Business
What Inter-Provincial Migration Trends Can Tell Us About Good Governance
It turns out we move a great deal less than our American neighbors
Government policies have consequences. Among them is the possibility that they might so annoy the locals that people actually get up and head for the exit. Given how parting can be such sweet sorrow (and how it’s a pain to lose out on all that revenue from provincial income, property, and sales tax), legislatures generally prefer to keep their citizens on this side of the door.
Nevertheless, migration happens. And when enough people do it at the same time, they sometimes leave economic and social clues behind waiting to be discovered. This graph represents net migrations since 1971 into and out of the four largest provinces:
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It may just be possible to make out some broad patterns here. Quebec has never had a net inbound migration year (although there’s been plenty of immigration to Quebec from outside of Canada). But nothing matches the mass exodus of anglophones due to concerns over language and separation in the 1970s.
Curiously it seems that Alberta and British Columbia received far more migrants than Ontario around that time – although the actual numbers tell us that they were more likely to have come from Saskatchewan and Ontario than Quebec. By contrast, most disillusioned Quebecers found their way to Ontario. Besides the 70s, Alberta also enjoyed inbound spikes in the mid-90s, mid-00s, and early 10s. And it looks like they’re in the middle of another boom cycle as we speak.
The real value of all this data however, is in using it to test causation hypotheses. In other words, can statistical analysis tell us what it was that caused the migrations? And are some or all of those causes the result of government policy choices? Here are some possibilities we’ll explore:
- Household income trends
- Government debt
- Crime rates
- Healthcare costs
- Housing costs
Right off the top I’ll come clean with you: there’ll be no smoking gun here. I could find no single historical measure that came close to explaining migration patterns. However I was able to confidently discard some theories. That’s a win I guess. And other numbers did hint to intriguing possibilities.
Inter-provincial variations in household income, crime rates (specifically murder rates), healthcare costs (including prescriptions, eye care, and dental care), and even housing affordability had no measurable impact on migration. This was true for both correlation coefficients and lag analysis (where we looked at migration changes in the years following an economic event).
Rising unemployment had, at best, a minimal impact on outbound migration. And even then, it was only noticeable for Alberta and Prince Edward Island.
Of all the metrics I explored, the only one that might have had a serious influence in migration was provincial government budget deficits.
Folks from Alberta, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland all responded to growing government debt by clearing out. Now, I doubt this was their way to telling the government what they really thought about bad fiscal management. Rather, people probably decided to move to greener pastures in response to the ripple-effect consequences of deficits, like higher taxes, reduced social services, and deteriorating infrastructure.
I suspect that part of the reason I wasn’t able to find any strong connections between those metrics and migration patterns is because there really isn’t all that much migration going on in the first place.
Take Ontario’s record net population loss of 31,018 residents back in 2021. That may sound like a lot of people, but it’s actually just a hair over two-tenths of one percent of the total Ontario population. And even Quebec’s epic 1979 loss of 46,429 people was still nowhere near one percent. It was 0.7117456, to be precise. Those aren’t significant numbers.
When so few people choose to move, it’s probably because there’s nothing on the macro level going on that’s pushing them. Those who do go, probably do it primarily for personal reasons that just won’t show up in population-scale data.
There’s also the very real possibility that Canadians are smart enough to realize that things probably won’t be any better over there than they already are right here. Fewer than two-thirds of one percent of Ontarians left for other provinces in 2023, while only around one-third of a percent gave up on Quebec.
By contrast, annual state-to-state migration figures in the U.S. typically range between 1 percent to 5 percent of each state’s population. In 2022, that added up to 8.2 million people, according to the Census Bureau.
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Alberta
Emissions Reduction Alberta offering financial boost for the next transformative drilling idea
From the Canadian Energy Centre
$35-million Alberta challenge targets next-gen drilling opportunities
‘All transformative ideas are really eligible’
Forget the old image of a straight vertical oil and gas well.
In Western Canada, engineers now steer wells for kilometres underground with remarkable precision, tapping vast energy resources from a single spot on the surface.
The sector is continually evolving as operators pursue next-generation drilling technologies that lower costs while opening new opportunities and reducing environmental impacts.
But many promising innovations never reach the market because of high development costs and limited opportunities for real-world testing, according to Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA).
That’s why ERA is launching the Drilling Technology Challenge, which will invest up to $35 million to advance new drilling and subsurface technologies.
“The focus isn’t just on drilling, it’s about building our future economy, helping reduce emissions, creating new industries and making sure we remain a responsible leader in energy development for decades to come,” said ERA CEO Justin Riemer.
And it’s not just about oil and gas. ERA says emerging technologies can unlock new resource opportunities such as geothermal energy, deep geological CO₂ storage and critical minerals extraction.
“Alberta’s wealth comes from our natural resources, most of which are extracted through drilling and other subsurface technologies,” said Gurpreet Lail, CEO of Enserva, which represents energy service companies.
ERA funding for the challenge will range from $250,000 to $8 million per project.
Eligible technologies include advanced drilling systems, downhole tools and sensors; AI-enabled automation and optimization; low-impact rigs and fluids; geothermal and critical mineral drilling applications; and supporting infrastructure like mobile labs and simulation platforms.
“All transformative ideas are really eligible for this call,” Riemer said, noting that AI-based technologies are likely to play a growing role.
“I think what we’re seeing is that the wells of the future are going to be guided by smart sensors and real-time data. You’re going to have a lot of AI-driven controls that help operators make instant decisions and avoid problems.”
Applications for the Drilling Technology Challenge close January 29, 2026.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The global war business scored record revenues in 2024 amid multiple protracted proxy conflicts across the world, according to a new industry analysis released on Monday.
The top 100 arms manufacturers in the world raked in $679 billion in revenue in 2024, up 5.9% from the year prior, according to a new Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) study. The figure marks the highest ever revenue for manufacturers recorded by SIPRI as the group credits major conflicts for supplying the large appetite for arms around the world.
“The rise in the total arms revenues of the Top 100 in 2024 was mostly due to overall increases in the arms revenues of companies based in Europe and the United States,” SIPRI said in their report. “There were year-on-year increases in all the geographical areas covered by the ranking apart from Asia and Oceania, which saw a slight decrease, largely as a result of a notable drop in the total arms revenues of Chinese companies.”
Notably, Chinese arms manufacturers saw a large drop in reported revenues, declining 10% from 2023 to 2024, according to SIPRI. Just off China’s shores, Japan’s arms industry saw the largest single year-over-year increase in revenue of all regions measured, jumping 40% from 2023 to 2024.
American companies dominate the top of the list, which measures individual companies’ revenue, with Lockheed Martin taking the top spot with $64,650,000,000 of arms revenue in 2024, according to the report. Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems follow shortly after in revenue,
The Czechoslovak Group recorded the single largest jump in year-on-year revenue from 2023 to 2024, increasing its haul by 193%, according to SIPRI. The increase is largely driven by their crucial role in supplying arms and ammunition to Ukraine.
The Pentagon contracted one of the group’s subsidiaries in August to build a new ammo plant in the U.S. to replenish artillery shell stockpiles drained by U.S. aid to Ukraine.
“In 2024 the growing demand for military equipment around the world, primarily linked to rising geopolitical tensions, accelerated the increase in total Top 100 arms revenues seen in 2023,” the report reads. “More than three quarters of companies in the Top 100 (77 companies) increased their arms revenues in 2024, with 42 reporting at least double-digit percentage growth.”
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