It is pretty clear that ex-premier Gordon Campbell is all-in with the Alberta line that Canada’s future well-being depends entirely on the full and unfettered exploitation of fossil fuels to the exclusion of any other concern and any other interest, and as though nothing else matters but oil and gas (see Pique, April 18, “The end of magical thinking…”). He is entitled to his belief, narrow-focused and faulty as it is. But two other points from his piece do not fall into the forgiveness column.
First, it is false that Canada’s GDP per capita is “at the bottom of the OECD list.” Several reputable statistical sources list Canada at 13th highest of the 38 OECD countries. Perhaps even more relevant, for 2025, countryeconomy.com lists Canada as second best in the G7, slightly ahead of Germany and only behind the U.S. There are issues of falling productivity growth per capita in Canada, largely a result of a fast-growing population (resulting in a larger denominator in the equation), but that is not the same as an absolute per-capita measure. As reported by Statistica, in 2024 Canada’s GDP actually grew at a rate of 1.34 per cent, a better performance than the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Japan, and only exceeded by the U.S.
Mr. Campbell’s claim that Canada is “at the bottom of the OECD list” in per-capita GDP is exactly the kind of misinformation peddled by the right, referred to in Leslie Anthony’s column in the same issue of Pique.
But I think the most pernicious thing Mr. Campbell had to say is the gangsterish proposition that if any province dares to exercise its provincial jurisdiction to disagree with a pipeline, they should be extorted into bending the knee through the denial of equalization payments, thereby threatening that province’s education, health-care and general civic well-being.
If ever there was an indication of how close current right-wing Conservative thought aligns with Mr. Trump’s view of how government power should work—exhibited by his threats to deny funds to states or institutions unless they succumb to his demands on a host of matters—it is that. So I guess it is no wonder Mr. Campbell exhorts us to “forget Trump” since they share the same contemptible inclination.
And as for national government debt, also presented in the article as catastrophic: Canada has by far the lowest net debt per capita of all G7 countries.
