Loans have to be paid back, so this is less "flushing tax dollars down the drain" and more "gee whiz I sure wonder where this money could have been spent instead," right?

From that perspective, this is basically an infrastructure grant for Alberta... And frankly, if that's how Alberta wants to use its chunk of federal infrastructure spending, more power to them.

Vancouver gets SkyTrain expansions (and massive housing projects and the corresponding wastewater/landfill infrastructure), Montreal gets the REM, and Alberta gets the Trans Mountain expansion. Sounds fair enough to me.