The Trans Mountain pipeline soap opera is much more than a boxing match between governments fighting to maintain office. It is the latest advertisement to the world that attempting to execute any major project in Canada is tough and getting tougher.
The upshot of that domestic affairs ad campaign will be what the country can ill afford: diverting international investment to more welcoming shores at a time when the status of the North American Free Trade Agreement and escalating trade war rhetoric between the United States and China have already increased investment uncertainty in Canada.
In the first in a series of economic reports released by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), the organization notes with alarm that Canada is falling behind its competitors in its ability to attract investment capital.
CAPP’s numbers should also be raising concerns elsewhere in the country and across the spectrum of Canadian businesses and public institutions that rely on such essential engines of the economy to generate the taxes and wealth that help support and drive other sectors.
CAPP notes, for example, that while capital investment in the oil and gas sector increased globally in 2017, it was down 19% in Canada compared with 2016 and 46% compared with 2014. According to CAPP, that compares with a 38% increase in oil and natural gas investment last year in the United States.
Meanwhile, a new Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada survey of accountants in corporate leadership positions found that two of three respondents now consider Canada a less competitive place than the United States in which to invest and do business.
Anyone in this country who thinks the aforementioned numbers should not be a concern, and that the discordant noise from the Kinder Morgan sabre dance is not exacerbating that worry, is blind to economic realities and what they mean to the country’s fiscal health and its future standard of living.
