Business
Median wages and salaries lower in every Canadian province than in every U.S. state
From the Fraser Institute
There’s a growing consensus among economists that the federal government and several provincial governments over the past decade have not enacted enough policies that encourage economic growth. Consequently, Canadians are getting poorer relative to residents of other countries including the United States. In particular, their ability to purchase essential goods and services such as housing and food—in other words, their standard of living—is declining relative to our neighbours to the south.
In fact, according to our new study, among the 10 provinces and 50 U.S. states, median employment earnings—that is, wages and salaries— in 2022 (the latest year of available data) were lowest in the four Atlantic provinces, followed by Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. So, the median employment earnings of workers were lower in every Canadian province than in every U.S. state.
Were Canadian provinces always in the basement? Pretty much. In 2010, while only 12 U.S. states reported higher median employment earnings than Alberta, the other nine Canadian provinces ranked among the bottom 10 places. However, the important point is that from 2010 to 2022, Canadian provinces have fallen even further behind as many low-ranking U.S. states substantially improved.
In 2010, the per-worker earnings gap (in 2017 Canadian dollars) between Louisiana, a middle-ranking state, and the nine lowest-ranked Canadian provinces varied from $4,650 (in Saskatchewan) to $15,661 (Prince Edward Island). By 2022, a typical mid-ranking state such as Tennessee was out-earning all provinces by a range of $6,770 (in Alberta) to $16,955 (P.E.I.). In other words, by 2022, not only were workers in all U.S. states out-earning workers in all Canadian provinces, the gap had grown.
Another example—Alberta and Texas are the two largest oil-producing jurisdictions in their respective countries, yet Albertans, who out-earned Texans in 2010, saw their lead of $3,423 per worker become a deficit of $5,254 by 2022.
It’s a similar story for B.C. and Washington, which are geographically proximate and have similar-sized populations. While B.C. experienced strong growth in median employment earnings per worker over this period, it still lost ground relative to Washington—the gap grew from $10,879 in 2010 to $11,311 by 2022.
The change between Ontario and Michigan is even more striking. Again, they are geographic neighbours, have similar-sized populations and share a large auto sector, with Michigan’s lead over Ontario growing from $2,955 per worker in 2010 to $8,661 by 2022. The trends are similar when comparing Saskatchewan to North Dakota or the Atlantic provinces to the New England states; the gaps have only grown larger.
So, why should Canadians care?
Of course, everybody wants to make more money, so Canadians should want to know why workers in Mississippi and Louisiana make more than workers here at home. But there’s also a broader problem—people and capital can move relatively freely across the Canada-U.S. border, meaning this growing divergence in employment earnings has significant ramifications for the Canadian economy.
It could spur the ongoing migration of highly productive individuals, including high-skilled immigrants, who choose to move south. And encourage domestic and foreign firms to invest in the U.S. rather than in Canada. If these trends continue, they will exacerbate the earnings gaps between the two countries and potentially make Canada an economic backwater relative to the U.S. There’s also a significant risk these trends could worsen if the next U.S. administration increases tariffs on Canadian exports to the U.S., effectively abrogating the North American free trade agreement.
Clearly, to mitigate this risk and reverse the ongoing divergence in employment earnings—which largely determine living standards—between Canada and the U.S., the federal and provincial governments should implement bold and sweeping growth-oriented policies to make the Canadian economy more competitive. When Canada is more attractive to business investment, high-skilled workers and entrepreneurs, all workers will reap the rewards.
Authors:
Governor Tiff Macklem concedes the downturn runs deeper than a business cycle, citing trade wars, weak investment, and fading population growth as permanent drags on Canada’s economy.
In an extraordinary press conference on October 29th, 2025, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem stood before reporters in Ottawa and calmly described what most Canadians have already been feeling for months: the economy is unraveling. But don’t expect him to say it in plain language. The central bank’s message was buried beneath bureaucratic doublespeak, carefully manicured forecasts, and bilingual spin. Strip that all away, and here’s what’s really going on: the Canadian economy has been gutted by a combination of political mismanagement, trade dependence, and a collapsing growth model based on mass immigration. The central bank knows it. The data proves it. And yet no one dares to say the quiet part out loud.
Start with the headline: the Bank of Canada cut interest rates by 25 basis points, bringing the policy rate down to 2.25%, its second consecutive cut and part of a 100 basis point easing campaign this year. That alone should tell you something is wrong. You don’t slash rates in a healthy economy. You do it when there’s pain. And there is. Canada’s GDP contracted by 1.6% in the second quarter of 2025. Exports are collapsing, investment is weak, and the unemployment rate is stuck at 7.1%, the highest non-pandemic level since 2016.
Macklem admitted it: “This is more than a cyclical downturn. It’s a structural adjustment. The U.S. trade conflict has diminished Canada’s economic prospects. The structural damage caused by tariffs is reducing the productive capacity of the economy.” That’s not just spin—that’s an admission of failure. A major trading nation like Canada has built its economic engine around exports, and now, thanks to years of reckless dependence on U.S. markets and zero effort to diversify, it’s all coming apart.
And don’t miss the implications of that phrase “structural adjustment.” It means the damage is permanent. Not temporary. Not fixable with a couple of rate cuts. Permanent. In fact, the Bank’s own Monetary Policy Report says that by the end of 2026, GDP will be 1.5% lower than it was forecast back in January. Half of that hit comes from a loss in potential output. The other half is just plain weak demand. And the reason that demand is weak? Because the federal government is finally dialing back the immigration faucet it’s been using for years to artificially inflate GDP growth.
The Bank doesn’t call it “propping up” GDP. But the facts are unavoidable. In its MPR, the Bank explicitly ties the coming consumption slowdown to a sharp drop in population growth: “Population growth is a key factor behind this expected slowdown, driven by government policies designed to reduce the inflow of newcomers. Population growth is assumed to slow to average 0.5% over 2026 and 2027.” That’s down from 3.3% just a year ago. So what was driving GDP all this time? People. Not productivity. Not innovation. Not exports. People.
And now that the government has finally acknowledged the political backlash of dumping half a million new residents a year into an overstretched housing market, the so-called “growth” is vanishing. It wasn’t real. It was demographic window dressing. Macklem admitted as much during the press conference when he said: “If you’ve got fewer new consumers in the economy, you’re going to get less consumption growth.” That’s about as close as a central banker gets to saying: we were faking it.
And yet despite all of this, the Bank still clings to its bureaucratic playbook. When asked whether Canada is heading into a recession, Macklem hedged: “Our outlook has growth resuming… but we expect that growth to be very modest… We could get two negative quarters. That’s not our forecast, but we can’t rule it out.” Translation: It’s already here, but we’re not going to admit it until StatsCan confirms it six months late.
Worse still, when reporters pressed him on what could lift the economy out of the ditch, he passed the buck. “Monetary policy can’t undo the damage caused by tariffs. It can’t target the hard-hit sectors. It can’t find new markets for companies. It can’t reconfigure supply chains.” So what can it do? “Mitigate spillovers,” Macklem says. That’s central banker code for “stand back and pray.”
So where’s the recovery supposed to come from? The Bank pins its hopes on a moderate rebound in exports, a bit of resilience in household consumption, and “ongoing government spending.” There it is. More public sector lifelines. More debt. More Ottawa Band-Aids.
And looming behind all of this is the elephant in the room: U.S. trade policy. The Bank explicitly warns that the situation could worsen depending on the outcome of next year’s U.S. election. The MPR highlights that tariffs are already cutting into Canadian income, raising business costs, and eliminating entire trade-dependent sectors. Governor Macklem put it plainly: “Unless something else changes, our incomes will be lower than they otherwise would have been.”
Canadians should be furious. For years, we were told everything was fine. That our economy was “resilient.” That inflation was “transitory.” That population growth would solve all our problems. Now we’re being told the economy is structurally impaired, trade-dependent to a fault, and stuck with weak per-capita growth, high unemployment, and sticky core inflation between 2.5–3%. And the people responsible for this mess? They’ve either resigned (Trudeau), failed upward (Carney), or still refuse to admit they spent a decade selling us a fantasy.
This isn’t just bad economics. It’s political malpractice.
Canada isn’t failing because of interest rates or some mysterious global volatility. It’s failing because of deliberate choices—trade dependence, mass immigration without infrastructure, and a refusal to confront reality. The central bank sees the iceberg. They’re easing the throttle. But the ship has already taken on water. And no one at the helm seems willing to turn the wheel.
So here’s the truth: The Bank of Canada just rang the alarm bell. Quietly. Cautiously. But clearly. The illusion is over. The fake growth era is ending. And the reckoning has begun.
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Conrad Eder
Consumer choice, not government coercion, should shape the market. Doug Ford’s alcohol crackdown trades symbolic outrage for sound policy and Ontarians will pay the price
Ontario politicians have developed an insatiable appetite for prohibition. Having already imposed a sweeping ban on all American alcohol, Premier Doug Ford has now threatened to remove Crown Royal, Smirnoff and potentially other brands from LCBO shelves. Such authoritarian impulses reflect a disturbing shift in our political culture—one that undermines economic prosperity and individual liberty.
After Diageo, the multinational behind brands like Crown Royal and Smirnoff, announced in August that it would close its Amherstburg, Ont., bottling facility, affecting 200 workers, the political response was swift. NDP MPP Lisa Gretzky urged the government to retaliate by pulling Crown Royal from LCBO shelves. Days later, Ford dramatically dumped a bottle of the whisky during a press conference, signalling he might follow through.
Now, the premier has escalated the threat, vowing to remove Smirnoff and potentially other Diageo products.
These gestures may make headlines, but they come at a cost. They undermine business confidence, discourage investment, and send the wrong message to employers. More fundamentally, they reflect a poor understanding of how free societies settle disputes and make decisions.
To understand what’s at stake, it helps to consider the two basic mechanisms available to democratic societies: the marketplace and the ballot box. At the ballot box, citizens vote once, and majority rule determines a single outcome. The marketplace, by contrast, allows people to vote continuously with their dollars. Individuals make countless choices reflecting their own values and priorities. You get what you choose—without overriding anyone else’s preference.
There’s a role for government in correcting market failures, where there’s fraud, monopoly power or public risk. But banning legal products simply because of political displeasure with a company’s decision is not market correction. It’s coercion.
Diageo’s decision to close a facility may be unfortunate, but it doesn’t involve deception, unfair dominance, or harm to the public. Bans aren’t rooted in sound principle; they’re political, plain and simple.
Some argue the government is justified in acting to protect Ontario jobs. But that line of thinking is short-sighted. If job protection alone warranted banning products, we’d resist every innovation or trade deal that disrupted the status quo. Sustainable job growth depends on encouraging investment and innovation, not shielding every position from change.
The appropriate response to plant closures is policy reform, not retaliation. Ontario should focus on creating an environment where businesses want to invest and grow. That means fostering a stable, competitive business climate with clear rules, reasonable taxes, and efficient regulation. Threatening companies with bans only creates uncertainty and drives investment elsewhere.
With Ontarians spending $740 million annually on Diageo products, removing them from store shelves would impose real economic costs. Consumers would face fewer choices, weaker competition, and higher prices. Restaurants and retailers would be forced to adjust. The LCBO, Ontario’s government-run liquor retailer, would lose sales.
This isn’t hypothetical. The province’s ban on American alcohol is already projected to block nearly $1 billion in annual sales, while doing nothing to benefit Ontario consumers. The LCBO is serving political interests, not the public.
Supporters of such bans often reveal their lack of confidence in public opinion. Rather than persuade others to boycott a product voluntarily, they demand that government enforce a blanket restriction.
There’s a better way. Consumer-led boycotts offer accountability without coercion. They allow individuals to act on their beliefs without forcing others to comply. And they tend to be more effective, as companies respond faster to falling sales than to political theatrics.
But the issue at hand goes beyond liquor. It’s about whether elected officials should impose a single set of preferences on everyone, or whether citizens are trusted to decide for themselves.
Each new ban makes the next one easier to justify. Over time, these interventions accumulate and normalize government interference in private choice. Unlike consumer preferences, which can shift quickly and reverse, government prohibitions often persist. The LCBO’s century-old structure is evidence of how long some policies endure, even when they no longer serve the public interest.
This isn’t a call to eliminate government’s role. But it is a call for principled governance, the kind that distinguishes between legitimate oversight and overreach rooted in symbolism or political frustration.
Ontario’s government would do better to focus on long-term prosperity. That means building an economy where investors feel welcome, businesses can grow, and consumers are free to choose.
Ontarians are perfectly capable of making their own choices about which products to buy and which companies to support. They don’t need politicians like Ford making those decisions for them.
Conrad Eder is a policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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