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U.S refineries are buying up Alberta’s oil, dirt cheap, and turning it into full priced U.S. products and profits. Thanks to our failed energy policy, President Donald Trump’s economy is benefiting from cheap Alberta oil.

The oil discount has left Alberta companies no choice but to shift capital investment south of the border. So not only do American refiners make billions in profits buying cheap Canadian oil and selling it at international prices, Canadian jobs are also exported to the U.S. as well.

Imagine if Canadian federal policy forced our beef farmers to charge American fast-food chains 75-per-cent less for Canadian beef but the price of American hamburgers never changed. Or if Ontario auto plants were forced to sell Canadian cars in the U.S. for 75-per-cent off while U.S. dealers kept the same sticker prices.

Photo by Ben Nelms/Bloomberg

Canadians should be outraged at the federal government’s energy-policy failure, doubly so when you consider that our oil and gas are our most valuable exports.

So, do Albertans need to be passive and watch as our No. 1 asset suffers under the weight of policy-driven price collapse? The answer is no. We don’t have to be victims, we can choose to act.

What should owners do if an incompetent manager puts the store’s most important product on sale at a huge discount?

End the sale.

How do Albertans end the sale? The medium- to long-term answer is building pipelines and increasing oil producers’ access to rail-transport capacity. But right now we don’t have that much time on our side.