Steve MacLellan

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted in mid-July that the Trans Mountain expansion project “is going forward, and work is getting started this construction season,” a typical reply was “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Given all the protests and legal and political setbacks it has suffered, that skepticism was understandable. But the $7.4 billion to $9.3 billion pipeline twinning project is now under construction.

Also going ahead is $150 million worth of investments in new vessels and bases by the Western Canada Marine Response Corp., which paused its expansion following a Federal Court of Appeal decision that quashed the original approval of the pipeline twinning project.

As of September 30, 2,200 workers had been hired, and are now working, mostly at either end of the pipeline, in Burnaby and Edmonton. Those numbers were originally expected to reach 3,000 by the end of this year.