Haulage bridge at Cando Rail & Terminals’ Sturgeon Terminal in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland, near Edmonton. Photo courtesy Cando Rail & Terminals

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Will Gibson

Cando Rail & Terminals to invest $200 million to support Dow’s Path2Zero petrochemical complex

A major rail hub in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland will double in size to support a new carbon-neutral plastic production facility, turning the terminal into the largest of its kind in the country.

Cando Rail & Terminals will invest $200 million at its Sturgeon Terminal after securing Dow Chemical as an anchor tenant for its expanded terminal, which will support the planned $8.9 billion Path2Zero petrochemical complex being built in the region northeast of Edmonton.

“Half of the terminal expansion will be dedicated to the Dow project and handle the products produced at the Path2Zero complex,” says Steve Bromley, Cando’s chief commercial officer.

By incorporating carbon capture and storage, the complex, which began construction this spring, is expected to be the world’s first to produce polyethylene with net zero scope 1 and 2 emissions.

The widely used plastic’s journey to global markets will begin by rail.

“Dow stores their polyethylene in covered railcars while waiting to sell it,” Bromley says.

“When buyers purchase it, we will build unit trains and those cars will go to the Port of Prince Rupert and eventually be shipped to their customers in Asia.”

A “unit train” is a single train where all the cars carry the same commodity to the same destination.

The expanded Cando terminal will have the capacity to prepare 12,000-foot unit trains – or trains that are more than three-and-a-half kilometers long.

Construction will start on the expansion in 2025 at a 320-acre site west of Cando’s existing terminal, which 20 industrial customers use to stage and store railcars as well as assemble unit trains.

Bromley, a former CP Rail executive who joined Cando in 2013, says the other half of the terminal’s capacity not used by the Dow facility will be sold to other major projects in the region.

The announcement is the latest in a series of investments for Cando to grow its operations in Alberta that will see the company spend more than $500 million by 2027.

The company, which is majority owned by the Alberta Investment Management Corporation previously spent $100 million to acquire a 1,700-railcar facility in Lethbridge along with $150 million to build its existing Sturgeon terminal.

“Alberta is important to us – we have 300 active employees in this province and handle 900,000 railcars annually here,” Bromley says.

“But we are looking for opportunities across North America, both in Canada and the United States as well.”

Cando released the news of the Sturgeon Terminal expansion at the Alberta Industrial Heartland Association’s annual conference on Sept. 19.

“This is an investment in critical infrastructure that underpins additional growth in the region,” says Mark Plamondon, the association’s executive director.

The announcement came as the association marked its 25th anniversary at the event, which Plamondon saw as fitting.

“Dow’s Path2Zero came to the region because of the competitive advantages gained by clustering heavy industry. Competitive advantages are built from infrastructure that’s already here, such as the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, which transports and stores carbon dioxide for industry,” he says.

“Having that level of integration can turn inputs into one operation into outputs for another. Competitive advantages for one become advantages for others. Cando’s investment will attract others just as Dow’s Path2Zero was a pull for additional investment.”

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The House of Commons recently rejected a New Democratic Party-led bill that would have allowed for a universal basic income instead of ‘cutting taxes and letting Canadians keep more of their own money,’ said Franco Terrazzano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Canada’s most respected taxpayer watchdog group called on citizens to oppose as much as possible the policies and laws pushed by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and opposition parties.

“Taxpayers must stay vigilant and keep pushing back against this extremely costly scheme,” Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), told LifeSiteNews.

“Bad ideas never seem to go away in Ottawa, so taxpayers must stay alert and continue to push politicians to fight against guaranteed income schemes.”

In recent weeks, the House of Commons voted down an extreme New Democratic Party-proposed law that would have allowed for a universal basic income (UBI) for all Canadians and refugee claimants.

Instead of focusing on handouts, Terrazzano noted, the government should instead be “making life more affordable by cutting taxes and letting Canadians keep more of their own money.”

“The government is broke and is more than $1 trillion in debt so this expensive scheme would mean massive tax hikes for average Canadians,” he told LifeSiteNews.

Terrazzano observed how the New Democratic Party’s UBI “scheme” would have been a “disaster for taxpayers, businesses and our economy, and all politicians should fight against this.”

“It would make it harder for Canadian businesses to find and retain talent because if the government pays people not to work, fewer people will work,” he said.

While the New Democratic Party’s attempt at passing a UBI bill into law failed, there is another similar bill before Canada’s Senate that, if passed, would establish “a national framework for a guaranteed livable basic income.”

Senate Bill S-233 is now before a committee, but it has not gone to the House of Commons yet. The bill was introduced by Trudeau-appointed Senator Kim Pate in 2021.

The cost of living in Canada has risen dramatically over the last few years under the Trudeau government, which continues to overspend and promote its ideologically charged agenda.

In June, LifeSiteNews reported that decades of progress in lowering the poverty rate in Canada has been wiped out in the last few years under Trudeau’s Liberal government.

Terrazzano previously told LifeSiteNews that he urged the Trudeau government to cut spending, balance the budget and “completely scrap” the “carbon tax,” as the best way to help struggling Canadians financially.