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Good morning,

Pipelines are often a flashpoint in disagreements between jurisdictions, or between industry and community. The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion – which crosses from Alberta’s oil sands, over the Rockies, to the B.C. coast near Vancouver – has been more fraught than many.

Kinder Morgan, the company behind the pipeline, says it will now stop “non-essential” spending on the project, which has ground to a halt due to opposition from the British Columbia government. B.C. Premier John Horgan says he is concerned about the environmental impact of the line, while Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and the federal Liberals say the pipeline is important for the nation’s economy.

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay Ottawa, Mayaz Alam in Toronto and James Keller in Vancouver. If you’re reading this on the web or someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, you can sign up for Politics Briefing and all Globe newsletters here. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.

TODAY'S HEADLINES

Finance Minister Bill Morneau's new chief of staff will be Ben Chin, a former top aide to B.C. premier Christy Clark and a former news anchor.

China is waging a public relations campaign against the U.S. Trump administration, with the Chinese ambassador to Canada writing today in The Globe that increased U.S. tariffs are “looney” and the President is against free trade.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says U.S. President Donald Trump would “regret” pulling out of a nuclear deal with his country.

The Vatican has arrested a former diplomat who used to work at its embassy in Washington. Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella is suspected of possessing child pornography in Canada and the U.S.

Municipal politicians with last names beginning early in the alphabet tend to do better than others, a new study suggests.

And thousands in Saskatchewan and many more around the country are mourning the loss of 15 members of a high-school hockey team and its staff in a bus crash over the weekend. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited the community last night.

Don Braid (Calgary Herald) on Kinder Morgan: “The bottom line is that this project simply can’t be allowed to fail. The prestige and authority of the federal government are at stake. So is the future of Alberta’s economy.”

Mitchell Anderson (The Tyee) on Kinder Morgan: “Countries of the world clearly need to develop plans on transitioning away from the fossil fuel economy — a daunting and critical task. But what if those long-in-the-future plans are instead used as a fig leaf to justify business as usual carbon extraction? Our prime minister holds forth the fight against climate change as a rationale for the Trans Mountain pipeline and massively increased exports of unprocessed bitumen. So how small is Justin Trudeau’s fig leaf?”

Paul Wells (Maclean’s) on Kinder Morgan: “ Here and there, on the outskirts of the minister’s amiable outdoor chat with the scribes, there were hints that the Trudeau government takes the increasingly likely end of Trans Mountain more seriously.”

Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on the Phoenix pay system: “For the class of senior bureaucrats who hold so much influence in government, it is a particular blow. These are supposed to be the technocrats that advise governments of all stripes on getting things done. This still-burning dumpster fire is a deep blow to the brand of the bureaucratic elite.”

Doug Saunders (The Globe and Mail) on people power: “As we bristle at the autocrats of 2018, we ought to give as much support as we can to the millions of people who are taking risks by doing something to stop them. ”

Jamil Jivani (The Globe and Mail) on Jagmeet Singh: “Our treatment of Mr. Singh reveals we are concerned the NDP Leader might have extremist views or at least tolerate them. But we aren’t concerned about the extremist views that Mr. Singh himself provides a positive moral alternative to. Or, at least, we aren’t concerned enough to avoid tearing him down and diminishing the positive impact he can have in our country.”

Erna Paris (The Globe and Mail) on Trump’s CIA nominee Gina Haspel: “With his nomination of Ms. Haspel, U.S. President Donald Trump inadvertently reopened the unresolved issue of state-sponsored torture in the war on terror. As the postwar liberal order dribbles away, along with respect for international norms, the likelihood of her being blocked by the Senate may be low. One thing, though, is certain: The senators’ decision will be a marker of attitudes to human rights and a rules-based world order among America’s elected leaders.”

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