The Trudeau legacy: “Sunny ways” in a smoky haze

This article originally appeared in The Hill Times on January 20th, 2025.

 

Following soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation announcement, there’s been a lot of discussion about what his legacy will be.

Some people argue that his legacy will be defined by what he didn’t accomplish, which was electoral reform, but I have a different take. It’s about a Justin Trudeau legacy which not only impacts Canadians and Canada, but will continue to impact humanity across the globe for generations to come. 

The Trans Mountain Pipeline System Expansion Project, also known as TMX, or as the most ill-conceived, short-sighted, environmentally and socially catastrophic failure in national economics and diplomacy. Purchased by the government under Trudeau, this project will be remembered to be as confusing as Trudeau’s wardrobe in India, and much more costly to the taxpayer than his relationships with SNC Lavalin and WE Charity.

From the outset, the TMX pipeline, originally owned by Houston-based energy infrastructure company Kinder Morgan, was under siege on all sides for its scientifically proven negative climatic and environmental impacts, its failure to respect Indigenous lands, and its dubious economic benefits for Canada. 

So what do you do if you go to the grocery store and see produce which is way past its sell-by date and doesn’t meet expert-defined health standards? Well, apparently, you buy it and bring it home, to the tune of $4.5 billion.

Part of the reasoning behind the Liberal government buying the TMX project was that it would unify the country behind a magnificent national project – like the CP Transcontinental Railway did during Canada’s formative years. It was also meant to build closer ties between the provinces, particularly Ontario, Alberta, and B.C. For Alberta, the intention was a quid pro quo of buying the project to get the province on board with a carbon tax. All these good intentions – national unity, aligning the provinces, and putting a price on pollution – fell firmly under the Liberal Party’s philosophy of “sunny ways”… And all these good intentions face-planted spectacularly.

From the outset, multiple Indigenous Nations resisted the TMX pipeline, turning the RCMP into the fossil fuel industry’s de-facto private security force which was wielded to crush peaceful protest. The government of B.C. wanted nothing to do with it, and Alberta went conservative, refused the carbon tax, and ended up being even more hostile towards Ottawa. Meanwhile, the Feds themselves acknowledged that TMX would be a net loss for the Government economically. Ultimately, Canadian taxpayers ended up being on the hook for $40 billion for a pipeline that the government can’t find a buyer for.

So instead of leaving us with a legacy of a safer future or cleaner economy, Justin Trudeau stuck Canadians with the bill for a pipeline that carries so much debt that it can’t be sold, a driving force of climatic collapse, a renewed broken trust with Indigenous People, and undermined his own attempts at a carbon tax. Now that is a legacy.

You could say that the pipeline is moving tar sands oil to the places it intended, but with peak demand for oil estimated to be reached in five years, that’s a lot of oil that nobody wants to buy. Either way, with increasing floods sweeping away people’s homes, droughts impacting agriculture, and forest fires burning hotter, more widely and more frequently – those Liberal “sunny ways” become obscured by wildfire smoke. 

The pipeline also doubles down on Canada being a global trafficker in climate-harming emissions as the same domestic unnatural disasters are increased across the globe to devastating and deadly effect. Which is why TMX is a perfect example of how Trudeau’s “sunny ways” compromises actually undermined the larger policy goals of his government while at the same time making enemies on all sides of the political spectrum.  

The lessons here are clear: Never again can we be fooled when the Premier of Alberta demands just one more pipeline. And never again can any Prime Minister of any political stripe be allowed to give the nation’s credit card to the Big Oil corporations.   

Any new PM needs to demonstrate scientific and economic literacy and end fossil fuel subsidies which includes investing in expensive, unproven technology like the Pathways Alliance’s pipe dream of carbon capture, an even larger boondoggle than Trudeau’s pipeline mistake.

It’s up to us as voters and taxpayers to make sure sunny ways are here to stay by ensuring not one more loonie is given to an enormously wealthy industry that is putting all of our futures’ at risk.