GOLDSTEIN: Albertans are frustrated with being Canada’s cash cow

The frustrations of Albertans are legitimate. Let’s stop pretending otherwise.

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Published May 27, 2026  •  Last updated 21 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

An oil and gas industry pumpjack drill rig in the Canadian Prairies with the Canadian Rockies in Alberta, Canada. Photo by Nalidsa Sukprasert /Adobe Stock

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The reality is that many Albertans — and not just those already convinced that separation is the only answer — are legitimately frustrated with their province’s status in Canada.

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Gratuitously insulting them over the next five months, at least, as Albertans debate their future role in or outside of Confederation, serves no purpose.

It isn’t going to keep Canada together, or make it work better, regardless of what happens in the Oct. 19 Alberta referendum on whether to hold a referendum on separation.

What might is acknowledging the sources of Alberta’s frustration with federal Liberal governments that for decades have played Albertans off against the far greater number of voters to be had in Ontario and Quebec.

The root issue is that Albertans make a disproportionate contribution to the wealth of Canada compared to any other province while repeatedly — and especially under the 2015 to 2025 Liberal government of Justin Trudeau — facing federal policies that hurt the province’s economy.

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Between 2007 and 2024, Albertans made a net contribution to Canada through taxes and other payments of $285.1 billion, according to a study by the Fraser Institute.

This means Albertans contributed $285.1 billion more to the federal government than Ottawa spent or transferred to Alberta.

As Tegan Hill and Milagros Palacios of the fiscally conservative think tank noted, no other province comes close to this net contribution to the federal government.

Alberta’s net contribution is four times as large as B.C.’s and Ontario’s, while Canada’s other seven provinces are net recipients of federal funding, meaning Ottawa spends or transfers more money to them than they return to Ottawa.

Alberta’s outsized contribution to the federal government helps pay for social programs in every province and substantially improves Ottawa’s finances.

To cite one of many examples, in 2022, the $25.7 billion deficit the Trudeau government recorded, was 36% lower than the $39.9 billion it would have been without Alberta’s outsized contribution to the federal bottom line.

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Demonstrably, a strong Alberta economy makes for a strong Canadian economy, which is why the Trudeau government’s attack on Canada’s oil and gas sector over the past decade as part of a virtue-signalling and failed campaign to lower our industrial greenhouse gas emissions to impossible-to-achieve targets was a $200-billion-plus (that’s Ottawa’s figure) disaster.

True the feds bought one oil pipeline that started shipping a small amount of our vast oil resources to Asian markets in 2024, while Canada’s first large-scale liquid natural gas operation in B.C., began exporting a tiny portion of our vast natural gas resources to global and Asian markets last year.

But that was overshadowed by Trudeau’s bureaucratic attack on Canada’s oil and gas sector as federal election after federal election was decided, long before the votes were counted in Alberta.

Everything from the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, to the Impact Assessment Act, to the Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, to the oil and gas emissions cap, to the Clean Electricity Regulations, to the methane regulations, and on and on.

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Even Prime Minister Mark Carney — the leading global corporate advocate for higher carbon taxes before becoming PM — admitted that what he had inherited was “too much regulation, not enough action” with a lot of talk “and then nothing happens.”

Carney has started dismantling some of it to, he says, boost our economic growth and productivity at “speeds not seen in generations” but there will be no quick fixes.

The frustrations of Albertans are legitimate. Let’s stop pretending otherwise.

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