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Sadly, our living standards have also taken a hit deteriorating nearly six per cent from 2007 compared to an average two per cent gain in the OECD, as cited in a recent report by the Business Council of British Columbia.

“Canadians have seen the largest deterioration in living standards relative to peer countries over 2007 to 2018, according to OECD data. This is primarily because peer countries have increased their productivity by more than Canada,” the Business Council wrote.

So far there has been a real lack of leadership on this issue out of the federal government, which has preferred to cherry pick stats such as low unemployment. More troubling is the lack of reaction to big events such as the Encana relocation and CN rail strike, with farmers and energy producers still awaiting a resolution on the latter.

All that said, we do hope that situations like these will eventually flush out the structural deficiencies in the country. We agree with Sylvain Charlebois, professor of food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University, when he says that, “Beyond the politics of it all lies Canada’s reputation in logistics. It’s just awful. Canada is known to be a land of few options, transportation inefficiencies and bottlenecks.”

Unfortunately, in the end, it may take a real estate contraction for the rest of the country to finally wake up and start addressing our inability to scale out our strengths, improve our overall productivity and boost our standard of living.

Maybe, just maybe, it won’t come to this and we as a nation will have the humility to realize we can all do better with a stronger Alberta.

Martin Pelletier, CFA is a Portfolio Manager and OCIO at TriVest Wealth Counsel Ltd, a Calgary-based private client and institutional investment firm specializing in discretionary risk-managed portfolios as well as investment audit and oversight services.