Privatizing Uncertainty and Socializing Risk: Indigenous Legal and Economic Leverage in the Federal Trans Mountain Buy-Out

[From Introduction]: “In an interview in early-September 2018 shortly after the federal buy-out of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project (TMEP), Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proclaimed that this project would be dead if it were not for the higher risk tolerance of the federal government compared to that of previous owner, Kinder Morgan, Inc. (KM). In other words, the federal government could guarantee completion where a private corporation had failed to make the project viable – perhaps even because the project no longer needed to be economically viable to succeed. This statement of the sitting Prime Minister is troubling for many reasons, central among which because he implies that governments have a higher risk tolerance vis-à-vis abrogating Aboriginal title and rights, when indeed they have a constitutional obligation to maintain them and the honour of the Crown. Opposition to the pipeline, led by First Nations and environmental groups, was after all one of the reasons KM cited for selling off this asset. International environmental, Indigenous, and human rights obligations apply directly to governments, so if anything, the government of Canada should commit to implementing higher standards than industry.”