on the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2022 cost almost $9 billion, almost double the estimate of $5.3 billion, a Global News analysis has discovered.

 

The expenditure for the Crown corporation expansion, found through a detailed reading of filings that included corporate plan summaries and projections, is one of several line items that reveal how a project purchased by Ottawa exceeded its original cost estimate by a factor of six, from $5.4 billion to $30.9 billion.

 

The most telling details pertain to “uncapped” costs, a catch-all term pipeline companies use to describe expenditures that are more difficult to plan for in advance or that are subject to price swings. Accommodations with Indigenous groups and the cost of steel are two examples.

 

Another is the construction through B.C.’s treacherous mountains and down to the coast. The ‘uncapped’ costs for this stretch ballooned from an initial estimate of $315 million in 2017 to $7.4 billion upon project completion, a 23-fold increase.

 

This information is provided in an appendix to Trans Mountain’s latest update on tolls it plans to charge shippers, submitted to the Canada Energy Regulator in June. The documents are publicly available ...


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