Tag: philosophy

Seven years later, former finance minister Bill Morneau faces Trans Mountain referendum from future CEOs

This article was written by Andrew Willis and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 27, 2025.

Top: Bill Morneau speaks to MBA students at the University of Western Ontario during a class about managing strategic transformation on Wednesday.

As Alberta, British Columbia and Ottawa face off over a potential second pipeline to the Pacific coast, the politician who championed the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion held a referendum on the project with Western University business students.

Former federal finance minister Bill Morneau struggled to win votes for his government’s decision to have taxpayers take over what proved to be a nation-building piece of infrastructure, with a hefty $34billion price tag.

Last Wednesday, eight days before Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith were scheduled to announce a grand bargain on the country’s energy future in Calgary, Mr. Morneau took the stage before 75 students at the Ivey School of Business to revisit the high-pressure negotiations between former Trans Mountain owner Kinder Morgan Inc. and the two provinces in the spring of 2018.

It was riveting theatre. And a select group of MBA and undergrad students got to play a role.

By the time Mr. Morneau finished up, an audience of future business leaders had a sense of how tough it is to make perfect decisions with imperfect data. Potential CEOs realized every choice they make in their corporate careers will leave someone unhappy.

Ivey dean Julian Birkinshaw and lecturer Doug Murphy, former chief executive officer of Corus Entertainment Inc., lured Mr. Morneau to the London, Ont., campus as part of a course called Navigating Change – Lessons from CEOs Managing Strategic Transformation in Uncertain Times.

Earlier this fall, Bank of Montreal CEO Darryl White, Sleep Country Canada cofounder Christine Magee and six other executives also made the trip to Ivey to revisit key decisions.

While Mr. Morneau sat among the students, Dr. Birkinshaw and Mr. Murphy took the class through a Trans Mountain case study. The two professors started in 2012, when oil prices were soaring and Kinder Morgan announced plans to twin their original pipeline and nearly triple its capacity.

The Houston-based utility put a $5.4-billion price tag on the project. Expanding Trans Mountain enjoyed support from all the era’s political leaders: B.C. premier Christy Clark, Alberta’s Alison Redford and prime minister Stephen Harper.

By April, 2018, the landscape had changed completely. The pipeline’s cost had soared to $7.4-billion. The oil market was in a slump. B.C. had narrowly elected NDP premier John Horgan, who clung to power with support from the Green Party.

The province, along with Indigenous and environmental groups, were in court attempting to block Trans Mountain’s expansion.

On April 18, Kinder Morgan announced it had suspended all activity on Trans Mountain. CEO Steve Kean said the company would walk away from the project at the end of May, seven weeks later, unless all political and legal issues were resolved in its favour.

At this point, the professors asked a highly engaged class to sketch out Mr. Morneau’s options, as the face of the federal government. Within minutes, the students decided the minister had four potential choices:

Remove the risks to Kinder Morgan, or any other owner, with indemnities that transferred the cost of delays to the federal government.

Forge a partnership with domestic pipeline companies or funds such as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) to buy Trans Mountain.

Have the government buy the pipeline.

Walk away and let Kinder Morgan abandon the project.

Once the class worked through all possible alternatives, they took a vote on which option they would have picked. Before revealing the tally, here is how Mr. Morneau explained what happened in the real world, with candour and transparency seldom seen on Parliament Hill.

“Kinder Morgan gamed us,” Mr. Morneau said. He said face-toface talks with Mr. Kean showed the CEO had decided Trans Mountain no longer made economic sense and wanted out, no matter what Ottawa offered.

Politically, Mr. Morneau said the Canadian government could never give a Houston-based company indemnities on the project that could run to billions of dollars.

Practically, Mr. Morneau said the seven-week timeline dictated by Kinder Morgan meant there was little opportunity to find private-sector buyers. Mr. Morneau, a pension consultant prior to entering politics, explained the government respects the independence of public-sector funds such as CPPIB, and would never force a pension plan to invest in an asset with the uncertainty of Trans Mountain.

Walking away was also never an option. There was a strong business case for the project. In addition, the federal Liberals championed a carbon tax, an unpopular policy in Alberta. Mr. Morneau said expanding Trans Mountain balanced the impact of the new tax, “although it was never an easy quid pro quo for Albertans to accept.”

Albertans were already fuming over U.S. president Barack Obama’s 2015 decision to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline and Ottawa’s decision to block the Northern Gateway pipeline in 2016. Mr. Morneau said: “Abandoning Trans Mountain would have fed into the sense of political alienation in Alberta and fanned the flames of western separatism.”

In late May, two days before Kinder Morgan’s deadline, the federal government purchased Trans Mountain for $4.5-billion. The project ran into massive cost overruns during the COVID-19 pandemic. It opened in May, 2024, and has achieved its policy goals.

Expanding Trans Mountain shrank the gap between world oil prices and what Alberta producers receive, boosting revenues for both oil companies and provincial and federal governments, and lessened Canada’s dependence on exports to the United States.

How did the Ivey students vote? In the 75-person class, the vast majority opted for the government putting together some kind of public/private partnership, tapping pension-fund money. Twelve voted for giving Kinder Morgan some form of government indemnity. Two said Mr. Morneau should have abandoned the project.

Just seven business students supported the government’s decision to buy Trans Mountain.

As the class wound down, a student asked Mr. Morneau whether he had any advice for the current Prime Minister, as Mr. Carney negotiates with B.C. and Alberta politicians.

“I’m hugely supportive of what the federal government is doing, with initiatives like the Major Projects Office,” Mr. Morneau said. He said Mr. Carney has made speeding up the regulatory process a priority, a much-needed measure because “time is the enemy of deals.”

“There is a Canada-first mentality now that is different from when I was in office, so I am encouraged,” Mr. Morneau said. “There’s a better spirit in this country around nation-building projects.”

THE GROWTH of GREED

This opinion was written by Tim Wu and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 8, 2025.

Allegory of Avarice by Jacques de Gheyn II (1565 – 1629)

Tim Wu’s latest book is The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.

The 21st century – if you hadn’t noticed – has been a pretty rocky ride. We’ve already been through several economic crashes, a global pandemic and an affordability crisis, not to mention wars in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Nor is the political landscape much cause for joy: Of the democracies around in the 1990s, more than 25 have slid back to dictatorship or authoritarian semi-democracy, while China and Russia are once again ruled by autocrats. The United States every day looks more like the Roman Republic near its end, run by a President openly seeking Caesar’s perpetual dictatorship with even less deference to the Senate.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Back in the ’90s and ’00s many were looking to the 21st century with a broad sense of optimism. The coming age of perpetual good vibes was captured by Francis Fukuyama’s famous 1992 claim that we were witnessing not just “the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such.” We’d figured it all out: everyone would enjoy peace, prosperity and democratic government forevermore. The “third way” described by Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Canada’s Paul Martin seemed to mix the best parts of capitalism and socialism into one happy 1990s cocktail.

Unfortunately, as we all know, things did not go according to plan. The promised prosperity for all turned into an accumulation of wealth at the top and hard times for many more, breeding deep resentment even in wealthy countries and worse political instability elsewhere. In poorer parts of the world, economic despair yielded mass migrations, feeding a rise in xenophobic populism.

Can we, nonetheless, regain some of that lost optimism? Can we find a way that offers hope for our collective future, beyond resisting authoritarian takeover?

We can, but not without squarely facing the most pernicious development that governments of the ’90s and ’00s failed to prevent: the spread of extractive business models and monopoly across much of the world’s economy. The age of extraction is upon us, and we cannot progress without overcoming it.

What precisely is meant by the term “extraction”? It refers, technically, to the taking of wealth far in excess of the value provided by goods and services. It is the experience of paying an outrageous price for a last-minute airline ticket, paying huge rent for a tiny apartment or working for low wages at a highly profitable corporation. It is sellers on Amazon paying over US$57-billion a year to show up in the “sponsored results,” a new example of valueless extraction. It is the unrestrained exertion of economic power, and as it has spread, it has become the curse of our age.

Consider the story of the internet economy, a clear example of where things went wrong over the past 25 years. In 2000, it was widely assumed that this new and marvellous technology was going to make everyone rich and spread democracy to every country on Earth. At a minimum, it was going to be the rising tide that floated all boats. Part of that was thanks to a magical invention called “the platform” – the neutral host that would help everyone run their own businesses or help creators find their audiences. “Here comes everybody” was how pundit Clay Shirky put it back in 2008.

No one will deny that the platforms are incredibly useful and convenient. And there have been those who, over the past 25 years, have managed to convert their hobby into a successful business or at least record some fun videos. But by and large the winners of the platform age were the tech platforms themselves. The platforms that were originally meant to host and catalyze the economy became engines of extraction on a scale and with an efficiency never seen before – not just of money, but also data and precious time and attention.

But the extraction economy is not limited to the internet. Across industries, businesses now follow the same playbook. If the old idea was to make a great product and sell it, the new idea is to find a position of power over your consumers or others in the chain and exploit it to the maximum extent possible. It works best in industries like housing, telecommunications, pharmaceutical drugs and other essentials, but the approach is everywhere.

The rise of these business models yielding sustained corporate profitability and private wealth accumulation has revealed the great hole in the “third-way” thinking of the 1990s and 2000s. The good part of that approach was the provision of social safety nets – something Canada still does better than most. But the bad part was the idea of blindly allowing some firms and individuals to accumulate unseemly profits and wealth, based on the premise that taxation could fix inequality later. You might call it the “tax later” fallacy.

We would never allow private toll bridges nor electric utilities to charge any price or discriminate between customers. That same spirit needs to animate a new age of limits to private power.

Using an economic metaphor that transfixed a generation, many said it would be better to grow the pie first and redistribute it later. That metaphor was irresistible, as it relieved politicians of any guilt associated with allowing the unrestrained growth of a new billionaire class. But the pie was never cut, and the redistribution never came. The reason was simple: Those who accumulate wealth and economic power rarely give it up willingly. Given that wealth yields political power, the more accumulation, the less likely redistribution becomes.

By the 2010s, it had became obvious that many of world’s economies had become unfair and top-heavy. When I worked in the Obama White House, our economists first began taking the inequality problem seriously in 2015 or so, just as one might notice a hole in the ozone layer.

All this may sound dispiriting, but understanding where the third way went wrong is key to our future. It makes clear that good intentions are not enough. We need greater structural limits on the extractive power of essential businesses – to allow others to thrive. What is needed can best be termed an architecture of equality.

The tech platforms provide a good test case. While providing undeniably useful services, they are taking too much from the rest of the economy. Legislation should prevent discrimination and self-preferencing, and put a price on data extraction – and in some cases cap excessive fees. The idea is not just consumer protection, but also to provide incentives for other businesses, including Canadian businesses, to make a better return. Less take by the platforms will incentive investments by local business with greater confidence that they shall reap what they sow.

But the problem is not limited to tech. Every industry haunted by extractive monopoly needs countermeasures to prevent an unlimited take. We would never allow private toll bridges nor electric utilities to charge any price or discriminate between customers. That same spirit needs to animate a new age of limits to private power.

Voters everywhere – not just in New York – feel the affordability crisis and feel the economy is unfair. Yet there remain some in Canada, Great Britain and the United States who think the old Clinton/Blair/Martin approach still works fine. They would tolerate monopolistic accumulation of wealth and hopefully, one day, redistribute that money. Unfortunately, the past 25 years have shown that approach to be a failure that risks fuelling the rise of populist dictatorship.

The 2012 classic How Nations Fail correctly predicted that extraction by a wealthy elite is a path to downfall and dictatorship. That’s why a government devoted to the long-term prosperity of its people must limit and balance economic power, in an equivalent to political checks and balances. By doing so, we can offer hope and prosperity to a new generation that would like a fair chance at being at least as well-off as their parents.

Did the White House just side with Canada in a treaty dispute?

This opinion was written by Lawrence Herman and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 9, 2025.

Enbridge’s Mackinaw facility services the company’s existing underwater Line 5 pipeline. Line 5 has been a bilateral problem for years because of Michigan’s concerns about the safety of the pipeline running under the Mackinac Strait.

Legal move in regard to the Enbridge Line 5 debate could bode well for the USMCA

International lawyer with Herman & Associates and a senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute

We have become inured to the disdain of the Trump White House for international treaties and agreements as it wages trade wars against the world. Tariffs have been applied willy-nilly, contrary to fundamental rules of the World Trade Organization, resulting in global chaos and supply chain unpredictability as we try to figure out the latest twists and turns in U.S. trade policy.

Yet, late last month, something happened that seems peculiarly at odds with all this. In a formal legal document, the Trump administration actually accepted its treaty obligations toward Canada. It happened in the Line 5 pipeline dispute, a case that’s been raging for years between Enbridge Inc. and the State of Michigan, and one that carries huge economic significance for Canada. There is at least some prospect that Mr. Trump’s newfound respect for international law could carry over into the renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), set to begin next year.

Line 5 has been a huge bilateral problem for years because of Michigan’s concerns about the safety of the pipeline running under the Mackinac Strait. It came to a head in 2020 when Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced her intention to revoke Enbridge’s 1953 easement for the pipeline under the strait, citing Enbridge’s “persistent and incurable violations of the easement’s terms and conditions” related to safety and maintenance.

Blocking Line 5 would have untold economic consequences for Canada, as the pipeline transports almost all the oil and gas sent from Alberta to Eastern Canada. It also delivers product to many parts of the American Midwest.

Enbridge filed a lawsuit against Michigan, arguing that the state has no basis for cancelling the easement, underscoring that the company has gone above and beyond taking all necessary steps to secure the line against leakage. It launched a replacement line project years back, approved by the Michigan Public Services Commission and the Michigan appeals court. But then the Whitmer government refused final approval on environmental grounds.

While there are many legal technicalities involved, when it comes down to it, the central factor in the dispute is the 1977 Canada-United States Pipelines Treaty. It guarantees unimpeded pipeline transit from Alberta to Ontario through the U.S. and was ratified by the U.S. government after getting Senate approval.

The treaty was originally pushed in the 1970s by the U.S. government itself because it wanted assurances of unimpeded oil transit from Alaska, along a possible route to a U.S. port through Canada without interference from British Columbia.

Supporting Enbridge in its case against Michigan, the Canadian government filed an intervenor brief in court arguing that the 1977 treaty is binding on the U.S. and overrides Michigan’s attempts at interference. Where was the U.S. federal government in all this?

The Biden administration kept on the sidelines to placate various American political interests. But, last month, confounding all predictions, the Trump administration stepped in and, in doing so, underscored the legally binding force of the pipeline treaty.

In its 33-page submission to the U.S. District Court on Sept. 19, the Justice Department said Michigan is attempting to override federal authority on interstate pipeline regulation and in foreign affairs because the U.S. is subject to its legal obligations under the 1977 treaty.

The federal submission directly confirms American obligations under the 1977 treaty, stating that the U.S. could be exposed to liability if found in breach of the treaty, and that therefore, there is a “significant public interest” in avoiding a bilateral dispute with Canada over Michigan’s conduct.

Given Donald Trump’s record, it still is hard to believe this has anything to do with some latediscovered respect for international law or for ratified American treaties. Rather, this seems to be more about MAGA politics and Mr. Trump’s attacks on Democratic governors around the country. Perhaps as significant is the influence of big oil.

Even so, one cannot dismiss the fact that the Trump administration has recognized in a legal filing that the U.S. is bound by a treaty with Canada. Without being naive, maybe this position could have some spillover effect on the USMCA negotiations.

While it is risky to overstate this or find solace in some newly expressed support for international agreements, the fact that the White House has stated in a court filing that the U.S. is treatybound cannot be totally discounted.

It offers Canada at least some political leverage in dealing with an unpredictable adversary in the impeding USMCA battles. It may be modest leverage – but with this White House crowd, every bit helps.

Wab Kinew’s development dreams threaten our people’s way of life

This opinion was written by Clayton Thomas-Muller, member of the Mathais Colomb Cree Nation and the author of Life in the City of Dirty Water – A Memoir Of Healing, and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 5, 2025.

I respect Wabanakwut Kinew and the Manitoba NDP government that he has formed; they are light years ahead of any other provincial or territorial governments in these lands they call Canada. I understand the political game. It is, however, still jarring and triggering to hear a Neechi (fellow Indigenous person), one I grew up with, promoting an energy and trade corridor to a new port in Hudson Bay during the climate crisis, as the Premier did recently.

This came at a moment when so many Indigenous peoples and Northern community members had been evacuated owing to climate-change exacerbated fires. It’s staggering to see Mr. Kinew’s openness to entertain the critical mineral and energy resource export dreams of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and those showcased in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Bill C-5 – initiatives that violate our climate as well as our inherent and treaty rights as Indigenous peoples.

Northern peoples and our way of life are on the chopping block in the current economic conversation between the provinces, territories and the federal government. I’ve heard talk of a northern train line proposal and an LNG export facility, which would require massive infrastructure on the Hudson Bay coast. LNG super tankers are huge – the scale of what we’re talking about in terms of exporting gas, critical minerals and potentially tar sands and conventional oil out of Hudson Bay is truly science fiction.

If new transportation corridors are opened up – one being explored is the First Nations-led NeeStaNan project to Nelson Bay – they could potentially accommodate timber, critical minerals and oil, leading to a massive increase in pressure on First Nations and northern municipalities to engage in extraction on an enormous scale. After, we could expect a proposal for an LNG facility, oil sands and conventional oil pipelines, as well as a line to bring condensate, a petroleum byproduct, to Hudson Bay. Let us not forget that oil from the tar sands can sink once exposed to water in a river or lake, in this case, right in the middle of the Beluga sanctuary in Hudson Bay.

Unlike conventional oil that floats on the top of water, bitumen is heavy, and depending on other factors, it can sink. There is no way to remove or clean it; if it settles on the bottom of the body of water, it can harden and contaminate the ecosystem forever.

We need to mobilize to protest these carbon-intensive proposals and false climate solutions that Mr. Kinew is proposing, along with increased military spending that he has said could be used to boost military bases in Manitoba. It is dangerous for our Premier to be echoing the rhetoric coming out of Alberta and Ontario during the era of the climate crisis. It is also extremely insensitive to be talking about pipelines being built across the permafrost of the North and trade corridors to Churchill at the same time as 21,000 climate refugees from Manitoba have registered as evacuees with the Red Cross.

We should be increasing funding for our Northern firefighters program, purchasing more water bombers and other life-saving equipment, and boosting training. We need to make Northern communities climatesafe by rebuilding highways and other infrastructure and upgrading and constructing airports. We should be responding to the climate crisis at scale, making economic decisions centred on the 94 calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and climate science, and not locking Manitoba and Canada into another 100 years of fossil fuel dependency and violent, unpredictable climate weather events.

While Mr. Kinew has ended the state of emergency here in Manitoba, I have heard from fellow members of my First Nation, Pukatawagan, who say they may not be able to return home until as late as November. This is the second time my nation has been evacuated in three years owing to climate-fuelled fires. The situation demonstrates how violent and unpredictable climate-related weather events are – how they are increasing and affecting Indigenous peoples more – and this government is talking about pipelines.

This critical minerals renaissance sellout by our Premier is not unique to our sacred lands here in Manitoba – it is happening across the country. This is high carbon intensity, water destroying and food security-disrupting extractivism. Indigenous peoples are on the front line of it all, disproportionately affected. We are also on the front line of the policing apparatus and criminalization aimed at our people and peaceful communities when we stand up as land defenders and water protectors, as we have seen in land disputes across the country, such as in Elsipogtog, N.B., and more recently in B.C., with the Wet’suwet’en. We must expose any special interests trying to profit from this current ecological and economic crisis.

Manitoba must stand up. Labour and all social movement sectors need to talk across silos, taking a hard look at this current reality that we’re facing, and making plans about what to do. We cannot let the shock economics of our biggest trading partner, the U.S., set the stage to allow the neoliberal hawks of Canada to fast-track all kinds of excessive military spending and outdated dirty energy and critical minerals infrastructure at the request of the fossil fuel sector, the banks that finance them and U.S. President Donald Trump.

We need social movements to stand up like never before to protect the public, defend the commons, and to fight against the commodification of life, the privatization of our ecosystem, and the turning of the atmosphere into a dump for large corporations. We need to start making the connections between climate justice and colonization; between reparations and truth and reconciliation, because these things are all inextricably linked.

This critical minerals renaissance sellout by our Premier is not unique to our sacred lands here in Manitoba – it is happening across the country. This is high carbon intensity, water destroying and food security-disrupting extractivism.