Local communities like Bruderheim, Alberta, where the pipeline would begin, anticipate positive economic spin-offs from the influx of workers.
"As a town that had very little growth in the last 20 years, any, you know, positive growth would be a great thing," said Bruderheim Mayor Ron Ewasiuk.
Local business owners also expect commercial growth from the increased population.
"We're going to have more people come to our store and then our business will grow too," said Bruderheim store owner Kim Chin Young.
Jackie Forrest of the ARC Energy Research Institute explained that alternative pipeline routes give Canadian producers better leverage against U.
S. customers.
"As soon as Trans Mountain started up, the Americans had to pay us a better price for our crude because we had options," Forrest said.
Forrest added that private companies have previously abandoned major Canadian infrastructure projects due to high regulatory risks and rejections.
"We have proven over the last decade that private companies can come here, spend hundreds of millions, if not a billion dollars, advancing a project only to get rejected," Forrest noted.
Martha Hall Findlay, director of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, highlighted that major Canadian nation-building infrastructure historically requires public backing.
"If you look at Canadian history, nothing we've done that has been really big has been purely private," Hall Findlay said.
Heather Exner-Pirot of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute observed that past governmental interference has discouraged private capital from assuming such immense balance-sheet risks.
"This is an enormously expensive nation-building project, very difficult for any private proponent to accept it all on their balance sheet," Exner-Pirot said.
