“There are some places that are never for sale,” Prime Minister Mark Carney told U.S. President Donald Trump during their first meeting in Washington, D.C.

“Never say never,” Trump replied, repeating his claim that “it’s much better for Canada” if we agree to become America’s 51st state.

While Trump keeps everyone distracted, the takeover of Canadian infrastructure by his corporate allies is well underway. As soon as possible, Carney and his team must review these investments through a national security lens.

For example, Blackstone Inc. is a trillion-dollar Wall Street firm run by one of Donald Trump’s top 10 donors. CEO Steve Schwarzman is the richest private equity billionaire in the world, and an advisor to Trump since 2016.

Known as the world’s largest corporate landlord, Blackstone already owns at least $20 billion worth of Canadian real estate, with a focus on rental housing. Blackstone just bought half of Canada’s largest telecoms network, Rogers.

Most worrying from a national security perspective, Blackstone is the biggest investor behind Texas-based Western LNG, which is pushing to build a massive American-owned pipeline and gas terminal in British Columbia.

Another Wall Street firm, KKR (which employs former U.S. general and CIA director David Petraeus) already owns a majority stake in the Coastal GasLink pipeline – currently Canada’s only export link to the rest of the world.

If Blackstone is successful in building the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline, American billionaires with close ties to Trump will control gas export corridors across the entire continent, including the U.S. Gulf Coast, Mexico and Canada.

“America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country,” Carney warned in his victory speech after winning Canada’s recent election. “These are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us.”

Carney is right – and he needs to act swiftly to stop this corporate takeover.

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BLOCK THE AMERICAN PIPELINE TAKEOVER NOW!

Adding insult to injury

Transnational oil and gas companies have been lobbying hard in Canada, trying to convince politicians that the answer to Trump’s trade threats is to build more fossil fuel infrastructure. They say LNG projects will create jobs for Canadians at a time of economic uncertainty.

But what’s not well known is that the new generation of floating LNG platforms are exclusively built in China or South Korea, using steel from those countries.

This is true for Cedar LNG, which is currently under construction by Samsung Heavy Industries at its massive shipyard on Geoje Island in Korea. The same firm won the contract to build the floating terminal for Western LNG.

Completed platforms are simply floated into place and hooked up to pipelines. And the PRGT pipeline construction contract has been awarded to Bechtel, another globe-spanning American firm with deep ties to the U.S. government.

The Nisga’a treaty government is nominally a 50 per cent partner in the PRGT pipeline. But all the cash to advance the project so far has come from U.S. private equity firms. The Nisga’a government has no equity stake in Western LNG’s floating gas platform.

Canada’s provinces collect modest royalties on natural gas, which is extracted through fracking. But much of the value chain is controlled by foreign companies, who pocket the profits. Canadians would see few permanent jobs from these U.S.-owned projects.

Canadian compradors

After President Trump declared a “national energy emergency” at his inauguration in January, political operatives on both sides of the border got to work promoting his “drill, baby drill” agenda.

The plan is twofold: build hundreds of gas-powered data centres, creating more demand for fuel here in North America. And – using Trump’s tariffs as a threat – force countries around the world to buy more LNG from American companies.

Buying boatloads of fuel is a way for developing countries to show they are reducing their trade deficit with the United States, which makes Trump happy.

But flooding world markets with LNG also delays the transition to renewable energy, as developing countries build gas-fired power plants rather than generating their own electricity from wind or solar. This ensures a long-term market for fossil fuel.

Canadian executives like TC Energy’s Francois Poirier have already hired ex-U.S. intelligence agents and Trump appointees to advance this vision of “American energy dominance.”

And Canadian political operatives have gone to work directly for U.S. companies like Western LNG, the Texas-based proponent of the PRGT pipeline. These include ex-B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s press secretary and a former BC Liberal chief of staff.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre used much of the recent federal election campaign to promote foreign-owned LNG projects, pipelines and gas-powered data centres. As Trump continues his threats to annex Canada, whose interests are they serving?

What can Carney do?

Carney has a powerful tool in the Investment Canada Act, a law that Prime Minister Stephen Harper used to review and block the sale of a defence manufacturing company to American investors in 2008.

New ICA guidelines introduced before the election acknowledge that “in an increasingly geopolitically fractured world, Canada is facing more frequent threats to its national security through economic means.”

The law now allows the government to reject a project based on “the potential of [an] investment to undermine Canada’s economic security through the enhanced integration of the Canadian business with the economy of a foreign state.”

As soon as he swears in a new cabinet, Carney and his ministers should review the takeover of the PRGT pipeline by Texas-based Western LNG, which is entirely backed by Wall Street private equity companies led by Blackstone Inc.

SIGN THE PETITION TO PRIME MINISTER MARK CARNEY:

BLOCK THE AMERICAN PIPELINE TAKEOVER NOW!