Politics
The 1,090-kilometre section crossing the Canadian Shield was the most difficult leg of the pipeline. Believing construction costs could make the line uneconomic, private sector sponsors refused to finance this portion of the line. Since the federal government wanted the line laid for nationalistic reasons, the reigning Liberals put a bill before Parliament to create a crown corporation to build and own the Canadian Shield portion of the line, leasing it back to TCPL.
The Louis St. Laurent government aggressively restricted debate on this bill in order to get construction underway by June 1956, knowing that delays beyond that month would postpone the entire project a year. The use of closure created a Parliamentary scandal. Known as the Great Pipeline Debate, this parliamentary episode contributed to the government's defeat at the polls in 1957, ending many years of Liberal rule, and bringing in a government under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.
The bill was passed and construction of the TransCanada pipeline began.
A stock trading scandal surrounding Northern Ontario Natural Gas, the contractor for the Northern Ontario leg of the pipeline, also implicated Sudbury mayor Leo Landreville and Ontario provincial cabinet ministers Philip Kelly, William Griesinger and Clare Mapledoram between 1955 and 1958.
Read more about this topic: Trans Canada Pipeline
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“One might imagine that a movement which is so preoccupied with the fulfillment of human potential would have a measure of respect for those who nourish its source. But politics make strange bedfellows, and liberated women have elected to become part of a long tradition of hostility to mothers.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“I played by the rules of politics as I found them.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)