Carney talks about free trade and hands out subsidies. Ottawa strangles free trade with cartels and bureaucracy.
Note: This post was written from notes prepared for a panel at the Canada Strong and Free Conference in Calgary on Sept 6. I am grateful for the invitation and the opportunity to explore solutions to recognized interprovincial barriers and push further beyond.
Alberta is the number one destination for Canadians seeking a better life. In the last 5 years, 1 of 3 Canadians moving out of their provinces seeking a better life have come to Alberta. People come to Alberta to escape stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, and the bureaucratic chokeholds of central Canada. They come for work, for opportunity, and for the chance to get ahead. Alberta doesn’t just have oil and gas; it has policies and an entrepreneurial culture that reward hard work. (Every province, except for PEI, has hydrocarbon resources, but most chose not to exploit them). That’s why the province often draws more people than it loses.
But Alberta cannot assume it will always stay ahead. Prosperity, like liberty, is not automatic, and it can vanish if Albertans get complacent. To remain the country’s economic frontier, Alberta must keep moving. That means tearing down the barriers to trade and commerce we still have and fighting the new ones Ottawa and other provinces are busy inventing.
The costs of standing still are enormous. Economists estimate internal trade barriers drain Canada of up to $130 billion a year, as much as seven percent of GDP, a fraction of what the Trump tariffs would inflict. For Alberta alone, even a ten percent reduction in interprovincial barriers would be worth $7.3 billion annually. And when Quebec blocked the Energy East pipeline, Alberta lost the chance to ship crude worth as much as $15 billion a year — roughly one-fifth of its economy. That isn’t theory; that is lost paycheques, foregone tax revenue, and hospitals and schools that never got funded.
Read the rest of the article on our Substack here.