Weakness has consequences: Why Canada's Trudeau just spent $3.5 billion to nationalize an oil pipeline

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, the network of oil and gas pipelines in Canada is 840,000 kilometers long. And virtually every kilometer of pipe was laid by private capital over many decades.

Yet today, it appears the only way a major pipeline project in Canada can get built is if the federal government buys the project, as it did this week when it spent $4.5 billion Canadian ($3.5 billion U.S.) to buy the Trans Mountain project, which aims to triple the capacity of former owner Kinder Morgan’s existing pipeline bringing oil from Alberta to the Port of Vancouver. Even then, the outcome is uncertain.