Karly Coleman Says YES

Cyclist, cycling educator and Edmonton’s only bike traffic reporter

I started cycling in 1992, when bike lanes were but a gleam in a transportation engineer’s eye. I’ve taken and taught Cycling Canada courses on bike safety. I’ve been on cycling and active-transportation boards, advocating for cycling space on roads—any underutilized space, anywhere. I’ve cycled across Canada and written a memoir about that journey. So I have a lot of skin in the vehicular cycling game. But I was slow to appreciate bike lanes. As they’ve become more popular in North America, I’ve come to appreciate the freedom and protection they give people who ride.

Mostly I love how bike lanes show where cyclists are on the road. To be clear, we are allowed on most roads in Alberta (and are not allowed on most sidewalks), but we’re not always so visible. Given the small (but slowly growing) number of cyclists in many cities—e.g., around 19 per cent of Calgarians say they ride weekly; about 6 per cent ride daily—we’re hard to see and easy for vehicle drivers to fly by, to our potential peril. Collisions cost drivers too, so bike lanes protect everyone.

Moreover, vehicles themselves are getting bigger. Some 63 per cent of new vehicles now registered in Canada are classified as “multi-purpose” (which excludes cars and includes SUVs), compared to 42 per cent in 2017. These vehicles, which get bulkier with each iteration, make it much harder to see other users of our roads. Research published in 2024 in the journal Economics of Transportation shows that with every additional 10 cm of front-end height on a vehicle, the risk of death for pedestrians increases by 22 per cent.

Another reason we’re not always visible is that too few drivers are watching for us. They’re quelling their children’s fights, thinking about what to eat for supper, wondering if their favourite restaurant is still open—all while navigating a 4,500-pound machine on streets full of signs, signals, construction, other vehicles and pedestrians. And sometimes we cyclists are those drivers. We too know how easy it is to miss the neon jacket or flashing headlight on a cyclist’s body or bike.

Bike lanes are a game-changer especially for cyclists who belong to vulnerable populations, including women, children, seniors and differently abled people. With bike lanes, we don’t have to worry nearly as much about being unseen; there are literally concrete barriers between the oversized carapaces being driven through the streets and us.

With lower upkeep costs than roads, and year-round usability, bike lanes offer practical mobility for anyone who wants to get around—not just for those lucky enough to own a car. And bike lanes save us all money. As urban historian Lewis Mumford warned, adding highway lanes to deal with congestion is like “loosening your belt to cure obesity.” Edmonton’s Anthony Henday Drive has proved him right. Widening began on that road less than a decade after it opened. Meanwhile, former mayor Don Iveson famously referred to bike lanes as “budget dust.” He too was right. The annual maintenance and repair of Edmonton’s pathways, including bike lanes, costs about $178/km. To maintain the same length of road—and Edmonton has way more roads than bike lanes—costs $1,285/km.

 

Kayode Southwood Says NO

Senior policy analyst, Canadian Federation of Independent Business

Alberta’s municipalities should pause the expansion of bike lanes. While cycling infrastructure is important, the way bike lanes are being implemented today ignores the unique needs of the streets and communities they traverse. A one-size-fits-all approach is not only ineffective, it’s harmful. It disrupts local economies, hurts small businesses and alienates residents.

Proponents often claim that opposition to bike lanes is simply a culture war between cyclists and drivers. But that framing misses the point. Bike lanes have unfortunately become one of the most polarizing infrastructure issues in our cities not because people oppose cycling, but because cities are implementing these projects poorly. The real issue isn’t bikes vs. cars; it’s a failure to plan, consult and integrate bike lanes in ways that respect local communities and businesses.

In Calgary and Edmonton, for example, small businesses have reported significant losses due to new bike lanes installed in front of their stores that eliminate customer parking. Recent data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) shows one-quarter of Alberta’s small businesses rank traffic management infrastructure, including bike lanes, as the most harmful municipal issue they face.

This isn’t to say bike lanes are inherently bad. Protected infrastructure for cyclists is essential for safety and mobility. But when cities pursue aggressive expansion plans—installing intersecting bike lanes across nearly every downtown street—the result is confusion and underutilization.

Consider Calgary’s 15th Avenue SW bike lane. It runs west–east just one block south of an existing east–west lane, and is flanked by dual-direction lanes on both 12th Avenue SW and 11th Street SW. The latter sees an average of just 128 cyclists on weekdays according to the City’s data—a mere 0.005 per cent of the Beltline’s population of 25,880. More broadly, only 2 per cent of downtown trips in Calgary in 2024 were made by bike, half the target set in the City’s 2020 cycling strategy. Edmonton’s downtown bike lane data shows similarly low usage and unclear goals. Clearly, current bike lane investments aren’t yielding the expected modal shift, and further expansion would be wasteful.

Despite this, city officials continue to push forward without adequately consulting the people most affected. For example, Calgary’s engagement process for the 15th Avenue SW bike lane included virtual sessions attended by only two businesses. That’s not meaningful consultation. In both Calgary and Edmonton, municipal officials charge ahead with bike lanes that reduce accessibility, ignoring opposition.

 

Before adding still more bike lanes, municipalities must first commit to thorough monitoring and meaningful stakeholder engagement. Cities need to provide tangible support to businesses affected by construction—who see a 40 per cent drop in sales on average—and set clear, measurable goals for ridership with a willingness to adjust targets if they aren’t met.

Right now, bike lane strategies in Alberta feel like a race instead of a methodical plan. It’s time to slow down, listen up and build infrastructure that works for everyone.

 

karly coleman responds to kayode southwood

Kayode Southwood’s argument seems to be that while bike lanes aren’t “inherently bad,” cities haven’t asked people for permission to build them, and their implementation has been botched. Success would only be possible if bespoke lanes were created in place of the current one-size-fits-all approach. So, overall, we shouldn’t invest in bike lanes.

But bike lanes in Alberta aren’t a problem. Our cities are finally rising to the challenge of providing safer mobility infrastructure, including bike lanes. These provide more transportation choices and stronger economic resilience, not less. If anything is a problem, it’s a long-standing municipal planning system that sees automobiles as the major means of transportation. This bias has shaped our lives, guiding the placement and proliferation of streets, buildings and parking lots. For many of us, it’s the only life we know. We can see this in Southwood’s arguments. He ignores how our auto-dominant system might evolve to better serve everyone and how neighbourhood revitalization can positively impact even businesses. To hang the decline in fortunes for small businesses on bike lanes is a polarizing framework without hard evidence to back it up.

In 2025 we’ve seen what happens when provincial governments jump onto the populist anti-bike-lane bandwagon. Ontario attempted to rip out bike lanes with its Bill 212: Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act. Ontario’s Superior Court found that removing protected bike lanes violated cyclists’ Charter rights by increasing risks to life and security of the people without any lawful justification. The province relied on “weak anecdotal evidence and expert opinion… unsupported, unpersuasive and contrary to the consensus view of experts,” without data showing that bike lanes caused the congestion or harm that politicians claimed.

Bike lanes deserve the same patience and evidence-based thinking as any other transportation infrastructure.

Southwood points to CFIB survey results that bundle bike lanes together with every other “traffic management” irritant and then treats that as proof that, ipso facto, cycling infrastructure is “harmful”—precisely the kind of conflation rejected by the Ontario court: anecdote and hearsay. Every credible study on safety, mode shift, economic vitality and corridor performance points the other way.

Southwood claims municipal planners have “failed” citizens by not consulting and integrating bike lanes into communities respectfully. As proof he states the City of Calgary held virtual engagement sessions in which only two businesses participated. It’s unclear how this constitutes a lack of engagement. Regardless, people weigh their participation in municipal processes against everyday routines, such as childcare, work issues and elder care. Sometimes the engagement session loses out, despite municipal entreaties. Demanding full attendance as a precondition for change simply hands a veto to whoever has the most time to show up.

Since parking is another of Southwood’s issues, let’s look at it. According to the late professor Donald Shoup, North America has seven parking spots for every car. Research shows vehicles are parked for an average of 23 hours a day—functioning more like bollards than transportation devices. And while automobiles can carry several people at once, they seldom do. Statistics Canada reports that over 80.9 per cent of automobile trips in 2025 were taken by single-occupant drivers. One driver stops at a store on the way home, parks, goes in, shops and leaves: one stall, one customer.

Now imagine the same stall designated for 12 bikes. One spot, 12 customers, same timeframe, vastly more commercial activity. Even in winter cities, research bears this out. Nonetheless, culturally, we cyclists aren’t seen as economic drivers. Southwood reinforces this blind spot by treating the loss of car parking as a crisis while ignoring the far greater economic potential of alternatives.

He also claims bike lanes are underutilized. If only it were so simple. Until we provide continuous, better-connected routes, the number of cyclists will increase only incrementally. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t install bike lanes. It means that as people see others like them riding, they’ll be encouraged to ride too. But only if they feel physically, emotionally and socially safe enough. And if they can park outside the store.

We wouldn’t rip out a bridge because traffic is light on opening day. Cycling infrastructure deserves the same patience and evidence-based thinking as any other transportation initiative. We don’t need a moratorium on bike lanes; we need the courage to keep building them—and the honesty to admit that the only thing truly threatened here is the primacy of the private car, not the public interest.

 

 

kayode southwood responds to karly coleman

Karly Coleman makes a heartfelt case for more bike lanes, highlighting the visibility and protection they offer cyclists. As someone who completed my first triathlon this year and logged thousands of kilometres on my bike, I agree that safe cycling matters. But accelerating bike-lane expansion along retail corridors without fixing how we plan, build and measure these projects is the wrong approach. In Alberta, bike lane implementation too often undercuts small-business viability. We need to pause blanket expansion and adopt a methodical business-first strategy that earns durable public support.

Across Canada, small firms have endured an average of 508 days of construction-related disruption over the past five years, according to the CFIB report “Hard Hats and Hard Times.” It found construction causes a 22 per cent revenue decline and roughly $10,000 in cleaning and repair costs. When lane removals, concrete medians and signal changes are layered onto multi-season construction, a mom-and-pop retailer or café operating on thin margins can’t simply “wait it out.” These aren’t soft costs—they translate into shorter hours, layoffs and closures, especially on streets where parking and loading are eliminated without alternatives. For many small businesses, curbside access isn’t a luxury; it’s the difference between survival and closure.

Affordability concerns add another layer. Edmontonians face a nearly 7 per cent property tax increase in 2026, so perhaps bike-lane expansions could have been scaled back to ease pressure on businesses and residents. Back in 2022, Edmonton city council approved $100-million to build out the city’s bike-lane network. Even a fraction of that could have been redirected to reduce tax burdens during a challenging economic climate. When cities are asking businesses to absorb higher taxes and rising costs, they need to demonstrate that every dollar spent delivers measurable value—not just political optics.

If this approach isn’t boosting ridership but is harming businesses, are cities meeting their goals

Coleman argues bike lanes bring year-round usability. True—but they also bring year-round costs, even when ridership plummets in winter. Edmonton devotes nearly 45 per cent of its $67-million snow and ice budget to clearing bike lanes, multi-use paths, bus stops, stairs and pedestrian spaces. City officials acknowledge that clearing active pathways can be more expensive per kilometre than clearing roads. The standard—to clear priority bike lanes to bare pavement within 24 hours—is appropriate for safety, but it underscores why route selection must be value-driven in winter cities. When taxpayers and businesses are footing the bill for premium maintenance in corridors that see minimal winter use, it’s fair to ask whether priorities are aligned with reality.

Additionally, consultation with merchants on bike lanes is often superficial. Transit projects show the same pattern. In Edmonton’s Chinatown, for example, the City pushed ahead with a transit lane that removed all parking on 101st St NW. Area businesses voiced strong opposition and sent letters to council without response. When projects reconfigure parking, loading and delivery routes, cities must prioritize grassroots engagement—door-to-door outreach, roundtables and access audits—before finalizing designs. Online surveys and virtual sessions attended by only a handful of businesses don’t constitute meaningful consultation. If cities want buy-in, they need to meet business owners where they are—on the street, in their shops and at times that work for them.

Protected lanes do improve safety—when placed where they’re needed most. But building parallel lanes within blocks of each other without clear ridership targets or review commitments is poor stewardship of curb space. One of Calgary’s Cycling Strategy goals is to increase satisfaction with cycling. If the current approach isn’t boosting ridership and is harming businesses, is it meeting its objectives Truly we don’t know. The City stopped publishing its annual Bicycle Program Yearbook in 2013 and hasn’t posted a cycling strategy update since 2018. Our cities should regularly review ridership data and public opinion to trigger course corrections. The lack of measurement is what prompted Alberta’s transportation minister in 2025 to call for bike-lane removals.

Cities don’t need an endless tug-of-war between cyclists and shopkeepers—they need a plan for coexistence. Bike lanes can deliver safety and sustainability, but only if paired with policies that keep storefronts accessible and main streets vibrant. That means treating small businesses as partners, not afterthoughts: maintaining parking, integrating curbside loading zones, offering construction relief, and measuring success by both ridership and retail health. If we get this right, we won’t just build bike lanes—we’ll build trust, strong local economies and streets where commerce and active transportation thrive together.

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Yadira Tejeda-Saldana Says Yes

Director of responsible research & innovation, Canada, New Harvest

With the global population projected to reach 10 billion by 2050, and with natural resources finite, creating sustainable food solutions is critical. This challenge, however, presents an opportunity to innovate and enhance food production through technologies such as cellular agriculture, which uses cells from animals, plants or even microbes (like those for brewing beer) to produce food, including animal-cell-derived meat. Innovation can help feed a growing population by complementing traditional agriculture. While much attention focuses on “lab-grown meat,” cellular agriculture also produces other products, such as cocoa, coffee or vanilla. Their manufacture can be in facilities or integrated into local rural operations, making them familiar and scalable, like yogurt.

Canada’s abundant resources and strong agricultural legacy position us to have a domestic cellular agriculture sector with 86,000 jobs and worth $7.5-billion by 2030. Under certain scenarios, cellular agriculture could improve efficiency and reduce environmental pressures—for example, using less land and creating fewer GHG emissions in meat production. Cell-derived food won’t replace traditional ways but will work with conventional farming to diversify production and strengthen rural resilience. This is crucial, as climate change is already harming farmers and ranchers. A study cited by Farm Credit Canada estimates droughts, floods and storms could lead to $3-billion in agricultural losses between 2022 and 2050. While cellular agriculture still depends on farm inputs, it could help farmers adapt by creating new revenue streams, e.g., converting damaged crops into feedstock for cell-based production.

Canada strongly depends on agri-food trade. We export over 50 per cent of our agricultural production and import roughly 30 per cent of our food and beverages. Global conflicts and trade issues can disrupt this supply chain, emphasizing the urgency of strengthening national food and economic security. This is a call to action for producers, researchers, innovators and consumers to collaborate to build greater resilience. Cellular agriculture can contribute by leveraging cutting-edge technology to boost the efficiency of local food production.

Farms could integrate cellular agriculture alongside crops and livestock, transforming otherwise wasted materials into cell-based products or value-added inputs. By-products from canola or pea processing, for instance, can be repurposed to culture animal cells for meat, advancing a circular economy and reducing reliance on single export markets (e.g., 65 per cent of canola meal goes to the US). This would boost autonomy and jobs and diversify revenue across the agricultural value chain, the way craft brewing and distilling revitalize local economies.

Our choice today is whether to allow cellular agriculture to flourish here or simply observe its benefits from afar. Canada has long been known for high-quality, safe agricultural products. By embracing cellular agriculture we can maintain that reputation while putting ourselves at the forefront of sustainable change. By approving cell-derived meat, we will ensure a thriving agricultural sector for generations to come.

 

Alice Driver Says No

Author of The Life and Death of the American Worker

When I think of meat and of how invested society is in continuing to subsidize and eat meat, I think of Tender is the Flesh, by Argentinian novelist Agustina Bazterrica. In this dystopian tale, a virus has contaminated all animal meat, and so companies begin to raise humans for slaughter. While that might seem unrelated to lab-grown meat, both proposals represent a future in which societies recognize problems with conventional meat and invest immense resources in creating novel sources of meat that are troubling in their own way.

What do we mean by lab-grown meat A company extracts cells from a live animal, then grows these at scale in a stainless-steel bioreactor. As the Government of Canada puts it, “The resulting tissues are intended to be used—for example, baked, grilled etc.—like any other food ingredient.” Singapore, Israel, Australia and the US have approved some lab-grown meats for human consumption on a limited scale; Canada has not.

The same global companies that invented modern factory farming, Tyson Foods and Cargill, are now investing in the companies that are producing lab-grown meat. In other words, companies that have caused immense environmental damage and worsened labour standards across the world are now part of the new protein technologies. What companies such as Tyson and Cargill have successfully bet on in the past is that most consumers don’t care how their meat is produced, how it tastes or what harms it creates. With lab meat, these companies are making the same bet.

They are also marketing lab meat to more conscious consumers, calling it the “future of food” and environmentally friendly. This claim, however, merits skepticism. A 2023 study published in ACS Food Science & Technology, for example, suggests that lab meat’s carbon footprint is potentially much worse than that of beef, based on a life-cycle assessment of the energy used and GHGs emitted at all stages of production. The biopharmaceutical industry generally—and the “broth” in which lab meat is grown specifically—is energy-intensive.

But even if in the long term lab-grown meat proves slightly less damaging to the environment than conventional meat, will it matter Industry projects lab-grown meat will cost the consumer $6–$12 per pound. Independent studies estimate a cost of $17–$23. In this scenario, lab-grown meat, unless it’s subsidized, is unlikely to be the future of food for most of us.

To eat meat is a morally and ethically complicated choice involving animal welfare, workers’ well-being, the environment and human health. Lab-grown meat involves various nuances of these same issues. Big Tech’s solutions are dubious: a vision of a future with an abundance of meat products that do no harm. And if Canada approves lab meat, it risks replicating the factory-farm model, with its tiny number of multinationals dominating the domestic market and food supply. “If we took that money away from Big Meat,” counters food journalist Alicia Kennedy, “there’s so much we can do on smaller scales to make sure food is equitably grown and equitably accessed, and nutritional needs are met along with cultural needs.”

 

Yadira Tejeda-Saldana responds to Alice Driver

Alice Driver MAKES A compelling argument about the potential of cell-derived meat to perpetuate the flaws of factory farming, and I share her concerns. I’d argue, however, that nowadays companies can still count on most consumers not caring about how their meat is produced, how it tastes or the harm it causes. A 2025 Canadian report indicates that more than 50 per cent of Canadian consumers are concerned about health risks, nutritional value, pesticides and preservative levels in their food. It’s also well documented that rising food prices affect shopping habits. Although consumers are open to purchasing locally produced, healthier or higher quality food, budget constraints are undermining their willingness to improve their food choices. The same report shows that 77 per cent of Canadians are concerned about climate change, with a majority shifting their dietary habits to reduce their impact. Canadians also seek deeper insights into the food they buy, with more than 50 per cent reporting that they look for sustainability information through social media or traditional media.

I’d also agree with Driver that it’s debatable whether cell-derived meat can be more environmentally friendly than conventional meat. Life-cycle assessment studies show a wide range of potential outcomes, which are highly dependent on production assumptions, scale and energy sources. The main challenge is that no mass-production facility currently exists, so projections remain speculative. But the study that Driver cites was widely misrepresented by journalists. That study assumes growth-culture media inputs will be “highly refined,” similar to those used in the biopharmaceutical industry. This refinement is the primary reason why the global-warming potential of cell-derived meat was said to be substantially higher than that of conventional beef. But while highly refined inputs were typical in the early stages of research into cell-derived meat, it’s unlikely large-scale production will rely on such costly inputs. In fact, several companies and researchers are developing less refined food-grade media formulations to lower costs and improve the environmental footprint of cell-derived meat. For instance, they’re exploring agricultural by-products, such as canola meal, as affordable replacements.

We’re developing ways to lower costs and improve the environmental footprint of cell-derived meat.

And even if Driver were correct that the cost of cell-based meat is higher than that of conventional meat, this is a common pattern for new products, especially when manufactured at a small scale. Computers and cell phones were initially very expensive and inaccessible to most people. Scientific and technological advancements have now enabled most people to have them. Pineapples were once rare and expensive for many people. Thanks to ships, refrigeration, canning technology and breeding advancements, however, pineapples can now be found in supermarkets worldwide at an affordable price.

The first burger made using cell-derived technology was estimated to have cost $330,000. Driver’s referenced prices of $6–$12 and $17–$23 per pound already represent a significant decrease from the early days. The industry is focused on addressing scaling-up challenges to make the product more affordable still.

I align with Driver’s views on the moral and ethical issues surrounding meat consumption. It’s all quite nuanced. Food isn’t merely a product; it’s deeply interconnected with cultures, traditions and lifestyles. Accordingly we need to ensure that new food technologies account for this. As a food scientist and avid food lover, I believe in responsibly using technology to address pressing global challenges. Emerging technologies such as cellular agriculture shouldn’t be viewed as a silver bullet or as a trap set by Big Tech. Rather they’re tools that must be governed judiciously. In Canada the cellular agriculture industry remains small, providing ample opportunities to apply lessons from factory farming regarding labour, equity and consolidation. The ecosystem is in development, enabling broad engagement from diverse groups. Canadian researchers recognize this: a project at the University of the Fraser Valley is exploring the social impacts of cellular agriculture and developing guidelines to embed justice from the outset so that the benefits of cellular agriculture reach rural communities, workers and Indigenous stewards.

We should think globally but act locally. With current economic models faltering and the federal government encouraging middle powers such as Canada to develop resilient, homegrown supply chains, opportunities are emerging. Cellular agriculture has the potential to retool our food system without repeating past mistakes. My team at New Harvest is actively pursuing this idea, welcoming grassroots partnerships with diverse communities willing to build a fairer future from the ground up.

 

Alice Driver responds to Yadira Tejeda-Saldana

It is true that the global population is projected to reach 10 billion by 2050 and that natural resources are finite. I do, however, question why we, as a society, continue to equate sustainability with meat, which, whether factory-farmed or lab-grown, is one of the most energy-intensive foods on the planet to produce. I am interested in exploring the philosophy of meat and the implications of continuing to invest heavily in the consumption of animal flesh. The base assumption of the argument to produce lab-grown meat is that meat is the way to meet the caloric needs of the future population. In a 2025 interview, however, Stanford food and agriculture expert David Lobell said that lab-grown meat probably wouldn’t have a significant impact on food sustainability “anytime soon enough to really matter…”

While it’s true that innovation can help feed a growing population, why is innovation defined as cell-grown meat Climate change is already harming farmers and ranchers, but an honest discussion would involve acknowledging the environmental impact of all forms of meat. A 2023 UC Davis study found that “the global-warming potential of lab-based meat using these purified media is 4 to 25 times greater than the average for retail beef.” Edward Spang, an associate professor of food science and technology and one of the authors of the study, wrote, “Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea.”

Canadians are already some of the most voracious meat-eaters in the world. The easiest, most cost-effective and most direct way for Canadians to address climate change and shrink their ecological footprint would be to reduce their meat consumption, not substitute one form of energy-intensive meat for another.

Scientists have shown that a plant-rich diet that includes only moderate meat consumption could prevent 40,000 early deaths per day by 2050 and cut in half the food-related emissions driving global heating. But we’d need to start right away. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, which has been shattering heat records in 2026, and where the growing number of heat deaths has been covered by The New York Times. The effects of climate change affect us all, and we need to look first to the simple changes, such as eating less meat, that could profoundly help the earth and our own health.

A more sustainable future could involve foods such as crickets, mealworms, algae and seaweed. Sure, people might recoil at the “strangeness” of such foods. But I often wonder why it’s easier for society to invest over $3-billion in meat grown in stainless steel vats than for us to seriously discuss alternative proteins, vegetarianism or veganism. And it’s not like Canadians would be starting from scratch. According to a 2025 study, 7.6 per cent of Canadians are already vegetarian, and 4.6 per cent are vegan.

We should reduce meat eating, not substitute one form of energy-intensive meat for another.

I also question to what extent cellular agriculture could help beleaguered farmers create new revenue streams, because cell culture systems are extremely sensitive. For example, damaged crops couldn’t be used in a lab environment if they had mycotoxins (from mould contamination), chemical contamination or pathogenic microbes. While Canada has abundant natural resources, the lab-grown meat industry has yet to demonstrate that it will reduce environmental pressures on even a small scale, let alone a large one.

And yet I recognize that protein is currently a cultural obsession being used to market everything from popcorn to Doritos. Global meat-packing companies, many of which are also investing in lab-grown meat, wield significant political influence, especially in the US. In 2025 The New York Times declared “Meat is back, on plates and in politics,” citing the influence of the Make America Healthy Again movement, which includes members of the Trump administration such as Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The far-right movement across the globe, including Canadian author Jordan Peterson, has embraced and promoted the carnivore diet.

There is a way to discuss cellular agriculture that recognizes its limitations. The lab-grown meat industry has proven it can attract investment, and it would certainly be a way for Canada to create jobs in a new industry. However, the industry hasn’t proven that it’s at the forefront of sustainable change, nor that it’s the food of the future. It is an expensive, energy-intensive biopharma-derived food product that, at current costs, would be unaffordable to most of the world’s population. We’d be wise to direct our energy elsewhere.

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If you’d like to write a letter to the editor, email us at letters@albertaviews.ca 

There is a uniqueness to Alberta’s annual budget unveiling. The ritual alternates between celebratory and funereal, thanks largely to an overreliance on the volatile prices of oil and gas. Great budget or disastrous budget. Surplus or deficit. Sometimes year-to-year. Sometimes all in the same year.

Alberta’s 2011–2012 budget, for example, initially forecast a $3.4-billion deficit… but turned out to be pretty much balanced. A relatively good year. Not so in 2020–2021, when a bleak $7-billion projected deficit at the start of the year morphed into a behemoth $17-billion hole thanks to the price of oil plunging—at one point turning negative—during the pandemic.

On February 28 this year, just two days after finance minister Nate Horner introduced our latest budget, oil prices began spiking when the US and Israel attacked Iran. High prices will pump more revenue than anticipated into Alberta’s treasury in the short term but create more long-term uncertainty. The fact remains, this year’s outlook is bad enough that Horner should have used pallbearers to carry the budget documents into the legislature, weighed down as they were by a $9.4-billion deficit. That’s on top of last year’s $4-billion deficit. And in anticipation of deficits the next two years: $7.6-billion and $6.9-billion.

Smith is blaming this mess on Alberta’s reliance on oil prices, a burden she says she inherited from previous governments and thus could do nothing about last year, this year or in coming years. As someone who in the 2023 election campaign vowed to deliver balanced budgets, Smith has now created another scapegoat: too many immigrants “flooding” Alberta, overwhelming schools and hospitals. That’s thanks to Justin Trudeau, says Smith, as she continues to use the former PM as a punching bag. (Never mind that just two years ago Smith herself announced an “aggressive target” to double Alberta’s population through immigration, to give the province more clout in Ottawa.)

On the eve of Alberta’s last election the newly minted premier was revelling in a record budget surplus of $11.5-billion, buoyed by a record $25-billion in resource-driven income. Now, reality is slapping us all in the face, and we really should pay attention—particularly the separatists in our midst. Much of their fever dream relies on energy revenue, lots of it, pouring into the provincial treasury every year. They argue that, post-separation, Albertans will be financially better off, paying lower taxes, enjoying annual budget surpluses of $20+ billion, heading into retirement like Scrooge McDuck high-diving into a pool of money. If only, they insist, Albertans had the courage to separate. It all sounds so simple and easy.

Now, fiscal reality is slapping us all in the face, and we really should pay attention— particularly the separatists.

It would be neither, of course. Insurmountable troubles would face an independent Alberta—assuming such a lonely creature could even be created. A province can’t unilaterally separate. First Nations are loudly opposed. Poll after poll shows a strong majority of Albertans reject separation. And many writers, including my fellow Alberta Views columnist Paula Simons, have waxed eloquent about the strengths, values and shared history of Confederation and Alberta’s place in it.

But such sentiments don’t sway those who view separation through the perspective of the dollar. As University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe pointed out in a Hub column last summer, “Alberta’s separatist impulse is different [from Quebec’s]—it’s almost entirely about money.” He then dismantled separatists’ visions of a utopian state, using as an example Britain’s diminished economy post-Brexit: “A separate Alberta would be a poorer Alberta.”

Smith and separatists say Alberta contributes more money per capita to the federal government than any other province. Yes, but that’s because Albertans have higher salaries and thus pay more in federal taxes. We’re not being unfairly milked. And speaking of per-capita arguments, at the height of the pandemic Alberta was receiving more monetary support per capita from the federal government than any other province. A prolonged slump in the price of oil could see Alberta one day becoming a recipient of equalization.

Smith has started reinvesting in the Heritage Savings Trust Fund as a way to counter the province’s overreliance on oil and gas prices, hoping to build the current $31-billion account to at least $250-billion by 2050. But that plan, ironically, relies on continued oil and gas revenue windfalls.

In the past Alberta spent non-renewable energy income pretty much as fast as it came in. It’s a chronic and destructive pattern that politicians have followed with the willing support of voters. Lougheed and Klein enjoyed massive oil/gas windfalls and could do no wrong. Every other premier since then has been unlucky and booted from office, by party or voters. Smith was lucky three years ago. But no longer.

The fate of Alberta premiers is too often decided by luck, by a roll of the oil-price dice. So too would be the finances of a separate Alberta—a poorer Alberta.

Graham Thomson is a political analyst, member of the Legislature Press Gallery and former Edmonton Journal political columnist.

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phil mount Says YES

National Farmers Union VP of policy

Canada’s supply management system supports viable family-scale farming and has had widespread support from Canadian consumers for my entire lifetime. Yet lately it has faced a stream of ideologically motivated criticism bent on tearing the system apart. Mostly these critics try to convince Canadians that we should value the abstract, ephemeral concept of “free trade” over a stable supply of perishable staple foods from local farms.

Rather than “Should Canada keep agricultural supply management?” the question should be “Why would anyone ever consider dismantling supply management?” For 50 years, supply management in Canada—a system of production quotas, cost-of-production pricing and import controls—has proven, time and again, to be the envy of family-scale farmers around the world. It’s also the envy of consumers in countries where essentials such as milk and eggs are subject to price volatility, erratic supplies and seasonal shortages. And in this time of US threats, supply management is a shining example of real Canadian food sovereignty in action.

Supply management allows family farms to earn a modest, reasonable livelihood, retaining a fair proportion of the farm-gate price—unlike most other agricultural sectors in Canada, where, for 30 years, the farmer’s share of food prices has been declining dramatically. The latest National Farmers Union research shows that—outside of supply-managed sectors—the trend has only worsened since COVID. But under supply management, the farmer’s share is based on their cost of production, which delivers a fair return that allows farms to plan and invest in the future. New entrant programs in each of Canada’s supply-managed sectors (dairy, poultry, eggs) attract young farmers to the industry and support farm succession.

Supply management protects farms from consolidation and bankruptcy far better than the “free market” does—and without the need for significant direct annual subsidies. This stability allows our farms to remain family-scaled, against global trends. The average dairy farm in Canada has 105 cows; prairie provinces average 190. Today two-thirds of all milk production in the US is on farms with more than 1,000 cows. The scale of these massive farms, in endless pursuit of efficiency, brings its own problems, including heavy reliance on low-paid migrant labour, vast amounts of animal waste to be managed, and bigger impacts from animal health issues. Culling large US flocks in response to avian influenza, for example, limited the supply and more than doubled the price of eggs in the US in early 2023, and again in early 2025.

With Canadian farmers invested in providing safe, secure, local products, the supply management system ensures that critical perishable staples are constantly available to consumers at reasonable prices, well regulated, and produced with ever-improving environmental and animal welfare outcomes. And above all, the system provides stability for farm families and communities. This uniquely Canadian system has delivered a resilient food supply for half a century. It is the solution. So why are some people trying to make it into a problem?

 

danny le roy Says No

University of Lethbridge associate professor of economics

For its advocates, supply management isn’t about economic rationality. Its purpose is to use the apparatus of the state to control production, marketing and trade for advocates’ own self-benefit.

For decades, supply management has meant rising prices and incomes in Canada for producers of milk, poultry and eggs. But it comes with costs that compound with time. Supply management stifles individual Canadians from realizing their self-interest as consumers—eggs, poultry and dairy products cost more, and smaller amounts are available than would be without supply management. Many agribusinesses now depend financially on supply management. These issues prompt nasty conflicts—among farmers, consumers, even around the dinner table.

Supply management is a hindrance to trade (in the widest sense of the word). It limits Canadians who want to import dairy, poultry or egg products from abroad. As it reduces the volume of trade, it increases costs to the importer and reduces the return to the exporter. This doesn’t make people richer; it makes them poorer—here in Canada and elsewhere.

High domestic prices for dairy, poultry and eggs hurt Canadians, particularly the poor, who spend a larger portion of their income on food. Lower-income consumers consequently spend less on everything else. Purveyors of other goods and services sell less than they would otherwise, or sell at lower prices, or both, and generate lower revenues.

Production quotas that restrict supply—a key pillar of supply management—hinder new producers wanting to enter the industry, as well as existing producers, who must purchase additional quota to expand their enterprise. There’s no larger financial barrier to expanding an agri-business than the cost of quota. And producers forgo the benefit of using productive assets they otherwise would have acquired.

Supply restrictions are also a hindrance to producers wishing to differentiate their output to satisfy specific consumers. The sale of raw milk to any buyer but a provincial milk marketing board, for example, is a federal crime punishable by up to three years in prison. While it’s legal to drink raw milk, Canada is the only G7 country that prohibits its private distribution and sale. In Europe raw milk can be bought at a vending machine.

 

phil mount responds to danny le roy

For three decades I’ve been responding to the harshest critics of supply management—almost all of them with no farm background, and motivated by ideology. This experience has proven useful especially as “truthiness” has become an inescapable part of the media landscape. What does truthiness look like It can be a suggestion that two things are related, or that one directly causes the other, when in fact it isn’t so. Something said with such certainty that it sounds like it should make sense—until you learn the facts.

Take, for example, “The sale of raw milk to any buyer but a provincial milk marketing board… is a federal crime punishable by up to three years in prison.” Prohibitions on the sale of raw milk have a long history in Canada, due to concerns over food-borne illnesses. In 1938 Ontario was first to implement compulsory milk pasteurization. This was a quarter-century before that province brought in supply management. The federal government mandated pasteurization in 1991. The regulation of raw milk remains under the purview of Health Canada. All of this holds true with or without supply management. The point is therefore irrelevant.

Then there’s this: “For decades, supply management has meant rising prices and incomes in Canada for producers of milk, poultry and eggs.” In fact, for decades inflation has contributed to “rising prices and incomes” for farmers, and this is true whether or not these farmers are in supply-managed sectors. Meanwhile the costs of production (seed, electricity, equipment, interest payments) have also risen for decades. Under supply management, farmers have rationally agreed to carefully control their production of essential perishable staple foods, and, in exchange, the rest of us agree that those farmers should receive a price that mirrors the rising costs of production, based on a continually updated survey of farms across the country. Incredibly fair.

We get a stable supply of important perishable staple foods in exchange for a fair return to farmers.

Agricultural producers in other sectors in Canada don’t have the protection of supply management, and for them the last 50 years have been a tale of market booms and busts, “price-taking” from fewer and fewer buyers, and a never-ending treadmill of expansion and more debt. At the same time, rising prices from input and service suppliers add to the costs of production, swallowing an ever-greater share of these farmers’ gross incomes, adding to even more farm debt, forcing farmers to rely on off-farm income and driving most of their children out of farming. None of this is hypothetical. It is well documented. And has been for decades.

Jurisdictions that did away with supply management, as Australia did with dairy in 2000, have learned the real costs of “free trade.” The latest USDA Global Agricultural Information Network report on Australia shows that “between 2002 and 2024, the national milking herd shrank by 39 per cent… the number of dairy farms declined by 71 per cent, … milk production fell by 25 per cent … [and] average herd size increased by about 70 per cent.” The hypothetical benefits of “free trade” continue to shimmer on the horizon. But with “dairy deserts” now appearing in Australia, feed costs spiking due to drought, global oversupply depressing international dairy commodity prices, and Australian processors choosing to rely on cheap imports, the hypothesis is floundering.

The last 30 years in the US have seen a dramatic loss of small and mid-sized farms, and concentration of chickens, eggs and dairy onto megafarms. Research shows more dairy megafarms are injecting their cows with synthetic hormones, and more consistently receive government subsidies. A catastrophic 2023 crash in milk prices led to $1.3-billion in direct government payments to US dairy farmers. The “free market” boom-bust-subsidy model works just fine for megafarms in the US.

The bottom line is supply management in Canada is an agreement that continues to provide a stable supply of perishable staple foods to all of us, in all regions, in exchange for a fair return to farmers, with no government payments required. To protect that guaranteed, stable, high-quality supply, we’ve agreed to keep strong controls on the massive volumes that would spill over our borders. These consumer and farmer protections are more important than ever, as megafarms decimate mid-sized farms (that’s all we have in Canada!) and increase strain on water, volatility of domestic and global markets, and the reliance on precarious migrant farm workers.

Fortunately, Canadian consumers, farmers, legislators and policymakers continue to ignore the criticisms from an ideologically motivated elite with no skin in the game, and continue their reasonable and rational support of our uniquely Canadian pledge to protect food sovereignty: supply management.

 

Danny le roy responds to phil mount

I’m grateful for the CHANCE to answer the question “Why would anyone ever consider dismantling supply management?” This system of production quotas, import controls and high prices not only fails to achieve its intended outcome, it harms everyone in Canada, including the people it purports to help. Supply management has created and compounded inefficiencies, increased the cost of food to Canadians and spawned a litany of unintended consequences.

Policy reforms elsewhere are illustrative. In the 1980s Australia began to address the negative effects of supply management. In 2000 the program was deregulated. State authorities that had set prices and managed supply were abolished. Consumer milk prices fell while raw milk prices rose from the efficiency gains throughout the industry. More recently, deregulation has driven productivity gains in the UK and EU as well.

Canadians, however, continue to be deprived of the benefits conferred by unfettered competition. The number of farms governed by supply management here has fallen faster than those that aren’t. In 1971 supply management was implemented for milk first in Ontario and Quebec and then in other provinces. That year, 145,318 farms reported dairy cattle out of 366,128 farms. Of the 189,900 farms in Canada today, only 9,048 reported milk shipments last year. Egg and poultry farms total 4,500. Less than 8 per cent of farms in Canada produce supply-managed commodities. Almost without exception, the only entrants in supply-managed industries are now family inheritors or people who sold farms in Europe and bought farms here. Supply management hasn’t prevented concentration of primary production; it has encouraged it.

Supply management not only fails to achieve its intended outcome, it harms people it aims to help.

Some critics of supply management are indeed ideologically motivated. But correctly identifying the logical implications of government policy isn’t a product of ideology but of deductive reasoning.

Free trade among people isn’t an abstract concept. It’s the crux of our daily existence, and it can be impeded. We constantly sacrifice things we value to obtain things we value more. Each person aims to improve their situation; otherwise trade can’t occur peacefully for mutual benefit.

With this in mind, one wonders which consumers are “envious” of supply management. The policy purposefully restricts production. Manufactured scarcity then increases prices. Consumers have less access to local goods and services and those from other jurisdictions. Trump-era tariffs do likewise. The higher prices US importers must pay compromises their productivity. The cascading impacts reveal the complexity and interconnectedness of the agrifood system and the consequences of disrupting the spontaneous order and creative power of free markets.

Trump’s tariffs expose the importance of individual freedom, voluntary co-operation and the division of labour in driving prosperity. The most cogent response for us, then, would be to remove all trade barriers in Canada, from regulations limiting movement of products between provinces to, yes, import taxes on supply-managed goods.

Farmers’ falling share of the consumer dollar has nothing to do with supply management. It’s the result of all the value-added activity in transforming commodities into consumer goods. Farmers don’t produce food; they produce a primary product which after transportation, processing, storing, wholesaling, advertising, retailing, preparing and serving ultimately becomes food. The farmer’s share has fallen as consumers get wealthier and spend less of their disposable income on food. Not having to spend so much on food is a sign of prosperity, as it allows more consumption of every other good or service.

It’s often argued supply management is needed because milk, poultry and eggs are perishable. Not only does this fail to describe why supply management for these commodities isn’t legislated in all other countries, it fails to explain why it doesn’t exist for products that are even more perishable. Consider freshly cut flowers. Not one petal on this planet is produced and marketed through a national supply management policy.

And if production quotas, pricing based on production costs, and trade restrictions are so great, why limit them to a few commodities Why not expand them to all goods and services Supply management for every person! Restrict production of every good and service. Set prices for everything and enforce them by administrative dictate. A policy causing more poverty is difficult to conceive.

Canada’s supply management model is not the envy of family-scale farmers around the world, nor of consumers. The evidence is overwhelming: supply management has no place in a free and prosperous society. The familiar blue cow logo on our dairy products isn’t innocuous. It is the mark of sanctioned oppression.

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You could be forgiven for assuming that March of 2020 would have been pretty much the worst time imaginable to open a craft brewery in a sparsely populated town in southern Alberta. The provincial government had just closed restaurants and bars, along with every other type of indoor gathering, in an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19.

The Pass Beer Company, by that point, had been three years in the making—and that’s not including the years Tony and Danielle Radak had talked and daydreamed about the idea. The couple didn’t have a canning machine to package the first batches of beer from their new brewhouse, which included a taproom and restaurant at the west end of Blairmore, one of five communities that make up the municipality of Crowsnest Pass. Tony owned and operated a local glass company and installed a take-out window in the front door so they could fill up growlers.

“Beer is essential. Who knew?”

It didn’t take long for the lineups to form. People needed something to do and new ways to connect with each other. Standing in line, even in the chill of early spring in the Rockies, to try beers made right there in town, turned out to be just what the community needed. “We were very, very busy. We didn’t get the days off during COVID. Beer is essential. Who knew?” Danielle Radak told me.

I called Radak, whose official job title is general manager and pizza overlord, in the fall of 2025, to get her perspective on the plan to allow for direct-to-consumer alcohol sales across most of the country. The Alberta government had signed a memorandum of understanding the previous June with eight other provinces and the Yukon to eliminate restrictions on the trade of alcohol within Canada. Officials committed to putting a plan into action by the spring of 2026. The agreement is part of a broader effort to cut all barriers to interprovincial trade, which is itself a strategy to strengthen the national economy in the face of unpredictable tariffs and other threats from the Trump administration in the United States, our largest trading partner.

The push for free trade across Canada would entail abolishing restrictions on the exchange of goods and services and on labour mobility between provinces and territories. Streamlining the national economy, however, could undermine the authority of provincial governments to protect local interests. The craft beer industry in Alberta, for example, benefited from lower tax rates at a critical stage of its development, which encouraged new breweries to start up in communities across the province. Those kinds of policies, ones that safeguard regional priorities, would become harder to implement in a new era of frictionless trade.

Streamlining the national economy could undermine provincial authority to protect local interests.

It’s unlikely any Albertans will buy beer from Newfoundlanders, or vice versa, once the new rules are in place. The cost of beer is relatively low compared to the cost of shipping. The Pass Brewery, however, is only a 15-minute drive from the boundary with British Columbia. But Radak told me she did not envision direct to consumer sales becoming a priority. Her team already has trouble keeping up with demand.

The brewery has flourished since its inception. They employ 45 people during the high season and 26 over the winter. The beer first flows to the restaurant and taproom, which has seating for about 150 during the summer when the patio is open. You can find the beer in cans in Twin Butte and on tap in a couple of bars in Waterton and Lethbridge, Radak said. They’re building a cold storage facility next to the brewery so they can increase distribution, but the focus will remain local. Either she or Tony does all the deliveries. “We’re a small-town brewery,” she said. “We want to keep the personal connection.”

Small, local and personal are not part of the lexicon of proponents of free trade, who tend to think big to maximize economies of scale and the resulting gains in efficiency. There’s a $200-billion pot of gold at the end of the liberalizing trade rainbow, according to a study by Trevor Tombe, an economist from the University of Calgary, and Ryan Manucha, a research fellow with the C.D. Howe Institute. Their report for the Macdonald–Laurier Institute, published in 2022, cites a range of possible gains for the economy of between 4.4 and 7.9 per cent of GDP, or $110-billion to $200-billion. Politicians such as prime minister Mark Carney have latched on to the higher-end estimate, which is now thought to be closer to $250-billion, when presenting internal free trade as a way to offset the losses inflicted by the erratic tariff policies of the United States.

Tombe outlines in the report how the most efficient way for governments to realize this economic potential is through “mutual recognition,” a policy to eliminate duplication in the approval process for goods, services and professional credentials by automatically accepting the standard established in the province or territory of origin. “I’m quite optimistic,” Tombe said, in an interview in early September, “because governments have moved considerably this year with a lot of changes to how they’re approaching the issue.”

He referred to new policies and commitments made by provincial, territorial and federal governments as evidence that the rhetoric around reducing internal trade barriers could translate into meaningful action. Among new legislation brought in by the provinces in 2025, Alberta and Nova Scotia have agreed to recognize credentials across the two provinces, subject to a streamlined review process by local regulatory bodies. Regulators must now process equivalent licences within 10 days so people can get to work faster.

This past year numerous press conferences also announced memorandums of understanding (MOUs) between provin-cial governments. Premier Danielle Smith and Ontario premier Doug Ford, for instance, signed an MOU in early June that signals an intention to make it easier for regulated professionals to work in either province, and to reduce barriers to the flow of goods and services such as the interprovincial trade of beer, wine and whisky. These MOUs are not legally binding, but Tombe said they’re an important step towards broader mutual recognition deals. “I take the governments at face value when they say they’re committed to it, that we’re going to see that rolled out,” he said.

Not everyone is so enthusiastic. Marc Lee, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), argued the push to cut trade barriers is mostly political theatre, conjured from arcane economic theorizing. “It sounds good and sounds credible, and it sounds like you’re defending the country and you’re boosting the Canadian economy, but it’s just vapour,” he said in an interview.

And it comes with risk. Lee co-authored a report published this summer called The Premier’s New Clothes about the risks of unchecked trade liberalization. He argued it could set in motion a “race to the bottom” in terms of regulatory oversight for the manufacture of goods and the licensing of professionals. If the goal is a single, pan-Canadian standard, then Lee suggested that governments harmonize up, not down. They should choose the best regulation, the one that has the most merit. “The trick in public policy,” he told me, is that “you’re always weighing the public interest against economic efficiency, and economic efficiency shouldn’t always win. It is just one of the factors you need to think about in terms of providing the good life for people in a particular place.”

In the report, Lee made the case that Canada already has an effective mechanism in place for safeguarding unencumbered internal trade. The Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) was signed in 2017, replacing a similar accord in an effort to further liberalize trade. The CFTA is an opt-out agreement, meaning a government—provincial, territorial or federal—agrees to zero barriers on everything unless they explicitly list it as an exception.

In June of 2025 the federal government’s Bill C-5 became law and removed all 53 federal barriers to the interprovincial flow of goods, services and workers. The heavy lifting, however, falls to provinces and territories, which among them have many more exceptions, as well as overlapping licensing mandates and regulatory standards. But Lee cited the fact there have been only a handful of disputes filed under CFTA since its inception as proof the agreement is largely working as intended, that it has succeeded in encouraging more goods, services and workers to move freely across the country.

 

Alcohol represents a fraction of all internal trade in Canada, less than 1 per cent, but it’s an interesting case study because of the colourful history and complex manoeuvring the provinces have undertaken to protect and monopolize their dominion over booze.

When the NDP were in power in Alberta, for example, the government bent over backwards to help the local craft beer industry get up and running. They implemented a series of policy changes from 2015 to 2018 to shield the fledgling industry from competition until it could stand on its own two feet. This exposed the Alberta government to legal action and a challenge levelled against their craft beer policies under the Agreement on Internal Trade, or AIT (the precursor of the CFTA). The provinces, territories and federal government had made the agreement in 1995 to reduce trade barriers. It included a dispute resolution mechanism to challenge rules or policies that undermined free trade.

Under AIT, the NDP policies were found to violate Alberta’s commitments to free trade within Canada. But those policies also succeeded in supporting a new industry at a critical stage in its development. Jason Foster, a beer writer and educator from Edmonton, told me that even breweries that emerged after the policies were abandoned, such as the Pass Beer Company, benefited from the government intervention because it had helped build a market and appetite for craft beer. This tension between frictionless trade and the ability of provincial and territorial governments to protect what they see as the public interest has long been a subplot in Canada’s story.

Take, for example, the case of Gerard Comeau, a 62-year-old retiree from a small coastal town in New Brunswick. He’s famous for a beer run that went sideways and took him all the way to the Supreme Court. Ryan Manucha, the research fellow from the C.D. Howe Institute, writes about the significance of the case in his book Booze, Cigarettes and Constitutional Dust-Ups.

Comeau was pulled over by the RCMP in the fall of 2012 after crossing back into New Brunswick from Quebec with a trunk full of booze. The police confiscated 354 bottles of beer and three bottles of liquor and wrote Comeau a ticket for almost $300 for exceeding his personal limit of what he was allowed to bring across the provincial boundary. He was one of 17 people charged that day for making the short trip into Quebec to take advantage of lower prices for alcohol.

Lawyers with the Canadian Constitution Foundation approached Comeau to help challenge his fine in court because they saw a chance to question the constitutionality of laws such as the one that limited the amount of alcohol someone could bring into New Brunswick for personal consumption. The legal team based their case on a challenge to how section 121 of Canada’s Constitution had historically been interpreted by the courts. The free trade clause reads:

“All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces.”

A New Brunswick judge acquitted Comeau, but lawyers for the provincial government appealed the case and it went to the Supreme Court of Canada in the spring of 2018. Section 121, the nine justices unanimously concluded, only applies to the laws and regulations that make trade restrictions their primary goal. The judges recognized the law about personal limits to bringing alcohol into the province could have other justifications, such as a desire to promote public health and wellness and mitigate the risks of addiction.

“The court ruled that section 121 has a limited scope; it does not invalidate all government measures that create barriers to trade,” Manucha writes. “Their decision is baffling, unless one studies our story of internal trade, and starts by reaching back into the political and economic history of Canada.”

Since before Confederation, improving and encouraging internal trade has been a perennial priority for our politicians. Manucha describes in his book how the economies of the colonies of early Canada depended on exports of raw materials, such as fur, timber and grains. Abrupt changes in trade policies by Britain in the mid-19th century wreaked havoc on the colonies, which adapted by shifting focus to the United States. Then the Americans pulled the rug out from underneath Canadian businesses again a couple of decades later. “Twice in twenty years, Canada’s export-reliant economic order was rearranged by external political forces,” Manucha writes.

His book includes a quote from an 1865 speech by George Brown, the founder of The Globe, about the economic potential of Confederation. It reads like a comment that could be made today: “…One of the best features of this union is, that if in our commercial relations with the United States we are compelled by them to meet fire with fire, it will enable us to stop this improvidence, and turn the current of our own trade into our own waters,” said Brown.

Even though the motivation to improve internal trade was baked into Canada’s constitution from the outset, other innate factors make it difficult to implement. “Internal trade barriers in Canada tell a story of our country’s struggle to pursue an enduring singleness, despite a staggering variety in climate, topography, demography and economics,” Manucha writes. The push and pull of unifying the national economy despite inherent regional and cultural differences has long roiled the Canadian soul. In Alberta that conflict erupted perhaps most clearly in the story of craft beer.

 

Alberta’s first and only NDP government was elected in May of 2015 amid a low point in the oil and gas industry’s habitual see-saw. Rachel Notley and her team came to power with a vision to try to diversify the economy, to seek out and support new industries that could paper over the yawning gap left in the province’s GDP by tanking oil prices. Craft beer was also having a moment, with dozens of new coffee-shop-like breweries opening every year across Canada and the US.

Alberta’s own craft beer boom, however, had yet to take off. Part of the problem, said Jason Foster, the beer expert from Edmonton, is that back in the mid-1990s the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission (AGLC) had unilaterally opened our borders to beer imports. “Fill out a two-page form and pay $75 and you’re in,” Foster said. It didn’t matter where the beer was made in Canada, everyone abided by the same set of rules and paid the same fee to earn shelf space at the liquor store.

Other boards in other provinces played a more active role in gatekeeping—picking and choosing which beer would get stocked in which stores. Unlike the AGLC, these agencies retained—and still retain—the power to give preferential treatment for in-province breweries. If you want to distribute your beer in Quebec, for example, you have to build your own warehouse in the province for storing it. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario has a complex application process that includes proving your beer is sufficiently different from other products already in the market. And there is a tasting panel, a team of judges who try the beer and decide whether they like it enough to stock it in the province. “They’re all different ways in which you curtail the importation of out-of-province beer. You make it harder to sell that beer,” Foster said.

The Alberta government changed the markup policy back in October of 2015 to advantage smaller breweries, those that produced less than 10,000 hectolitres, within the three western provinces of the Northwest Partnership Trade Agreement. These breweries were charged $0.10/litre. Everybody else, regardless of size, paid $1.25. Steam Whistle, a brewery from Toronto, filed a lawsuit against the markup in late 2015, which pushed the government to try another approach.

The NDP changed the policy in July of 2016, this time applying the $1.25/litre rate to all beer sold in Alberta, regardless of the brewery’s size or location. The government created the Alberta Small Brewers Grant Program, which provided funds to craft brewers that made up the difference between their previous lower rate and the new flat rate. The grant program gave local craft brewers a competitive advantage, both in liquor stores and when trying to get on tap at a bar or restaurant. It helped to raise their profile, said Foster, and was an attempt “to try and create a little bit of a shield, push back on the beers that are coming in from other provinces by increasing their price point, which gives a little bit of a competitive advantage to the local brewers, which would then hopefully give them some market share.”

About a year after the grant program was implemented, a dispute resolution panel ruled that it violated the province’s obligations under the Agreement on Internal Trade. The complaint had been submitted by Artisan Ales Consulting Inc., a Calgary company that imports beers from Quebec and around the world. The government appealed, but another panel made the same ruling in July of 2018. It ordered the government to repeal or amend Alberta’s small brewer grant program within six months. The government also lost the lawsuit brought by Steam Whistle. “Justice Gillian Marriott held that the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission’s tariff and grant policy for Alberta craft breweries was an unconstitutional restraint on interprovincial trade,” wrote lawyer Andrea Stempien, a partner with Bennett Jones, in a summary of the decision.

The judge looked to the decision the Supreme Court had recently made in the case involving Gerard Comeau. The main takeaway from that ruling was that the party challenging the law must show its “essence and purpose” was to restrict trade. “The court concluded that both the 2015 mark-up scheme for Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan, and the 2016 mark-up/grant scheme intended to prefer Alberta craft brewers and restrict trade,” Stempien wrote.

The NDP government scrapped the grant program in December 2018. They had succeeded in giving Alberta craft breweries a three-year runway to get a toehold in the market and start to build brand recognition. “This policy did what it was meant to do, and it was a success, and it was a central component of the craft beer boom in Alberta,” Foster said. His latest official count, from November of 2024, puts the number of these small-scale breweries in the province at 134.

 

The NDP’s difficulty in getting their craft-beer policies to stick, even though the measures had a public-interest dimension, supports CCPA economist Marc Lee’s argument that the current system already tips the scales in favour of commerce. “The CFTA and its predecessor, the 1995 Agreement on Internal Trade, impose free trade disciplines that significantly constrain how provincial and territorial governments regulate business, investment and labour mobility in their areas of jurisdiction under the Constitution,” his report from this past summer reads. Lee told me he’s skeptical any real economic gains are left to be made in terms of liberalization. The low-hanging fruit has been picked. Arguments for further cutting of trade barriers, such as through mutual recognition policies, Lee said, are based on complex theoretical equations and calculations that don’t hold water outside of an academic, ivory tower context.

Economist Trevor Tombe, in contrast, told me that when determining potential economic gains, he used the standard modelling techniques and equations for calculating the effects of liberalizing trade. He applied the same methods used in the international context. “So that’s the trick, taking the models that exist elsewhere but adapting them to the Canadian context so they can plug into the StatsCan data,” he said. “Statistics Canada, to its great credit, produces the best internal trade data on Earth by a pretty wide margin.”

The small brewers’ grant program “was a central component of the craft beer boom in Alberta.”

Elements of his analysis, however, have not received as much traction in the media and other discourse about internal trade. The economic gains he projects would take decades to materialize. They involve a redistribution of industry. Some provinces would win in some sectors and lose in others. “The pie can be bigger, but the slices get cut up in different ways when we liberalize,” Tombe said. People would have to follow the new opportunities. His models suggest that 1.3 to 1.7 per cent of Canada’s workforce would migrate. And, Tombe acknowledges, perhaps this is a price Canadians are not willing to pay. His goal is to ensure we have the best data possible to make an informed decision. “It may very well be that Canada’s highly decentralized federation might inevitably lead to high internal trade costs, and that might be a cost worth paying,” he said.

Alberta’s craft beer industry is what Tombe might call, in the poetic language of an economist, a legitimate non-economic objective. Bigger breweries, even if they’re outside the province, benefit from economies of scale and can provide cheaper alternatives. But craft beer, even as the sector is undergoing a contraction, is something more than the sum of its parts. It has a cultural dimension. Foster described how a large proportion of the craft breweries in Alberta were started in small towns. They employ local people and buy local ingredients. They contribute to a sense of place. They reflect and shape the identity of communities. It’s no coincidence the NDP government defended its policies to protect craft beer by invoking an image of agrarian Alberta, of the prairies, of a place that grows the best barley in the world. The pitch was infused with patriotism. The trade barrier was a tool to nurture a nascent industry that helps to make Alberta, Alberta.

 

Doug Horner is the author of Back from the Deep (Steerforth Press, 2024). He lives in Calgary.

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Tegan Hill says YES

The Fraser Institute’s director of Alberta policy

Equalization has long been contentious to Albertans. The program has clear design flaws, but the even bigger issue is that Albertans make important contributions to Canada yet bear the brunt of federal policies that disproportionately impact our economy.

The goal of equalization is to ensure provinces can provide reasonably comparable public services at reasonably comparable tax rates. In effect, the formula estimates a province’s “fiscal capacity” (i.e., ability to raise its own revenues) by applying a national average tax rate to different income sources and seeing how much revenue each province could raise at this hypothetical rate. Provinces that would raise less than the national average on a per person basis will receive equalization; provinces that would raise more will not.

In 2025/26 equalization payments will total $26.2-billion. All provinces except Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan will receive payments. If 16 per cent of federal revenues come from Alberta, Albertans will contribute roughly $4.2-billion to equalization this year while receiving no direct benefit. Indeed, the province hasn’t received equalization since the 1960s.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not they support the principle of the program. But some clear quirks simply don’t add up—and certainly don’t benefit Alberta.

Consider the “fixed-growth rule,” which ensures the total equalization payment grows roughly in line with the economy. Originally intended to act as a ceiling on equalization payments, it’s had the opposite effect, such that the total amount of payments grows even as the gap between “have” and “have not” provinces shrinks. If equalization is meant to close the gap between provinces, the amount spent should decrease, not increase, as richer and poorer provinces become more aligned.

Another problem is inconsistency in the treatment of different revenue types. Quebec, for example, provides below-market electricity prices. But the equalization formula accounts for actual resource revenues when determining Quebec’s ability to raise revenues. Put differently, it underestimates Quebec’s ability to raise revenue from its electricity provision. Ironically, the formula doesn’t follow the same approach for Alberta, which has no sales tax. In Alberta’s case, the formula includes hypothetical sales tax revenue when determining the province’s ability to raise revenue. Put simply, the formula doesn’t penalize Quebec for forgone hydro revenues but does penalize Alberta for forgone sales tax revenues.

The issue of “fairness” goes beyond equalization. Albertans contribute significantly to the federation but don’t get a fair shake in return. A slew of federal policies disproportionately and negatively impact Alberta: Bill C-69 (the “no pipelines act”), a tanker ban off BC’s northern coast, a cap on oil and gas emissions, and numerous “net-zero” policies, to name a few. It’s easy to see why many Albertans feel they’re getting a raw deal in the federation—and equalization is a piece of that puzzle.

 

Trevor Tombe says no

The University of Calgary economist

To former premier Jason Kenney, equalization is “the most powerful symbol of the unfairness of Alberta’s deal in Confederation.” In a 2021 referendum, just over 60 per cent of Alberta voters supported removing the principle from the Constitution. But not everyone agrees. Peter Lougheed, perhaps the most respected premier in our history, saw equalization as “a crucial aspect of Canadian confederation” and “one of the most equitable methods of maintaining the economic well-being of Canadians.” In my view Lougheed was right.

First, let’s clear up a common misconception: Alberta doesn’t “pay into” equalization. No province does. It’s a federal program funded by federal taxes collected from individuals and businesses paying the same tax rate across the country.

Of course, while everyone contributes similarly (based on their circumstances), Alberta has not received an equalization payment since the early 1960s. Isn’t that unfair?

Consider equalization’s main purpose. It isn’t about punishing wealth; it’s about ensuring all provinces can offer similar public services. That Alberta doesn’t receive payments is simply due to our economy being Canada’s strongest: we don’t need help. Even when we received equalization, we didn’t need it. Premier Ernest Manning initially gave nearly all of it to Albertans as direct cash transfers—“Manning Bucks,” if you will.

Today we need help even less. At average tax rates, Alberta could raise over $17,000 per person in revenue, nearly $4,000 more than BC and $10,000 more than PEI. Compared to Quebec—often singled out as an unfair beneficiary—Alberta’s fiscal capacity is around $7,000 per person higher. This matters. Provinces with weak economies struggle to fund health and education. Equalization brings them up to the national average. And this benefits not just the “have nots” but also Alberta. By helping poorer provinces meet their responsibilities without Ottawa stepping in, Canada can continue to be decentralized. This leaves Alberta freer to pursue its own interests.

Canadians are also mobile. Over the past five years, over 420,000 people moved to Alberta from another province—and brought with them the education that other provinces paid for and equalization helped support.

Still, the program has flaws. It might encourage provinces to keep taxes high, avoid developing resources, or undercharge for electricity. If Quebec raised power prices by just two cents per kilowatt hour, for example, it could lose over $4-billion in equalization. The program therefore subsidizes cheap power in Quebec. Is that unfair Perhaps. But design details can be fixed.

The current formula was designed by one Albertan, Al O’Brien, chair of the expert panel, and enacted by another, prime minister Stephen Harper. It was significantly improved then, and can be improved even more today. But details aside, equalization reflects a core value: helping ensure all Canadians can receive normal public services without paying abnormally high taxes. That’s not unfair to Alberta. It’s quite the opposite.

 

tegan hill responds to trevor tombe

It’s a privilege to engage in dialogue with Trevor Tombe—not only a respected economist, but the professor who first taught me about equalization. He asserts that equalization is not about punishing wealth, and that it in fact helps free Alberta to pursue its own interests. I’ll address these arguments in turn.

Tombe offers a clear and accurate explanation of the purpose behind equalization, emphasizing that it isn’t about punishing wealth. This is true—the intention of the program is to ensure Canada’s provinces can provide reasonably comparable services at reasonably comparable tax rates. But features in the program’s design lead to skewed results.

Take natural resource development. To determine which province gets what (and which get nothing), the formula applies a hypothetical national average tax rate to sources of revenue, such as personal income and business income, to see how much money each province could raise on its own. But the formula treats natural resource revenue (e.g., oil and hydro royalties) differently. Specifically, it measures actual natural resource revenues, rather than hypothetical, meaning any natural resource revenue a province earns directly impacts whether it will receive equalization payments and what those payments will be. Estimates suggest the “clawback” rate from a 10 per cent increase in natural resource revenue can be as much as 97 per cent. That’s a massive disincentive for provinces to develop their resources—and effectively acts as a tax on resource wealth.

This has real-world consequences. In 2018, Quebec—an equalization-receiving province—banned shale gas fracking and tightened rules for oil and gas drilling, even though the St. Lawrence Valley holds an estimated $68-billion to $186-billion worth of recoverable natural gas. In 2022, Quebec banned new oil and gas development entirely. While several factors played into this decision, this effective “tax” under the equalization program creates a clear disincentive for resource development that would otherwise create wealth in that province. At the same time, provinces that do develop their resources, such as Alberta, are punished by not receiving equalization.

Equalization creates a disincentive for provinces to develop resources—and acts as a tax on resource wealth.

Tombe also argues that by helping poorer provinces meet their responsibilities without Ottawa stepping in, Canada can continue to be decentralized, leaving Alberta to pursue its own interests. I agree in theory, but in reality, Alberta is clearly unable to pursue its own interests. Canada’s uncompetitive regulatory environment—fuelled by federal policies such as Bill C-69, Bill 48 and the arbitrary oil and gas emissions cap—creates uncertainty and discourages investment in the energy sector. In a survey of oil and gas investors, 68 per cent of respondents said uncertainty over environmental regulations deters investment in Canada compared to only 41 per cent who said the same for the US. And 59 per cent say the cost of regulatory compliance deters investment in Canada compared to 42 per cent for the US.

Albertans are feeling the impact. Investment in the oil and gas sector plummeted by 56 per cent over the last decade, from $84-billion in 2014 to $37-billion in 2023 (inflation adjusted). If the federal emissions cap goes ahead, cumulatively, over the 2030–2040 period, Alberta’s GDP (inflation-adjusted) will be an estimated $191-billion lower than it would be without the cap. Alberta will have lower wages, fewer jobs and less tax revenue. (Ironically, this also means less revenue for Ottawa).

That’s why Albertans feel a sense of unfairness. According to an Angus Reid poll, nearly half of Albertans believe they get a “raw deal”—they give more than they get—by being part of Canada. Another survey finds that more than 7 in 10 Albertans feel recent federal policies have hurt their quality of life. Put simply, Albertans aren’t getting their end of the bargain. They contribute immensely to the federation while receiving none of the benefits of being part of one—such as support from other provinces and the federal government to pursue their interests.

It’s bigger than one program. Consider that from 2007 to 2022 Albertans’ net contribution to federal finances (total federal taxes paid by Albertans minus federal money spent on or transferred to Albertans) was $244.6-billion—more than five times the net contribution from British Columbians or Ontarians. That’s $15-billion to $20-billion a year from Albertans to help keep taxes lower and fund government services in other provinces. And as Tombe shows, Alberta has been a place of economic opportunity for the many Canadians that have chosen to relocate to the province.

Alberta’s outsized contribution to the federation—and equalization specifically—isn’t in and of itself the problem. The issue is that federations are built on compromise, and Albertans are simply not getting a fair deal.

 

trevor tombe responds to tegan hill

As my dialogue partner notes, fairness is subjective. That’s why every province, at one time or another, feels it isn’t getting a fair deal in Confederation. Some two decades ago Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams said, “We’ve been shafted again and again.” Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty once described equalization as “perverse” and “nonsensical.” Even in Quebec—the largest equalization recipient—politicians have claimed they’re being “swindled.”

So discontent is neither unique to Alberta nor is it new. More than a century ago, prime minister Wilfrid Laurier said the entire system of subsidies to provinces was “wrong in principle.” And Canada’s first election, in 1867, saw a separatist party dominate the vote in Nova Scotia, largely over concerns about federal policy and transfers. One leader declared that the province was “in this Dominion as a conquered country.” Sound familiar?

Regional grievances are a core element of our political history. This isn’t to belittle their importance but to place them in context. Canada is vast and diverse, and federal policies unavoidably create regional winners and losers. This fact alone is not unfair. It’s simply a reality.

Alberta’s concerns about equalization, however, go deeper than discontent. The program itself is said to be unfair to Alberta. For that to be true, equalization would need to systematically penalize Alberta (fundamentally at odds with how federations normally operate) or violate basic principles of fairness, such as equity, transparency or consistency.

Let’s start with equity. Equalization aims to help poorer provinces deliver reasonably comparable public services. By its very nature, equalization does not—and should not—send money to the wealthiest province. In fact, directing funds to the strongest provinces would itself be unfair and contrary to the program’s own goal.

Transparency matters too. It’s better to openly define who receives support and why than to bury redistribution within opaque federal programs. That clarity isn’t without costs, though. In 1956 CCF leader M.J. Coldwell warned of a “long-run danger”: equalization will “look” to high-income provinces like “a subsidy which others get and which [rich provinces] are going to pay for,” and that this “may invite powerful opposition.” He was right. The federal government, by clearly defining and disclosing equalization, does risk criticism—but the alternative would be worse. A transparent formula-driven approach means design details can be fairly examined and debated.

It’s true that we contribute more. But this just reflects Alberta’s higher incomes and stronger economy.

As for consistency, my counterpart identifies two problems: resource revenues are treated differently from other sources, rewarding artificially low power prices, and the fixed-growth rule breaks the link between addressing inequality and the program’s overall size. These aren’t new concerns. Nor are they raised only by resource-rich provinces. New Brunswick’s premier called it “discriminatory” when prime minister John Diefenbaker (a westerner, I must add) first included resource revenues.

But if such details are why the program is unfair, you may be surprised to learn how little they matter. I estimate that eliminating resource revenues and the fixed-growth rule would shrink the cost of equalization from $26.2-billion to $25.9-billion—a mere 1 per cent. Quebec’s payments would drop from $13.6-billion to $13.1-billion, while Alberta would still receive nothing. So even if you believe these inconsistencies need fixing (and I do too), the impact on Alberta is marginal.

Fairness, though, is also about who pays. Equalization’s critics say Albertans contribute $4.2-billion based on our share of federal revenues. And it’s true that we contribute the most per capita—once over 16 per cent of federal revenues, now below 14 per cent, even with only 12 per cent of Canada’s population. But this just reflects Alberta’s higher incomes and stronger economy. Since federal taxes are largely levied on income and consumption, wealthier people and businesses pay more—even though all face the same tax rates. Whether that’s fair or not concerns one’s views on progressive taxes, not equalization.

Some argue equalization discourages growth policies in recipient provinces. Why get richer if equalization will just shrink… That’s a valid concern, but it’s not about equalization specifically; it’s about redistribution generally. And Canada redistributes no more across provinces than the US does across states—despite no equalization there.

Equalization has become a symbol for broader concerns over federal policies, from an oil tanker ban to an emissions cap. These are serious issues. But they are fundamentally separate from equalization and deserve their own targeted and effective responses.

Federations deliver real benefits—pooled risk, labour mobility, internal trade, collective strength and more. Not winning every policy debate doesn’t make the deal unfair. Equalization isn’t perfect. But it’s not unfair to Alberta.

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