It Costs Less to Ship by Rail than by TMX. Why?

On October 3, 2025 in Vaughn, Ontario, PM Carney said “We will build at a pace not seen since the Second World War.”

To do that, the government will have to remove obstacles to investment and construction.

On February 12 I questioned Tracy Sletto, CEO of the Canadian Energy Regulator (CER) at the Natural Resources Committee.

I asked about regulatory delays from her agency on major projects. Missing a deadline by two months is actually a year-long delay because of Canada’s short construction season. It adds significant costs (such as financing, inflation). Investors need to estimate costs, including the cost of regulatory uncertainty.

The cost of TMX, for example, escalated five times over from $7.5 billion to $35 billion, in part due to regulatory delays and uncertainties. Will the CER tell Canadians why and how those costs exploded?

The costs of big infrastructure projects must eventually be born by taxpayers or by the users of that infrastructure. The tolls on TMX, to cover the higher costs, have reached the point where it costs less to move oil by rail than by the environmentally friendlier, efficient pipeline that Canadians built.

This is simply ridiculous.

If this doesn’t change, it will be very hard to build infrastructure at an accelerated pace.