Chris Selley: At least we're richer than Alabama in complacency

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https://nationalpost.com/opinion/selley-canada-richer-than-alabama-in-complacency

By many metrics, Canada is stagnating or worse. But moral superiority over the Americans remains robust

Author of the article:

By Chris Selley

Published Feb 26, 2026

At an event in Toronto on Wednesday, International Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Canadians are pretty much on the same page when it comes to our current, let’s say, basic situation. Not just the Donald Trump and trade situation, but the much larger one. The one that recently caused our friends at the other national newspaper to investigate “how Canada became poorer than Alabama.”

As calculated by University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe and the International Monetary Fund, among the 60 Canadian provinces and U.S. states, Alabama’s GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power, is higher than Quebec’s, Manitoba’s, Prince Edward Island’s, Nova Scotia’s and New Brunswick’s. Add Mississippi to those five, and you have the poorest six jurisdictions in North America.

Canada’s richest province by this metric is Alberta. But 19 U.S. states are still richer — the richest, New York, by nearly 40 per cent.

LeBlanc didn’t mention that data during his “fireside chat” Thursday afternoon at an Economic Club of Toronto lunch at the Royal York Hotel, but he echoed the basic line we’ve heard from Prime Minister Mark Carney and his ministers: President Trump’s re-election signals a profound “rupture” in the global order, as LeBlanc put it, and not just something that will blow over once Trump goes away.

Hence LeBlanc’s trade junket to Mexico in recent days. Hence Carney’s relentless travel schedule and (my words, not LeBlanc’s) unapologetic if not downright greasy pursuit of commerce in unfriendly foreign capitals like Beijing and New Delhi.

“Canadians are impatient to see business leaders, business associations (and) governments, federal and provincial, work together to really shake the tree and see where (there are) trading opportunities and foreign direct investment opportunities into Canada,” LeBlanc said.

“If we can’t control some of the challenges in the trilateral trade agreement in CUSMA, we can certainly control how hard we work, how diligent we are, and how compelling we are.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre echoed the theme of seizing control over what we can during a concurrent Economic Club of Canada event, nearby at the Delta.

“Canada cannot control the decisions made by foreign leaders, or words by foreign presidents. We cannot control what global shocks and volatility might happen,” he said. “But we do control what we do in our own country. We control whether our economy is solid or fragile, whether it is dependent or self-reliant, whether we drift or whether we build.

“And the lesson in this moment is simple: The path to sovereignty is focusing relentlessly on what is within our power.”

After more than a decade of Liberal government in Ottawa, and with Justin Trudeau-era veterans still in very senior cabinet positions, Canadians seem to have placed remarkable trust in Carney to undo the damage many of those ministers caused under Trudeau’s watch.

That’s not me talking, either; that’s Carney and his ministers. “We are taking back control of the immigration system. We are returning immigration to sustainable levels,” Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab told the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Trudeau-era immigration ministers currently serve as justice minister (Sean Fraser) and minister of identity and culture (Marc Miller) under Carney.

“We’re taking back control to build Alberta strong and Canada strong,” Carney said in Calgary in November, in a speech focusing on natural-resource development. He said much the same at his own Canadian Club of Toronto appearance earlier that month. He said it in Davos.

Poilievre and Carney don’t conspicuously disagree on any of this stuff — just on how good a job the Liberals have done managing Canada’s economic affairs in Washington. “The most effective response to uncertainty is not outrage,” Poilievre said at the Delta. “It is results.”

Both seem convinced Canadians are seized with this issue. I really hope they both are, because I’m not at all sure that’s true.

Perhaps many Canadians took the Globe’s poorer-than-Alabama piece to heart, or at least it got them thinking. I hope so. GDP per capita isn’t the be-all or end-all of wealth measures, but as economist Mike Moffatt noted, there are lots of other measures that show Canada stagnating or worse. He pointed specifically to the UN’s Human Development Index, the World Happiness Index, the Corruption Perception Index and food-bank usage (which is through the roof in some cities).

But I also saw and heard an awful lot of very comfortable Canadians just waving away the very idea that Alabamans might in some respects be better off than we are as some ludicrous fantasy. Inconceivable! And anyway, we have universal health care. And isn’t it awful how the American hockey team visited the White House?

Moral superiority helped drive us into this rut. It will not help drag us out.