10 things to know about Alberta’s Keystone XL announcement

You’ve probably seen the announcement by this point that the Alberta government is spending $1.5 billion on the Keystone XL pipeline.

Here are 10 things you should realize about it.

1. The $1.5 billion the Alberta government is using to buy shares in the company is only part of the package. There’s also a $6 billion loan guarantee. That’s a total of $7.5 billion if the pipeline doesn’t end up getting built with oil prices at record lows.

2. For comparison, the Trudeau government spent $4.5 billion on the Trans Mountain Pipeline. And they own it.

3. This pipeline is supposed to create 1400 direct jobs in Alberta, as well as 5400 indirect jobs. That’s 6800 jobs.

4. Alberta lost over 50,000 full-time jobs between July 2019 and February 2020.

5. The Alberta government laid off 25,000 education staff just this past Saturday.

6. The Alberta government is taking on potentially $7.5 billion in debt to create 6800 jobs. That’s $1,102,941.18 per job. Their Saturday education layoff notice was to save $128 million. That’s $5,120 per job.

7. For $7.5 billion, the Alberta government could’ve hired 1,464,843 people at the rate they were paying the 25,000 they just laid off. Even if you don’t factor in the loan guarantee, that’s still 292,969 jobs.

8. TC Energy, the company building Keystone XL, made $32,000,000.00 last year from the corporate tax cut introduced in July.

9. Alberta doctors are having their funding cut by 25% tomorrow, when the new budget comes into effect. In the middle of a pandemic.

10. Jason Kenny doesn’t actually care about jobs.

Originally published at siever.ca/kim on March 31, 2020.