Opinion: Uncertainty will erase the Alberta Advantage

Written by Deborah Yedlin and Brad Parry for the Calgary Herald

As optim­ism grows in anti­cip­a­tion of renewed growth in Alberta’s oilp­atch, there is also grow­ing con­cern around the demand for labour, and whether we will be able to meet that need. After all, if the myriad projects on the table from coast to coast pro­ceed, the draw on Canada’s labour pool will be unpre­ced­en­ted.

As Canada and Alberta sit on the pre­cip­ice of unpre­ced­en­ted invest­ment, our abil­ity to build the projects that will bring dec­ades of prosper­ity to the province and coun­try hinges on hav­ing an adequate tal­ent pool. From the pro­posed West Coast pipeline to feed­ing expan­sions of exist­ing capa­city or the goal of increas­ing lique­fied nat­ural gas exports to 100 mil­lion tonnes per annum by 2040, a key ena­bler is suf­fi­cient labour.

We can’t risk the pro­gress made since 2014 to grow other indus­tries that will help insu­late the eco­nomy from the volat­il­ity of com­mod­ity prices.

This isn’t the first time we are star­ing at a labour short­age.

In 2005, as an increase in oils­ands pro­duc­tion was under­way, industry lead­ers like the late Charlie Fisc­her, CEO of Nexen, warned that labour con­straints would com­prom­ise our abil­ity to reach the goal of trip­ling bar­rels pro­duced to three mil­lion a day. The solu­tion turned out to be more than 200,000 work­ers from Atlantic Canada who were key to meet­ing Alberta’s labour needs.

That’s unlikely to hap­pen this time because of grow­ing labour pres­sures across the coun­try.

As Alberta — and Cal­gary — have delib­er­ately sought to diver­sify the eco­nomy, the tal­ent pool has grown, reach­ing more than 80,000 work­ers in 2025 and now rep­res­ent­ing 9.4 per cent of employ­ment in the city and well above the 5.5 per cent aver­age in other mar­kets. More recently, we have seen massive growth in Cal­gary’s avi­ation sec­tor. We also have a bur­geon­ing film industry in Cal­gary, the fast­est-grow­ing tech tal­ent hub in North Amer­ica, and are posi­tioned to be key play­ers in sup­port­ing growth of the agri­cul­ture sec­tor.

Hav­ing been a one-trick pony in terms of our eco­nomic engine for too long, we can’t risk the pro­gress made since 2014 to grow other indus­tries that will help insu­late the eco­nomy from the volat­il­ity of com­mod­ity prices.

But the ref­er­en­dum could upend all of this.

Cal­gary, on a per-cap­ita basis, has the young­est and most edu­cated work­force in the coun­try. However, 49 per cent of Cal­gari­ans have said they would leave if Alberta began the pro­cess to sep­ar­ate, with an aver­age 45 per cent of Alber­tans say­ing the same thing. Add to this a Cal­gary Cham­ber of Com­merce sur­vey which showed 48 per cent of busi­nesses would leave and, in turn, shrink the tax base, and it’s easy to see how quickly the Alberta Advant­age evap­or­ates.

Cap­ital fol­lows tal­ent — and top tal­ent has choices.

One need only look to Que­bec — and the fal­lout from its two ref­er­en­dums, held 15 years apart. An estim­ated 300 com­pan­ies left Montreal and as many 135,000 people migrated to other parts of Canada, so Que­bec now has the old­est pop­u­la­tion in the coun­try. That means a smal­ler tax base and higher demand for gov­ern­ment ser­vices. None of this adds up to strong eco­nomic growth.

There is also the ques­tion about immig­ra­tion, and whether Alberta is seen as a wel­come jur­is­dic­tion. The truth is that this coun­try — and province — have benefited greatly from people com­ing here. And they come with edu­ca­tion and skills that were paid for by other gov­ern­ments. The stat­ist­ics show 32 per cent of busi­nesses in Canada are run by people who immig­rated here, demon­strat­ing their entre­pren­eur­ship and import­ant con­tri­bu­tion to job cre­ation.

When every­one around the world is look­ing to attract tal­ent, all of this mat­ters.

And then there is the issue of invest­ment. Alberta — largely because of the cap­ital intens­ity of the energy sec­tor — has relied on for­eign invest­ment to sup­port the growth. On a per-cap­ita basis, the num­bers work out to $3,400 in Alberta versus an aver­age of $1,800 across the coun­try. You could eas­ily make the case those num­bers will go higher with the mag­nitude of invest­ment on the hori­zon.

Like labour, cap­ital goes to where there is cer­tainty; uncer­tainty means it goes else­where.

Without enough labour, we won’t real­ize our full eco­nomic poten­tial. The uncer­tainty tied to the ref­er­en­dum car­ries with it the poten­tial to under­mine the unpre­ced­en­ted eco­nomic oppor­tun­ity we have before us.

It’s simply not worth the risk. Not for Cal­gari­ans, Alber­tans or Cana­dians.