What Do The Tyee, the National Observer, DeSmogBlog and Elizabeth May Have in Common?

That's pretty easy. They're all British Columbian and, collectively, they have laid bare the scam that the Trudeau government is perpetrating on this province so that it can force through the Trans Mountain bitumen pipeline.

We all know the election campaign promises Trudeau used to hoodwink British Columbians into voting Liberal. The business about social licence, First Nations consultation, no pipelines without consent - lies, lies and lies. Boy, were we had by that earnest sounding little prig.

So Junior canceled Northern Gateway but went ahead and approved Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain bitumen pipeline across southern BC and straight through the Lower Mainland's munipalities, terminating at Burrard Inlet from which an armada of wallowing supertankers would transit the Vancouver waterfront through coal harbour and on into the sometimes treacherous and heavily trafficked Georgia Strait.

Justin knew it looked bad and smelled worse so he apologized and said it was a grand compromise between Ottawa and the Notley government. Only this wasn't between Ottawa and Edmonton.  It was British Columbia's coast and the right to put it at serious risk of irreparable environmental calamity that was the bargain, the prize for the deal between Ottawa and Edmonton. B.C. would damn well do as it was told.

Trudeau knew he couldn't rely on the rigged approvals of the industry-controlled National Energy Board. He had denounced the NEB as corrupt during his election campaign. So he announced his government would conduct a remedial assessment of the merits and safety of the Trans Mountain pipeline before deciding if it could go through.

A lot of us suspected that Trudeau was running a scam that, just like Harper, the fix would be in, but it took the National Observer to lay bare this prime minister's perfidy.

The fix was in. Trudeau's approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline was pre-ordained. The federal government's departments responsible for conducting the review were told what to write. They were told that their findings had to support the Kinder Morgan pipeline. 

Right before their internal meeting, federal officials met with Tsleil-Waututh representatives and told them that the government still hadn’t made a final decision on the project. But in the second meeting for government staffers only, public servants who were in the room said O’Gorman’s instructions were explicit. 

“We have to give cabinet a legally-sound basis for saying yes,” O’Gorman said, according to people at the meeting.

Trudeau didn't hesitate to betray British Columbia yet again. It was an act of corruption totally befitting his predecessor, Shifty Steve Harper. Trudeau and Harper are very much cut from the same cloth and that may be unpleasant to Liberals but it's the truth.

It's more than passing curious that these revelations have all come out through British Columbia's excellent news outlets - The Tyee, the National Observer, DeSmogBlog - but there's been not a peep of this in the national, mainstream media - Postmedia, the Globe, TorStar, CBC, CTV, Global. It sort of reinforces the feeling that, in this fight, it's British Columbians versus this degraded nation.

It's one thing to be ashamed of a prime minister. In deeply divided societies it is almost inevitable that one group will be at odds with the national leader. It is something entirely different, something far worse, inexcusable when a prime minister gives the people extremely good cause to be ashamed of their country. No prime minister has any business doing that. Yet Harper did it and we roundly rebuked him for it. Trudeau was supposed to erase that stain and, for a brief while, it seemed he would. The stain is back. It's not treason but it is treachery.