Business
Ottawa’s emissions cap another headache for consumers and business

From Resource Works
Ottawa’s emissions cap for oil and gas aims to cut emissions but risks raising costs for consumers and disrupting industry stability.
Ottawa has brought down a new emissions cap for the oil and gas industry, with a mandate to reduce emissions by 35 percent from 2019 levels by 2030 to support the federal government’s climate targets. While the federal government is celebrating the cap as a big step towards a more sustainable future, it is going to make life harder for consumers and businesses alike.
This cap is coming in at a time when the oil sector is finally gaining greater stability due to the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline (TMX), and the mandate would undermine that progress and press greater costs upon households and industries that are already adjusting to high inflation and uncertainty in world markets.
Now that TMX is operational, Canada’s oil producers have grown their access to international markets, most importantly in Asia and the West Coast of the United States. Much-needed price stability now exists for Western Canadian Select (WCS), cutting the discount against the U.S. West Texas Intermediate benchmark, enabling Canadian oil to compete more effectively.
Newfound stability means that Canadian consumers and businesses have benefited from slightly lower prices, and that industry has grown less dependent on a more limited domestic demand. However, Ottawa’s emissions cap does threaten this new balance, and the sector now has to deal with compliance costs that could be passed down to consumers.
In order to meet the cap’s targets, Canadian oil producers must heavily invest in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, which is costly but essential. Major CCS projects include Shell’s Quest and the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, both of which are already operational.
The Pathways Alliance is a coalition of six major oil sands companies and is preparing to invest in one of the world’s largest networks for carbon storage. These efforts are crucial for reducing emissions, despite requiring vast amounts of capital.
Those in the industry are worrying that the emissions cap will push resources away from production and, instead, towards compliance, adding costs that will be borne by fuel prices and other consumer products.
Ottawa has portrayed the cap as an essential measure for meeting the federal government’s climate goals, with Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson labeling it “technically achievable.” Nonetheless, industry players argue that the timeline does not align with the practicalities of scaling CCS and other strategies aimed at decarbonizing.
Strathcona Resources executive chairman Adam Waterous pointed out the “stroke-of-the-pen” risk, in which shifting political landscapes imperil ongoing investments in carbon capture. Numerous oil producers feel that without certainty in carbon price stability, Ottawa’s cap will result in an unstable business environment that will push investment away from production.
Business leaders do not share the federal government’s optimism about the cap and see it as a one-sided approach that fails to reckon with market realities. The Pathways Alliance, which includes companies like Suncor Energy and Canadian Natural Resources, has been frustrated in its multiple attempts to get federal support to fund its $16.5-billion CCS project.
Rather than imposing these new limits, energy industry advocates argue that the government should provide targeted incentives like “carbon contracts for difference” (CCfDs), which help to stabilize carbon credit prices and reduce financial risk among investors. These measures would enable the energy sector to decarbonize without putting a greater burden on consumers.
The cap’s timing also raises concerns about the Canada-U.S. relationship. Canada has traditionally been a stable supplier of energy and helps to bolster U.S. energy security. However, as the U.S. increases its reliance on Canadian oil, the cap could disrupt this trade relationship. Lowered production levels would leave the economies of both the U.S. and Canada vulnerable, potentially disrupting energy prices and supply stability.
For households across Canada, the emissions cap could mean further financial strain. The higher costs of compliance passed to oil producers will mean higher prices at the pump and more expensive heating costs at a time when Canadian consumers are already struggling financially.
Businesses will also face increasing operating costs, which will be passed down to consumers via more expensive goods and services. Furthermore, higher costs and reduced production will erode Canada’s competitive advantage in the global energy market, slowing economic growth and risking job losses in the energy sector.
So, while Ottawa can laud its emissions cap as a necessary action on the climate, the implications for consumers and businesses are tremendous. Working with industry to find pragmatic, collaborative solutions is how Ottawa can avoid creating more financial burdens for Canadians.
Business
It Took Trump To Get Canada Serious About Free Trade With Itself

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Lee Harding
Trump’s protectionism has jolted Canada into finally beginning to tear down interprovincial trade barriers
The threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs and the potential collapse of North American free trade have prompted Canada to look inward. With international trade under pressure, the country is—at last—taking meaningful steps to improve trade within its borders.
Canada’s Constitution gives provinces control over many key economic levers. While Ottawa manages international trade, the provinces regulate licensing, certification and procurement rules. These fragmented regulations have long acted as internal trade barriers, forcing companies and professionals to navigate duplicate approval processes when operating across provincial lines.
These restrictions increase costs, delay projects and limit job opportunities for businesses and workers. For consumers, they mean higher prices and fewer choices. Economists estimate that these barriers hold back up to $200 billion of Canada’s economy annually, roughly eight per cent of the country’s GDP.
Ironically, it wasn’t until after Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that it began to address domestic trade restrictions. In 1994, the first ministers signed the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), committing to equal treatment of bidders on provincial and municipal contracts. Subsequent regional agreements, such as Alberta and British Columbia’s Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement in 2007, and the New West Partnership that followed, expanded cooperation to include broader credential recognition and enforceable dispute resolution.
In 2017, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) replaced the AIT to streamline trade among provinces and territories. While more ambitious in scope, the CFTA’s effectiveness has been limited by a patchwork of exemptions and slow implementation.
Now, however, Trump’s protectionism has reignited momentum to fix the problem. In recent months, provincial and territorial labour market ministers met with their federal counterpart to strengthen the CFTA. Their goal: to remove longstanding barriers and unlock the full potential of Canada’s internal market.
According to a March 5 CFTA press release, five governments have agreed to eliminate 40 exemptions they previously claimed for themselves. A June 1 deadline has been set to produce an action plan for nationwide mutual recognition of professional credentials. Ministers are also working on the mutual recognition of consumer goods, excluding food, so that if a product is approved for sale in one province, it can be sold anywhere in Canada without added red tape.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has signalled that his province won’t wait for consensus. Ontario is dropping all its CFTA exemptions, allowing medical professionals to begin practising while awaiting registration with provincial regulators.
Ontario has partnered with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to implement mutual recognition of goods, services and registered workers. These provinces have also enabled direct-to-consumer alcohol sales, letting individuals purchase alcohol directly from producers for personal consumption.
A joint CFTA statement says other provinces intend to follow suit, except Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.
These developments are long overdue. Confederation happened more than 150 years ago, and prohibition ended more than a century ago, yet Canadians still face barriers when trying to buy a bottle of wine from another province or find work across a provincial line.
Perhaps now, Canada will finally become the economic union it was always meant to be. Few would thank Donald Trump, but without his tariffs, this renewed urgency to break down internal trade barriers might never have emerged.
Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
2025 Federal Election
Carney’s budget is worse than Trudeau’s

Liberal Leader Mark Carney is planning to borrow more money than former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
That’s an odd plan for a former banker because the federal government is already spending more on debt interest payments than it spends on health-care transfers to the provinces.
Let’s take a deeper look at Carney’s plan.
Carney says that his government would “spend less, invest more.”
At first glance, that might sound better than the previous decade of massive deficits and increasing debt, but does that sound like a real change?
Because if you open a thesaurus, you’ll find that “spend” and “invest” are synonyms, they mean the same thing.
And Carney’s platform shows it. Carney plans to increase government spending by $130 billion. He plans to increase the federal debt by $225 billion over the next four years. That’s about $100 billion more than Trudeau was planning borrow over the same period, according to the most recent Fall Economic Statement.
Carney is planning to waste $5.6 billion more on debt interest charges than Trudeau. Interest charges already cost taxpayers more than $1 billion per week.
The platform claims that Carney will run a budget surplus in 2028, but that’s nonsense. Because once you include the $48 billion of spending in Carney’s “capital” budget, the tiny surplus disappears, and taxpayers are stuck with more debt.
And that’s despite planning to take even more money from Canadians in years ahead. Carney’s platform shows that his carbon tariff, another carbon tax on Canadians, will cost taxpayers $500 million.
The bottom line is that government spending, no matter what pile it is put into, is just government spending. And when the government spends too much, that means it must borrow more money, and taxpayers have to pay the interest payments on that irresponsible borrowing.
Canadians don’t even believe that Carney can follow through on his watered-down plan. A majority of Canadians are skeptical that Carney will balance the operational budget in three years, according to Leger polling.
All Carney’s plan means for Canadians is more borrowing and higher debt. And taxpayers can’t afford anymore debt.
When the Liberals were first elected the debt was $616 billion. It’s projected to reach almost $1.3 trillion by the end of the year, that means the debt has more than doubled in the last decade.
Every single Canadian’s individual share of the federal debt averages about $30,000.
Interest charges on the debt are costing taxpayers $53.7 billion this year. That’s more than the government takes in GST from Canadians. That means every time you go to the grocery store, fill up your car with gas, or buy almost anything else, all that federal sales tax you pay isn’t being used for anything but paying for the government’s poor financial decisions.
Creative accounting is not the solution to get the government’s fiscal house in order. It’s spending cuts. And Carney even says this.
“The federal government has been spending too much,” said Carney. He then went on to acknowledge the huge spending growth of the government over the last decade and the ballooning of the federal bureaucracy. A serious plan to balance the budget and pay down debt includes cutting spending and slashing bureaucracy.
But the Conservatives aren’t off the hook here either. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will balance the budget “as soon as possible,” but hasn’t told taxpayers when that is.
More debt today means higher taxes tomorrow. That’s because every dollar borrowed by the federal government must be paid back plus interest. Any party that says it wants to make life more affordable also needs a plan to start paying back the debt.
Taxpayers need a government that will commit to balancing the budget for real and start paying back debt, not one that is continuing to pile on debt and waste billions on interest charges.
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