In today’s Morning Brief, we look at what the ruling on the Trans Mountain project means for Justin Trudeau, Alberta and the Indigenous groups that oppose it. We also look at Nancy Pelosi’s reaction to U.S. President Donald Trump’s state of the union and a quarantined cruise ship off the coast of Japan that has some 251 Canadians on board.
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What the Trans Mountain ruling means for Trudeau
Yesterday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau got the ruling he wanted on the much-delayed Trans Mountain project. The Federal Court of Appeal ruled unanimously that Ottawa had fulfilled its duty to consult meaningfully with a handful of First Nations opposed to the project, clearing a major hurdle in the drawn-out battle to build a second line to carry bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands to Burnaby on the B.C. coast.
The decision appeared to bring a sense of relief to the federal government. Ottawa spent nearly $4.7 billion in 2018 to buy TMX — which doesn’t include construction costs or any overruns the project has incurred — in a last-ditch effort to ensure the pipeline would be built after its owner, Kinder Morgan, announced plans to step away. It’s also a win for Trudeau in Alberta, whose Liberals were shut out in the province during the last federal election, as Premier Jason Kenney even gave a shout-out to the prime minister in a speech.
But it’s a loss in many of the Indigenous communities where the government has struggled to make progress. “Reconciliation stopped today,” said Reuben George of the Tsleil-Waututh, one of the four Indigenous groups behind the court challenge. The groups could appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada, and the disappointment could make Ottawa’s efforts to settle land claims and pursue other energy projects even more difficult.
Ultimately, the Trans Mountain project has become much more than an infrastructure initiative, writes CBC’s Chris Hall. The responses to the ruling highlight the difficulties governments face in trying to reconcile so many competing interests. And however much ground the Trudeau government has won in the field of Ottawa-Alberta relations, it still likely faces a rematch with Indigenous communities involved in this case, and the potential for more legal challenges to come. Read more on the ramifications of the ruling here.
In brief
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