This pipeline belongs in the cost-overrun hall of fame | Forexlive

In a sane world, a country would take a long look in the mirror after what happened with Canada’s Trans Mountain pipeline.

Just today, the Canadian government announced the pipeline will cost another $3.1 billion. Stop me if you’ve heard that one before. The original cost estimate for the pipeline in 2013 was $5.4 billion and we’re now up to six times that.

Thankfully, the pipeline is near completion but the mismanagement of this project is a stark reminder of the near-impossibility of building anything in Canada. For a country desperately short on housing and infrastructure, that’s a bad sign. Worse yet is that hardly anyone seems to be doing anything about it.

To be clear, this is a material amount of money and would represent 7.4% of total federal government revenue in FY23. It will slowly be recovered by tolls on the oil shipped through the pipeline but that’s an egregious example of shifting the burden of government waste to private balance sheets.

I find it increasingly difficult to remain optimistic about the Canadian dollar. There is a stark divergence opening up between the Canadian and US economies on the consumer side while US productivity improves and Canadian productivity stagnates.

1.45 anyone?