The Alberta Project - May 15, 2025


The U.S. DOES NOT subsidize Canada

Washed Up Singer Insults Alberta Separation!

Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

147.19

Word count

2,750

Sentence count

143

People

Also mentioned:
Donald Trump Mark Carney Brandy Livingston Bill C-63 Trudeau

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Trump claims that the U.S. subsidizes Canada, but there's a lot more to it than that. In this episode of the podcast, I break down this subsidy claim, and argue that it's actually the other way around.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Governor Trudeau, I said, listen, what would happen if we didn't subsidize you?
00:00:04.740 Receiving subsidies of hundreds of billions of dollars. We pay subsidies to Canada.
00:00:10.680 The other thing is we subsidize them to the turn of about $200 billion a year.
00:00:16.760 In the case of Canada, we're spending $200 billion a year to subsidize Canada.
00:00:21.220 So for the last few months, we've been hearing Trump spew this rhetoric that
00:00:25.260 the U.S. subsidizes Canada. And while I've compiled a series of figures from different
00:00:32.220 sources, and the real picture is that the U.S. does not subsidize Canada. Alberta subsidizes Canada.
00:00:40.700 Roll the intro.
00:00:41.240 So first of all, let's deconstruct this whole subsidy claim. As I'm sure most of you already
00:00:57.140 know, this figure that Trump likes to label as a subsidy is actually a trade deficit that the U.S.
00:01:06.020 has with Canada. And it's nowhere near $200 billion, like he likes to claim. It's actually
00:01:12.940 $102.3 billion, according to Stats Canada. So what's interesting about this trade deficit
00:01:22.260 that the U.S. has with Canada is that it's entirely made up of the amount of oil that we send over to
00:01:29.860 the U.S. And so if you actually remove oil and gas imports from Canada from that figure,
00:01:36.240 it actually turns into a $31 billion trade surplus with the U.S., which, you know, Trump really likes
00:01:44.160 surpluses, which, by the way, would be the biggest trade surplus that the U.S. has with any country
00:01:51.080 if we exclude oil and gas imports from Canada. And what's interesting about these oil and gas imports
00:01:58.980 is that they're actually Canada gives, sells the U.S. our crude oil, our heavy crude oil
00:02:06.420 at a discounted price. You know, part of that is because it's heavier crude oil, which means it's
00:02:12.260 a bit more difficult to refine. And another part that we sell it at a discounted price, below market
00:02:19.560 price, is that the U.S. is pretty much our sole customer for oil and gas. 95% of Canadian oil and
00:02:26.420 gas goes to the U.S. So we don't really have much negotiating power there. And because of that,
00:02:32.860 the U.S. actually benefits a lot from this discounted Canadian crude oil. So we can see
00:02:39.380 here in this article, or I guess this is a letter that, yeah, Brian Livingston sent. So the heavier
00:02:46.800 Canadian crude oil is delivered to refineries in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado,
00:02:51.580 Louisiana, and Texas. So these refineries are basically purpose-built to refine heavy Canadian
00:02:58.120 crude oil. And so basically what the U.S. does with this oil, once they've refined it, they can sell it
00:03:04.920 at a market price, basically flipping the oil and making a profit off of it. So they get it at a discount
00:03:12.040 and then sell it at market price. And it also allows them to sell their own light oil to other
00:03:20.340 markets, which they can also sell at a market price. Had they not been receiving so much Canadian
00:03:26.520 crude, they wouldn't be able to reliably sell their own light oil around the world, which again is sold
00:03:34.460 at a market price. And Brian Livingston claims that in simplest terms, the U.S. buys Canadian oil at a
00:03:40.620 discount and export at full price, which currently yields a U.S. $19 billion annual windfall. And so
00:03:48.340 if anything, the Canada's oil and gas industry is partly subsidizing the U.S. because of the discounted
00:03:56.600 oil that we sell them, which is pretty interesting. You know, it sort of not only deconstructs Trump's
00:04:05.820 claim about subsidizing Canada, but it flips it on its back entirely. I also wanted to talk about
00:04:11.080 this oil, this Canadian heavy crude and what it buys for Canada. And it turns out that it actually
00:04:19.340 buys Canada a lot. And you may have noticed that I've been calling it Canadian oil, even though really
00:04:27.160 it's Albertan oil. And this isn't a claim that I'm making out of thin air, you know, under a section 92A of
00:04:35.980 the Canadian constitution, natural resources belong to the provinces that they're in. And so really, this is
00:04:43.480 Alberta's oil revenues, which are then taxed and sent to the government, which then distributes it to the rest of
00:04:52.820 Canada, as you will see. So because this, and by the way, this oil and gas sector, like this is the
00:05:00.800 biggest industry in Canada by far. It's the most revenue generating industry in the whole country.
00:05:06.760 There's nothing even that like comes close to it. And so, and because of that, it generates a lot of
00:05:12.220 taxes. You know, you take the corporate tax that oil and gas companies pay, you take the income tax of
00:05:19.500 oil and gas sector workers. And, you know, the, just the general GSD that Alberta pays, even though
00:05:26.080 that's not really part of, I guess, that's the whole provincial thing. It's not really part of
00:05:31.440 oil and gas sector per se. And so every year, Alberta basically sends around, or I guess I should
00:05:41.840 say generates $23 billion in tax revenue for the federal government. And the federal government
00:05:49.480 puts about, so here we can see it from 2023 to 2024, puts about $7.7 billion of that back into
00:05:57.800 Alberta. And so, which means that Alberta is basically a net contributor, that a lot of the taxes that we
00:06:05.260 pay, we don't get most of that revenue back into Alberta. It goes and is distributed to the rest of
00:06:13.500 Canada by the government. And so, you know, this is a pretty big deal, as you'll about to see. So, the
00:06:20.820 Fraser Institute did a study about this, and it details, you know, from 2007 to 2022, how massive of a
00:06:30.720 contribution Alberta has made to Confederation. You know, again, most of this is due to our oil and gas
00:06:38.240 exports. And, you know, we can see here. So, you know, in these 15 years, Alberta has been a net
00:06:46.420 contributor to Ottawa to the tune of $244.6 billion, which is, you know, interesting. We've been hearing,
00:06:54.660 you know, looking at figures from the other provinces, you know, we've been hearing a lot
00:06:58.780 about the auto sector in Ontario and how much of a behemoth it is and how many jobs it creates. And,
00:07:05.360 you know, this massive auto sector, which, by the way, has been massively subsidized by the
00:07:11.420 government, especially as they've been trying to get into electric vehicles, has only generated,
00:07:15.800 you know, in these 15 years, you know, $42 billion, or I guess contributed $42 billion to
00:07:22.280 Confederation, right? And so, yeah, basically, everything else in red, these have been, these
00:07:28.380 provinces have been net recipients. And so, you know, we can see here, like, the last two. So,
00:07:33.140 you know, Nova Scotia is essentially, like, a nursing home, right? Like, or I guess a nursing
00:07:38.780 province, I should say. There's just, it's just so many old people there. And so, because of that, 1.00
00:07:43.680 yeah, part, well, I should say partly because of that, they're, like, massive net recipients. And,
00:07:48.600 you know, $327.7 billion to Quebec, of course, so they can preserve the language. So, you know,
00:07:56.880 you can see here, like, a lot of this money comes from, like, directly from oil and gas revenue that
00:08:04.940 is taxed by the government and is then redistributed to the rest of the province. And by the way, this
00:08:10.180 2007 to 2022 timeline does not paint the full picture. From 1968 to 2018, Alberta's net contribution
00:08:21.560 to confederation has been $630 billion. Again, due to the oil and gas revenues that we generate.
00:08:31.700 And what's interesting, like, I'm going to throw you a little bit of a curveball here is that,
00:08:37.240 you know, had the federal government been actually competent, Alberta would have been generating even
00:08:43.120 more revenue for confederation. Why is that? Well, because, you know, the last 10 years, especially,
00:08:49.920 the federal government has been very hostile towards the oil and gas industry. Lots of,
00:08:55.680 you know, emission caps and net zero mandates and, you know, Bill C-69, which makes it incredibly
00:09:03.100 difficult to build new pipelines. Bill 48, which basically prevents tankers from carrying oil off
00:09:10.840 the coast of British Columbia, which is, which would then let us be able to export oil to broader
00:09:17.960 markets, which is interesting, since, you know, Mark Carney ran on the premise that we need to
00:09:23.020 diversify and find our trading partners and find more reliable trading partners. And so,
00:09:30.300 you know, basically, us being able to sell our oil and natural gas to Asian markets would be exactly
00:09:38.240 just that. And yet, the tanker ban is still in place. So it's, it's, it's a little bit contradictory,
00:09:45.720 you know, what comes out of his mouth and what his actions actually imply. And so had the government
00:09:52.200 not been so hostile, you know, to this sector, which is, you know, again, the biggest sector
00:09:58.560 in Canada, it would have generated so much more revenues, which would then be taxed from
00:10:05.220 a confederation and sent to, you know, the rest of Canada, so that they could benefit, you know,
00:10:12.660 they could keep their social programs, they could, you know, even thrive, they could have
00:10:16.960 better social programs. And so really, like, I've basically, like, given you like a detail
00:10:23.200 of how much just, you know, this sector that, you know, is primarily built from Alberta and Alberta,
00:10:32.200 Alberta's resources is subsidizing the rest of Canada. And it's just very, it's very odd how,
00:10:44.740 you know, the federal government, you know, has decided to sort of hinder the, our development
00:10:52.120 in this area. Because, you know, like, the thing is that a prosperous Alberta is a prosperous Canada,
00:10:57.820 like, like, bottom line, like, like, I said, you know, all the tax revenues that would be generated
00:11:04.060 from oil and gas benefits the entire country, like every, you know, which is interesting. So,
00:11:12.320 like, a lot of the, you know, the equalization that goes to Quebec is from, you know, oil and gas
00:11:19.340 revenues, right, which is then sort of hypocritical when they, you know, oppose pipelines going to Quebec,
00:11:24.980 which would then, you know, expand or reach into markets like in Europe and other things with,
00:11:31.900 you know, like, they, they, they sort of think they have a, this belief that, you know, by blocking,
00:11:38.640 like, an east-west energy pipeline that they, they're, you know, standing up and fighting against
00:11:46.020 climate change, even though, you know, basically all the revenues that they receive is taxed from
00:11:51.120 Canada's oil and gas anyway. So, just by existing, as it is right now, Quebec gets a whole lot of money
00:12:01.740 out of dirty Canadian crude oil. And so, you know, I've, well, my own hypothesis, or I guess,
00:12:11.580 my own belief is that, you know, during these last, um, 10 years under liberal rule, um, the government
00:12:21.040 has basically been kneecapping, you know, the oil and gas sector, its biggest sector, um, so that,
00:12:28.920 I don't know, maybe, um, they can say that they're fighting against climate change and that might,
00:12:34.080 I don't know, win them some points, um, in the international community. Um, well, like,
00:12:39.600 which is interesting because they've never actually met any, um, of the goals in the
00:12:45.200 Paris climate accord. And I don't think they ever will because those goals are, well, you know,
00:12:50.120 let's just say a little bit, just a little bit ambitious. Um, so basically like they're just
00:12:56.080 doing this to keep up the facade that, you know, Canada is a global leader in fighting climate change
00:13:01.540 and that, you know, even though we only make up about one and a half percent of global, um,
00:13:07.360 emissions that, you know, we need to stand up and show all these massive polluters, you know,
00:13:14.140 i.e. the U.S., China, and India, how it's done and how, uh, we, you know, we should cripple our own,
00:13:21.960 uh, economy so that, um, you know, we can be carbon neutral. Now that the liberal government, um,
00:13:28.940 is back in power, um, you know, it just solidifies the fact that 43% of Canadians are essentially into
00:13:37.800 self-harm, I guess, right? They've put back a government that's basically cannibalizing Canada
00:13:45.080 by, you know, with the intent of destroying its single biggest, like, sector, right? And so Alberta
00:13:54.380 doesn't really have a say in any of these federal policies, really. I mean, you know,
00:14:00.940 we're basically at the whims of a central and eastern Canadian electorate, um, which is, you
00:14:07.280 know, greatly disinformed, of course. And we, we can't, because, because of federal overreach,
00:14:15.680 you know, um, that's been caused by the government that the central and eastern Canadian electorate
00:14:20.740 likes to vote in, um, you know, our industry has been kneecapped, like, by a lot, which makes sense
00:14:27.260 why, um, Albertans, so many Albertans have now taken to the Alberta separation movement, is that
00:14:33.660 we can't make so much of our own decisions of how to develop our own resources, you know, again,
00:14:40.340 because of people who don't live in Alberta, because of people who don't care about our struggles
00:14:46.300 or grievances. And I just wanted to, uh, go through, uh, some bullet points of, um,
00:14:53.360 the liberal government's, uh, tenure in the last 10 years. So, you know, there's been skyrocketing
00:14:59.520 mass immigration into Canada, plummeting GDP per capita, skyrocketing home prices, plummeting
00:15:06.980 social cohesion, skyrocketing crime, plummeting business investment. Um, yeah, so half a trillion
00:15:14.020 dollars of business investment that was, has, you know, fled to the U.S., which is, you know,
00:15:20.800 interesting because, you know, during the last 10 years, because of that fleeing investment,
00:15:25.500 Canada has become more reliant on the U.S. And so, which makes, you know, Donald Trump's temper tantrums
00:15:33.680 a bigger threat, which, you know, again, won Mark Carney this election that he, uh, ran against Trump
00:15:40.320 instead of actually running against the leaders of the other parties. Yeah. Skyrocketing government
00:15:46.500 spending debt and deficits. And so, yeah, what's interesting, I think, yeah, these last 10 years,
00:15:52.860 you know, Trudeau managed to, I think, double our national debt, which, I mean, kudos to him,
00:15:58.900 I guess. And, you know, the cherry on top of all of this, you know, all of this, you know,
00:16:04.760 loss in investment and, um, massive spending is that the government has continued to kneecap
00:16:12.720 Alberta's oil and gas industry by implementing policies and bills such as Bill C-69, Bill 48,
00:16:20.560 which is the tanker ban, the consumer carbon tax, which has been scrapped, but now there's an
00:16:26.460 industrial carbon tax coming in to replace it and an emissions cap that'll devastate Alberta's
00:16:34.060 revenues. And in turn, the government's revenues from taxes that they would be making from the oil
00:16:40.540 and gas sector. But, you know, let's, let's set all that aside. Let's, um, let's ignore the
00:16:47.580 self-cannibalizing forces that exist in Canada and let's focus on the real threat to our country,
00:16:53.600 or I guess, um, you know, the biggest crisis of our lifetimes, as Mark Carney likes to put it,
00:16:58.680 and that is Donald Trump, you know, orange man who likes to, who has, you know, personal grievances
00:17:05.420 with people and, uh, takes it out on them through tariffs. And so, yeah, the last 10 years of, you
00:17:11.300 know, economic stagnation in Canada has been because of Trump. And so Albertans have a real chance now
00:17:19.760 to flee, you know, the sinking ship that is Confederation. Like, why should we have to put up 0.88
00:17:27.580 with all of these bills and policies and mandates that devastate the oil and gas industry just so
00:17:37.000 Canada can keep up the facade of being a climate conscious, let's say, country and, you know, eating
00:17:45.880 into our revenues and eating into our profits, you know, all the meanwhile, extracting all of that
00:17:53.020 wealth and distributing it to the rest of Canada. Like, this is, like, peak ungratefulness. Like,
00:18:00.400 Alberta should not be part of Confederation. Like, this is, like, pure abuse. Like, what's the federal
00:18:08.040 government has been doing to Alberta? Like, there's no other word to describe it. And so, yeah, that is all
00:18:13.620 for me for today. I will be posting other series of videos detailing the, you know, long-winded history
00:18:21.580 of Alberta separatism, which isn't covered as much as it should be. And also, yeah, don't forget to
00:18:29.740 like and subscribe and, you know, share this with your friends and family or anyone else who wants,
00:18:36.700 you know, information on this topic. And so, yeah, that's all for me.