Canada Just Burned $20 BILLION… And They’re Celebrating

Have you ever wondered why an

announcement of a pipeline completion

approval could just go from right at the

top today's biggest headline to nearly a

page 12? Well, it's usually the data

behind it. See, we need to ask

ourselves, how much does a government

delay cost? Not in theory, not in

politics, but in real dollars today.

Because on Friday, Ottawa stood up and

told Canadians something very

interesting about the Nbridge pipeline.

Now, one, it's a natural gas pipeline

and they have approved that pipeline. It

is a 4 billion pipeline and they want

you to believe that that's somehow some

type of show of leadership despite this

pipeline being ready to go in 2022. They

want to show you that it's somehow

progress for Mark Carney and his Liberal

government, that they've somehow

established momentum. But what if I told

you that that same project used to cost

hundreds of millions, if not a billion

less than it will cost to do today when

the shovels hit the ground in July. And

all that's changed was time. No redesign

of the project, no expansion, no new

scope to the whole thing. just simply

the fact that it took from 2022 to 2026

to get approved. And today, we're going

to not let them get away with that.

We're going to prove something that

should honestly make every single one of

you stop and think about what this

Liberal government is doing to our

economy. Canada is just too slow to

build. And Canada is making itself far

poorer by choice. So, let's tap into the

truth.

Welcome to Bakes on Things.

>> Welcome back to Tap to Maple here on

your Sunday edition. Happy Sunday,

everybody. Grab six, seven coffees. I

don't care what it is. Let's do this

today together. Here's the headline.

Don't forget to like, subscribe, and

join the conversation. By the way, the

federal government just approved the

Sunrise expansion. Yay. Let's launch

fireworks. a natural gas pipeline

project in British Columbia led by

Enbridge tied into the West Coast system

and directly feeding LG export growth

through projects like wood fiber LNG and

the messaging around all of that energy

superpower jobs created security for the

country opportunity knocks all great

words the same words in fact that we

heard in 2022 when the project was first

put up for approval but here's what

they're also not telling you this

project didn't just show up last week,

did it? It didn't start here in 2026. It

didn't even start in 2025. In fact, this

project has been in planning,

engineering, consultation, and more

since actually before it was put up for

approval. So, that's 2020 and 2021,

meaning by industry standards, this

thing's been ready to go for a long

time. They don't want you asking

questions about that or pointing that

out. Hence down to page three. Now let's

see why it went even further down. Well,

because it's not conceptual. It wasn't a

theoretical project. It was ready to go.

And yet here we are just giving it now

the approval it deserves in 2026

post a giant surge of inflation. So,

when we think about the construction,

which is scheduled to begin here in the

summer of 2026, again, there's a reason

they're not launching fireworks, because

here's the question. If it was ready

years ago, why are we only approving

this project now with no major changes

to the project since four years ago? And

more importantly, what did that delay

cost us? Or what it is is it about to

cost us. So, let's walk through all of

this in good time so that everybody

understands this, including the

Liberati, because this is where

Canadians get misled very often by this

Liberal government, and it's time to

hear the truth. When you hear that this

is a $4 billion project, you assume

that's just what it costs to produce.

But that's not how this infrastructure

that are that is like this works. Costs

evolve over time. There is time value to

money. And in Canada, they don't just

evolve, they explode because of our

inflation rates over the last half

decade. Because between 2022 and today,

construction costs have been rising

roughly 5% per year, then another 5%,

then 4% in 2024, then 3% in 2025. And

while that's declining over time, it

compounds on itself. So that is about an

18% increase in what it costs today to

build this pipeline versus if we had

approved it in 2022. So let's rewind. If

Sunrise had been approved in 2022 and

that summer shovels went in the ground,

it would likely have cost us 3.3 billion

to 3.5 billion in the end. Instead, we

are going to pay well over 4 billion for

this project to actually be built. Now,

that is roughly $500 million to

potentially 700 million to potentially

an extra billion gone. No new pipeline

yet, no added capacity, no upgrades,

none of that stuff is costing us more.

It's just that the base project itself,

the waiting has cost us more. That's

where that price tag comes in. So, let

me make that real for you right now.

Let's let's take a look at some of the

real picture associated with those

calculations. $700 million is hospitals.

It's infrastructure. It's tax relief.

All burned, burned, burned, burned, gone

on the bonfire. Hope you went camping

because and can roast marshmallows cuz

you burned all the money because we

couldn't do this in less time. That's

the whole reason. Now, if Sunrise was

the only example of our mistakes made

here, then, you know, maybe you let this

one pass, maybe you say, "Okay, well,

stuff happens. Things got behind. It's a

construction project after all. I've

done renovations and they've gotten

behind." But it's not the first time.

It's not the only time. And it's a list

of many. So, if we zoom out to things

like Trans Mountain expansion, which

started at 5.4 billion, do you want to

know what that should be now? If Trans

Mountain expansion is built and

completed at this point, over 34

billion, from just over five billion to

over 34 billion. And that's not entirely

inflation, of course. That's not even

complexity itself that's causing that.

That's a $28 billion failure to execute

on the project. Coastal Gas Link, it had

an original price tag of $6.6

billion. What do you think that price

tag is now? Take a guess.

14.5 billion.

14.5

billion. Another $7.9 billion increase.

Wood fiber LNG the one that this is

meant to feed even here tied directly to

Sunrise. Enbridge originally had

expected that that particular project to

cost $1.5 billion dollar

now closer to $2.9 billion. All of this

extra spending

almost not almost double in that case

not related to the project's pieces at

all. It's related to the waiting. So

stop and think about this. Just these

projects alone, when added together,

have over $38 billion in cost increases

related simply to time. Not a rounding

error, not some sort of coincidence.

That's a system. It's our broken system.

And the delay costs you. That's $ 38

billion on your back now. Because had we

approved these things four years

earlier, the $ 38 billion would not have

existed. So, here's where this gets even

more dangerous. Because people hear

those numbers and they think, "Well,

yeah, things get more expensive over

time. It's just the government. It's

just what the government does. Oh, it's

the government. Don't worry about it."

No, no, no, no, no, no. This is why your

taxes go up. This is why your fuel taxes

go up. This is why carbon taxes are

introduced. None of that is what's

happening. What's happening is something

I call the delay tax. In fact, that's

exactly what this is. It works like

this. Every single year you delay one of