OTTAWA – When Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland delivered her budget speech last month, she gave a nod to the workers on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, a $34-billion government-owned project more than a decade in the making that, after multiple cost overruns and delays, will this month finally begin carrying Alberta oil to the West Coast.

Freeland used the opportunity to take a shot at those who, she said, think government only stands in the way of development.