In August 2018, the Government of Canada acquired Trans Mountain Corporation (TMC), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Canada Development Investment Corporation (CDEV), with the intention of completing construction of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX). At the time of acquisition, the Minister of Finance announced that the Government would divest its position in TMC when TMX was completed and de-risked. Separately, during the reinitiated Phase III consultations related to the approval of TMX, many of the impacted Indigenous groups expressed interest in opportunities for greater economic participation in TMX. In response, the Government launched an engagement process on economic participation led by the Department of Finance Canada (the Department), beginning with exploratory discussions in summer 2019 (Step 1).
Nearly all of the 60 Indigenous groups that participated in Step 1 of the Department’s engagement process indicated that additional financial information related to TMC and TMX was required as a precondition of advancing the engagement process. In Step 2, the Department has two objectives: (1) to build a consensus on the form of economic participation preferred by participating Indigenous groups and (2) to identify, or support the formation of, one or more counterparties that could represent them in a future negotiation with Canada. In pursuit of those objectives and in response to feedback received in Step 1, the Department is committed to procuring an independent financial analysis of TMC on their behalf.
In general, the Department’s objective for this contract is to advance Step 2 engagement activities and to support participating Indigenous groups in making informed decisions about participating economically in Trans Mountain and participating in the Department’s engagement process.
Contract award to August 31, 2021.
