All Canadians should know what this Calgarian is up to!

Submitted by Scott Cameron of Bassa Social Innovations

Get to know your neighbour.

You might be surprised how they’re changing the world.

#visioncanada2119

I’ve known Steve for the past year. He’s one of the first guys I met when I moved to Calgary and, as part of a small group of friends, someone that I get together with quite regularly for group dinners, birthdays and vacations – spent an amazing few days on the west coast sailing with he and his wife earlier this summer. Until today, I only had a hint of what he does.

Steve is an entrepreneur and a passionate energy sector guy. Like many Canadians, I’ve tended to glaze over when these guys start talking about their work. I’m a social sciences and former government sector guy – I had energy sector guys in my family and never really conditioned myself to understand what they did. I decided to change that and chose to take an hour out of my day to visit Steve in his shop here in SE Calgary.

He had another visitor in the shop with him that morning. A fourteen-year-old, middle school student that learned about Crossfire (the name of the technology) from her parents and decided to investigate it as part of her science curriculum. I’m glad she did. She took me over to a whiteboard at the front of the shop and used the schematics already drawn to explain how Steve’s invention (Crossfire) makes it possible to use solar energy to power a small air compressor (93% efficient) that controls the pneumatic valves at natural gas and oil wells making it possible for the site to eliminate emissions. Cool.

I’m not even going to attempt any further explanation because, well, I’m a social sciences guy. I learned a few things as a result of my visit today – that Steve is one of many Canadians investing their life savings into entrepreneurial ventures to make the energy sector greener, that the political and policy environment appears to be working against these innovations, that innovations of this nature won’t just improve the sector here but is gaining traction globally, and that a fourteen-year-old student has the intellect to understand and explain the technology to an old guy like me (because I chose to listen).

I also heard, firsthand, how this work can be frustrating and “profoundly discouraging” when it feels like the systems are stacked against innovation and political responses are filled with rhetoric. Innovation feels like a nice idea but appears to be tough sell politically. For now, it’s the courageous entrepreneurs that are taking up the cause and making stuff happen.

I’m encouraged by Steve’s work and glad that he has such a keen mind and passion to improve efficiency in the sector. He notes that “when given the challenge, we rise to the occasion”. Imagine the country we’d be if we adopted that attitude across industries – and I don’t necessarily think we’re far from it. Remember, I’m a social sciences guy writing about innovation in the energy sector – imagine the impact if people from across sectors chose to align for the purpose of building a nation to support our people, our progress and our planet. We need to support one another. We need a new narrative Canada. Let’s build that narrative together at #visioncanada2119.

Bassa Social Innovations

Scott Cameron is the former Social Planning Manager at The City of Red Deer, and before that he was Executive Director of The United Way of Central Alberta. He now lives in Calgary.

bassa Social Innovations is a values-based and principled consulting firm committed to positive social well-being for people, their families and their communities. We can help navigate the shared, and sometimes divergent perspectives of government, corporate, non-profit and community organizations to unravel social complexity, and explore collaborative and sustainable social change.

The term ‘bassa’ comes from the world of music, and basically means to play or sing an octave below what’s written. That’s how we describe our work – we work collaboratively to understand what isn’t obvious on the surface. The metaphor goes one step further…the bass note is the foundation of the chord and we seek to create foundational work that serves our clients in the present and future.

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Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).

So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light.

You’ll need to search long and hard to find a Canadian unwilling to help those less fortunate. And, so long as we identify as members of one nation¹, that feeling stretches from coast to coast.

So the basic principle of Canada’s equalization payments – where poorer provinces receive billions of dollars in special federal payments – is easy to understand. But as you can imagine, it’s not easy to apply the principle in a way that’s fair, and the current methodology has arguably lead to a very strange set of incentives.

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According to Department of Finance Canada, eligibility for payments is determined based on your province’s fiscal capacity. Fiscal capacity is a measure of the taxes (income, business, property, and consumption) that a province could raise (based on national average rates) along with revenues from natural resources. The idea, I suppose, is that you’re creating a realistic proxy for a province’s higher personal earnings and consumption and, with greater natural resources revenues, a reduced need to increase income tax rates.

But the devil is in the details, and I think there are some questions worth asking:

Whichever way you measure fiscal capacity there’ll be both winners and losers, so who gets to decide?
Should a province that effectively funds more than its “share” get proportionately greater representation for national policy² – or at least not see its policy preferences consistently overruled by its beneficiary provinces?

The problem, of course, is that the decisions that defined equalization were – because of long-standing political conditions – dominated by the region that ended up receiving the most. Had the formula been the best one possible, there would have been little room to complain. But was it?

For example, attaching so much weight to natural resource revenues is just one of many possible approaches – and far from the most obvious. Consider how the profits from natural resources already mostly show up in higher income and corporate tax revenues (including income tax paid by provincial government workers employed by energy-related ministries)?

And who said that such calculations had to be population-based, which clearly benefits Quebec (nine million residents vs around $5 billion in resource income) over Newfoundland (545,000 people vs $1.6 billion) or Alberta (4.2 million people vs $19 billion). While Alberta’s average market income is 20 percent or so higher than Quebec’s, Quebec’s is quite a bit higher than Newfoundland’s. So why should Newfoundland receive only minimal equalization payments?

To illustrate all that, here’s the most recent payment breakdown when measured per-capita:

Equalization 2025-26 – Government of Canada

For clarification, the latest per-capita payments to poorer provinces ranged from $3,936 to PEI, $1,553 to Quebec, and $36 to Ontario. Only Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC received nothing.

And here’s how the total equalization payments (in millions of dollars) have played out over the past decade:

Is energy wealth the right differentiating factor because it’s there through simple dumb luck, morally compelling the fortunate provinces to share their fortune? That would be a really difficult argument to make. For one thing because Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).

So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light. Perhaps that stand is correct or perhaps it isn’t. But it’s a stand they probably couldn’t have afforded to take had the equalization calculation been different.

Of course, no formula could possibly please everyone, but punishing the losers with ongoing attacks on the very source of their contributions is guaranteed to inspire resentment. And that could lead to very dark places.

Note: I know this post sounds like it came from a grumpy Albertan. But I assure you that I’ve never even visited the province, instead spending most of my life in Ontario.

Which has admittedly been challenging since the former primer minister infamously described us as a post-national state without an identity.

This isn’t nearly as crazy as it sounds. After all, there are already formal mechanisms through which Indigenous communities get more than a one-person-one-vote voice.

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Alberta

Big win for Alberta and Canada: Statement from Premier Smith

Published on April 2, 2025

Government of Alberta

Premier Danielle Smith issued the following statement on the April 2, 2025 U.S. tariff announcement:

“Today was an important win for Canada and Alberta, as it appears the United States has decided to uphold the majority of the free trade agreement (CUSMA) between our two nations. It also appears this will continue to be the case until after the Canadian federal election has concluded and the newly elected Canadian government is able to renegotiate CUSMA with the U.S. administration.

“This is precisely what I have been advocating for from the U.S. administration for months.

“It means that the majority of goods sold into the United States from Canada will have no tariffs applied to them, including zero per cent tariffs on energy, minerals, agricultural products, uranium, seafood, potash and host of other Canadian goods.

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