The federal government has offered Indigenous groups along the Trans Mountain pipeline route a collective 15 percent ownership stake, financed through a low-cost government loan, according to a letter from Finance Minister seen by Canadian outlets and confirmed by his spokesperson John Fragos. The offer follows what Fragos described as consultation and discussion with 129 First Nations along the pipeline corridor, and includes a one-time $2.5 million payment to each participating community, framed by officials as compensation for revenue lost in the years before any equity deal was reached.
The proposal comes as Ottawa simultaneously signals it may be rethinking whether to sell Trans Mountain at all. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne told reporters the government intends to “modernize” its approach to public assets including the pipeline, without saying whether a sale is still planned, according to reporting on the announcement. His office later clarified that the long-run plan remains to sell the pipeline, with Fragos stating that “the government has no intention of remaining the long-term owner of this project.” Energy Minister Tim Hodgson has previously said Ottawa will not sell until the system’s capacity is fully optimized, work expected to finish around 2028.
A pipeline that already pays for itself
Ottawa bought the original Trans Mountain pipeline and its expansion project for $4.5 billion in 2018 after Kinder Morgan’s investors balked at regulatory risk, and ultimately spent roughly $34 billion completing the expansion. Since oil began flowing through the expanded line in 2024, the pipeline has generated $2.6 billion for federal coffers, a figure that raises the question of why a profitable, government-owned asset is being offered out in fractional Indigenous shares rather than sold outright or held with a clearer ownership structure from the start.
The letter sent to First Nations does not specify a purchase price, a timeline, or whether the 15 percent stake applies to the existing pipeline alone or to the entirety of Trans Mountain Corporation, details that Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs said remain unclear even as communities are asked to commit. Phillip has called the incentive payments “corporate bribes to buy consent,” while Stephen Buffalo, head of the Indian Resource Council, dismissed the offer as a “feeble attempt of economic reconciliation.” Ottawa first promised Indigenous equity participation in the pipeline back in 2019, and negotiations have moved slowly since, with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith suggesting in 2024 that the government was contemplating a 30 percent stake, roughly double what was ultimately offered this week.
How the outlets framed it
CBC News described the offer as advancing a long-promised plan for economic reconciliation, noting it follows consultation with 129 First Nations and quoting government language about Indigenous communities needing to “participate in and directly benefit from” resource projects. The Globe and Mail, reporting the same announcement, foregrounded the criticism from Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, who called the incentives corporate bribes meant to buy consent, and from Stephen Buffalo, who called the proposal feeble. The Globe also emphasized the unresolved question of whether Ottawa still intends to sell the pipeline at all. The contrast shows one outlet treating the announcement as policy progress and the other treating it as an unresolved and contested transaction still missing basic terms such as price and timeline.
An opinion piece from Indigenous pipeline-corridor representatives published in the Globe and Mail argued that not a single share of Trans Mountain has actually been sold to Indigenous owners in the seven years since the promise was first made, even as the government moves ahead with plans for an entirely new pipeline in the same corridor and has already allotted a private company, Pembina, a defined equity stake in that unbuilt project. The authors argued that Indigenous ownership of the pipeline already running through their territory remains an abstraction while private investors receive spelled-out terms for infrastructure that does not yet exist.
