Churchill residents stew as Ottawa shells out for pipeline

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This article was published 28/05/2018 (2306 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — As the federal Liberals crack open the piggy bank to salvage the planned Trans Mountain pipeline extension, Churchill residents wonder why Ottawa won’t take over their rail link for a fraction of the cost.

“What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander,” said Joe Stover, a former port worker who lives in the northern Manitoba town on the shore of Hudson Bay. “It’s all about what’s in the national interest.”

On Tuesday morning, Ottawa announced it would put up $4.5 billion to take ownership of the Trans Mountain pipeline, after political pushback from British Columbia made Kinder Morgan’s Texas-based owners wary of proceeding with the expansion.

Ottawa plans to later sell the pipeline, believing it will have worthwhile economic spinoffs. (Trans Mountain carries oil to the west coast of B.C. from Alberta.)

Stover said the government’s logic suggests it ought to take over the Hudson Bay Railway (which washed-out last May, severing Churchill’s only overland link) from Omnitrax, a Denver-based company, which owns both the rail line and the Port of Churchill, which it mothballed in 2016.

That’s when Stover lost his job. He said a temporary Crown corporation like the one promised Tuesday for the pipeline would shore up the northern town, “just to get the assets back on their feet, and then slip the assets to those who are best to run it,” he proposed.

“I don’t think people are wanting it to be a taxpayer-funded thing forever and ever.”

NDP MP Niki Ashton, who represents northern Manitoba, has asked for Ottawa to nationalize both assets since the 2016 port layoffs, hosted a news conference Tuesday on Parliament Hill, alongside Stover.

“We’ve been calling for the government to stand up for the North and take over strategic assets, and instead they’re subsidizing an American oil company,” she said, fearing the pipeline will end up in a quagmire similar to the one facing Churchill.

“It’s short-sighted; to me, it’s incompetent,” said Ashton. “Churchill is dying as a community, so to see this action today is a slap in the face.”

Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said Ottawa’s focused on ongoing talks aimed at transferring both the rail line and shuttered port into local hands through a business venture.

“The people of Churchill know that the government of Canada is committed to them — both in the short term, to ensure they have the transportation links they need, and in the long term, so that Churchill is a very important part of an Arctic strategy for Canada.”

Patricia Kandiurin, a town worker in Churchill, said it rings hollow.

“Could’ve fooled us,” she said, flatly. “Maybe it would be different if we were Kinder Morgan.”

Stover said residents are getting weary of shifting developments in the Churchill saga, which Ashton described as “chaos.”

On Tuesday, the Free Press reported Omnitrax told the federal transport regulator it doesn’t actually own the damaged railway. Earlier this month, a Calgary-based group called iChurchill went public with its bid to take over both assets, before pulling out three weeks later.

“I think it got a lot of people’s hopes up. So people were, unsurprisingly, not too happy when that stuff kind of fell to the wayside,” Stover said.

Kandiurin put it more bluntly.

“We’re forgotten. We’re angry, still,” she said, pausing. “Ignored.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca