Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr says he knew almost the moment he heard Kinder Morgan was pressing the pause button on the Trans Mountain pipelineexpansion on April 8 that the federal government was likely going to have to buy the whole thing.
Although the final decision to purchase took more than seven weeks of secret negotiations with the company — many of which even Carr was not in on as they were handled by Finance Minister Bill Morneau and a very small team of finance officials — Carr says when he got a phone call in his hotel room during a business trip to New York City he knew what the final outcome was likely to be.
“When that phone call came, I knew that there was a reasonable chance that they would pull out and at the same time there was a possibility Canada would step in,” Carr said.
Carr says he wasn’t really expecting the April announcement that Kinder Morgan was halting all non-essential spending on the project pending proof from the federal government the political risks to the project had been erased. However, he was well aware Kinder Morgan was getting “skittish” because of the B.C. government’s threats to stop the pipeline.