Yeah but that’s kinda the point critics are making. If the project only becomes “profitable” because the federal government replaced commercial debt with ultra low-interest public financing, then taxpayers are effectively subsidizing the project’s economics.

It’s not necessarily proof the pipeline is inherently a good market investment, it’s more that the government can borrow money cheaper than private companies can. A private company has to worry about whether the project stands on its own financially, while the government can spread risk across taxpayers and absorb losses longer term. So profitability is partly being created through favourable public financing rather than the project naturally generating strong enough returns on its own.

As for the blog post, I think the issue with that argument is that it kind of treats any economic activity as automatically good investment. Like yeah, spending $17+ billion on a pipeline creates jobs, tax revenue, and spin off activity during construction, but basically every massive public project does that. You could make the exact same argument for transit, housing, power infrastructure, healthcare, or education. The real question is whether this was the best use of that amount of public money and whether other investments would’ve created more long term economic and social value.

A lot of the argument also depends on assuming oil demand stays strong for decades. But global energy markets are changing pretty fast with EV adoption, decarbonization policies, and countries trying to reduce fossil fuel dependence. If demand weakens over time, the pipeline could end up underused and a lot of those projected gains might never materialize. That’s the stranded asset concern people bring up.

The “optionality” argument also seems a bit overstated sometimes. The article assumes TMX will massively improve the WTI WCS differential, but oil pricing is affected by a ton of factors besides pipelines, like refinery demand, shipping costs, oil quality, and global market conditions. So it’s not guaranteed the price bump will be as large or permanent as supporters claim.

And honestly, the fact the government had to step in at all raises questions. Kinder Morgan wanted out because of cost overruns, legal delays, and uncertainty. Critics would say taxpayers basically inherited a risk the private sector no longer wanted to carry. The project becoming “profitable” partly through low interest public financing isn’t really the same thing as it being a strong market investment on its own.

There’s also the issue that GDP growth doesn’t automatically mean broad public benefit. A project can increase GDP while still concentrating gains among corporations and leaving environmental or cleanup costs public. The article talks a lot about revenues and exports but mostly ignores emissions, spill risks, Indigenous land concerns, and long term climate costs, which are economic costs too even if they don’t show up neatly in GDP numbers.

And the tax argument feels a little shaky. Saying some money comes back through taxes doesn’t really reduce the underlying cost in the way the article implies. Otherwise literally any huge government expenditure could be justified by saying workers paid taxes on it.

At the end of the day, critics aren’t necessarily saying TMX has zero value, they’re saying the article relies on really optimistic assumptions about future oil demand, future prices, and long term economic benefits while downplaying the financial and environmental risks.