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Energy

Natural resources remain backbone of Canada’s trade and prosperity

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6 minute read

From the Fraser Institute

By Jock Finlayson and Elmira Aliakbari

It’s hard to overstate the importance of energy to our economy. In its latest “scorecard” report, the Coalition for a Better Future notes that “over the past decade, Canada recorded a cumulative trade gap of $130 billion. Had it not been for energy, our trade gap would have been about $1 trillion.” By any measure, the energy sector punches above its weight when paying Canada’s bills.

Canada is a mid-sized economy accounting for roughly 2 per cent of global production. Within North America, we represent less than one-tenth of the collective output of the three national economies. Canada is also an “open” economy that relies on cross-border flows of trade, investment and knowledge to sustain our high living standards.

To pay our way in an unforgiving and very competitive world, Canada must produce and sell exports to customers in other markets. Among other benefits, these exports furnish the financial means to pay for the vast array of imports that enhance the wellbeing of Canadian households and allow many of our businesses to operate efficiently and grow.

In 2022, Canada exported $779 billion of goods to other countries, and $161 billion of services, for a total of $940 billion. About three-quarters of Canada’s exports are destined for a single market—the United States. Canada also sources the bulk of imports from the U.S.

A hard truth about Canada’s trade is the outsized role of natural resource-based products in the export mix. Added together, energy, non-metallic minerals (and related products), metal ores, forest products and agri-food (i.e. food produced from agriculture) comprise roughly half of Canada’s international exports of goods and services—a notably larger share than in other countries with advanced economies (apart from Australia and New Zealand).

Energy alone accounted for 27 per cent of Canada’s merchandise exports in 2022, generating $212 billion for Canadian businesses, workers and governments. Mining contributed $85 billion in export revenues, followed by forest products ($60 billion) and agri-food ($57 billion).

Within the broad energy basket, oil and oil-based products dominate, accounting for more than three-quarters of all energy-based export revenues. Despite innumerable speeches and press releases issued by the federal government, energy’s contribution to Canada’s exports is poised to increase in the next few years—due not to growing exports of “clean tech” goods, carbon-free electricity or hydrogen, but to pending liquefied natural gas (LNG) production in British Columbia coupled with rising volumes of Western Canadian oil shipments following the completion of pipeline expansion projects.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of energy to our economy. In its latest “scorecard” report, the Coalition for a Better Future notes that “over the past decade, Canada recorded a cumulative trade gap of $130 billion. Had it not been for energy, our trade gap would have been about $1 trillion.” By any measure, the energy sector punches above its weight when paying Canada’s bills. The same is true, albeit to a lesser extent, for the other major resource sectors.

Many Canadians, huddled in increasingly unaffordable urban communities that have few evident connections to the country’s natural resource economy, may be puzzled by the continued vital importance of resource extraction and processing to Canada’s prosperity.

Ultimately, any trading country has a ledger showing the trade surpluses and trade deficits of its industry sectors. In Canada’s case, a handful of sectors generate significant trade surpluses, which help finance the large trade deficits incurred in other parts of the economy.

The story is a simple one—positive trade balances in the energy, mining, forestry and agri-food sectors offset chronic—and in some cases fast-growing—trade deficits in consumer goods, chemicals and plastics, motor vehicles/parts, and industrial and electronic goods. Canada also runs a smallish deficit in our overall services trade.

The sectoral trade data are informative. Among other things, they tell us where Canada has a “comparative advantage” in the global context. For a market economy, a pattern of positive trade balances is evidence that it has a comparative advantage in industries that reliably report trade surpluses.

Armed with such information, smart policymakers should create and sustain a business and investment climate that champions and bolsters the commercial success of industries that underpin the export economy. This is a message the Trudeau government has had trouble digesting, perhaps because it relies heavily on the votes of a few large metropolitan areas while most rural and resource-dependent regions remain a political afterthought.

Bjorn Lomborg

The stupidity of Net Zero | Bjorn Lomborg on how climate alarmism leads to economic crisis

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From spiked on YouTube

Note: This interview is focused on Europe and the UK.  It very much applies to Canada. The 2025 Federal Election which will see Canadians choose between a more common sense approach, and spending the next 4 years continuing down the path of pursuing “The Stupidity of Net Zero”.

European industry is in freefall, and Net Zero is to blame.

Here, climate economist Bjorn Lomborg – author of Best Things First and False Alarm – explains how panic over climate change is doing far more damage than climate change itself.  Swapping cheap and dependable fossil fuels for unreliable and expensive renewables costs our economies trillions, but for little environmental gain, Lomborg says.

Plus, he tackles the myth of the ‘climate apocalypse’ and explains why there are more polar bears than ever.

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Energy

Trump signs four executive orders promoting coal industry

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From The Center Square

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President Donald Trump signed four executive orders Tuesday promoting the deregulation and expansion of the “beautiful, clean coal” industry in the U.S.

The first order White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf said might be “one of the most significant executive orders” the president has issued so far.

“This directs all departments and agencies of the federal government to end all discriminatory policies against the coal industry. This ends the leasing moratorium that prevents new coal projects on federal land, and it’s going to accelerate all permitting and funding for new coal projects,” Scharf said.

The other executive orders attempt to prevent some Biden-era policies from going into effect that would have caused the shuttering of dozens of American coal plants; support policies promoting the continued incorporation of coal and fossil-fuel forms of energy into the grid; and direct the Department of Justice to investigate state policies that may illegally or unconstitutionally “[discriminate] against coal” and “secure sources of energy.”

The White House hosted a large group of coal miners, members of Congress, administration officials and others Tuesday afternoon to commemorate the “Unleashing American Energy” signing event.

“This is a very important day to me because we’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned despite the fact that it was just about the best – certainly the best in terms of power, real power,” Trump said.

Trump said he was “honored” to be signing the orders in defense of the coal industry and that the administration was “ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal once and for all.”

Trump also said his administration was working on something unique that would guarantee the coal industry would not be upended by changes in administrations, based on an idea he had “about 15 minutes” before the event.

“We’re going to give a guarantee that… if somebody comes in, they can’t change it at a whim. They’re gonna have to go through hell to close you up,” he said to the coal miners.

Under the new administration, the department of the interior has approved the expansion of the Spring Creek Mine in Montana, and Trump promised there would be more coal ventures in Alabama, North Dakota, Utah, Wyoming and other states.

“I think we’re gonna look back with great pride at what we’ve done today – not just in putting people to work but at really reawakening our country,” Trump said.

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