OTTAWA — The Parliamentary Budget Officer says the federal government is now at risk of losing money because of its investment in the Trans Mountain pipeline.
The last analysis shows that the net present value of the pipeline is negative $600 million, making it worth about $1.2 billion less than the PBO’s estimate as of December 2020.
Estimated construction costs for the pipeline have skyrocketed from $12.6 billion to $21.4 billion since the last report and the completion date has been pushed back a year to the end of 2023.
In 2019, a PBO report pegged the cost of the pipeline expansion at $3.6 billion and $4.6 billion.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer says if the government were to halt construction this month and cancel the project indefinitely, the government would have to write off more than $14 billion in assets.
The federal government purchased the pipeline and unfinished work to increase its capacity by twinning it, in August 2018 for $4.4 billion.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on June 22, 2022
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