“Our government has newly approved the Trans Mountain pipeline going forward. The company plans to have shovels in the ground this construction season,” Trudeau told reporters, according to Global News. The Prime Minister added that all money earned from the pipeline will be invested in "clean energy projects."
He added that the pipeline would put Canada "in a stronger strategic position to create more good middle class jobs."
Canada will be less dependent on the United States and will have access to the growing Asian market as a result of the project, Trudeau added. The decision will boost the country’s energy workers who had suffered "far too long" while the project languished, the Canadian Prime Minister said.
The approval comes 10 months after the Federal Court of Appeal stopped the project and ordered the National Energy Board to redo its review of the pipeline, claiming that the original study was flawed and lacked adequate consultations with First Nations peoples, according to AP report.
The pipeline has been bought by the Canadian government from Texas-based Kinder Morgan infrastructure company last year as a way out of regulatory and political uncertainty that led the company to abandon the project.
If completed, the expansion would nearly triple the capacity of the pipeline that runs from Edmonton in the western oil-rich province of Alberta to Burnaby on British Columbia’s Pacific coast.
The pipeline faced protests from environmental activists and First Nation groups, while supporters of the project say it will create new jobs and there is less chance of spilling compare to transporting oil by tankers.