To the editor:
Many prime ministers have invested in industry.
Present day prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has now purchased the Kinder Morgan pipeline on behalf of the Canadian taxpayers.
This is nothing new, as previous Canadian prime ministers have also invested taxpayer dollars into private companies. Back in 1880, then prime minister of Canada, Sir John A MacDonald saw it as very important that Canada have a railroad from Eastern Canada to Western Canada. To accomplish this, he gave the Canadian Pacific Railway $25 million for the CPR to build the railway. That is $625 million in today’s dollars. In 1976, then prime minister Pierre Trudeau did the same as his son, Justin, just did with Kinder Morgan. He purchased Petro Canada for $1.5 billion on the intention to eventually sell it back to private ownership, which he did, netting the Canadian taxpayers $3.2 billion on the sale of Petro Canada.
The ironic thing here is that Trudeau had a minority government, and this decision was done with the backing of the federal NDP, the exact opposite to what NDP premier John Horgan is doing in B.C.
In 1990, then prime minister Brian Mulroney, saw it as an advantage to Canada, and he invested $3.8 billion in the oil field in the offshore North Atlantic ocean off the coast of Newfoundland. In 2012, then prime minster, Stephen Harper also invested $2.7 billion into the Canadian auto industry.
All of these prime ministers in their decision making protected the economy of the country and maintained that all the workers remained on the job collecting paycheques. If these decisions were never made by these prime ministers, just look at the amount of Canadian taxpayers that would no longer be receiving a paycheque, because their jobs would have disappeared without these taxpayer dollars investments.
Notice that protestors against the Kinder Morgan purchase, never mention what are the job alternatives if there was no Kinder Morgan, which includes B.C. premier John Horgan.
Joe Sawchuk
Duncan