Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Canada’s trade and supply chain dependability rating is in the dumpster.
If you have, you’ll be hoping that more Canadians are listening, and if they are, that they are demanding that their elected representatives listen. And act.
To that end, the Canada West Foundation (CWF) has drafted a Canadian dependability dumpster-diving retrieval plan.
Action on that front is long overdue.
The Substack Shipping News recently aired the car alarms ringing over doubts in Canada’s ability to deliver on its trade diversification ambitions and the challenges its ports and rail supply chains face from mutually destructive labour-management contract disputes.
Its ability to get its energy and natural resource riches to market is also questionable.
Fortunately, the country has a government in Alberta that is aggressively pursuing global market opportunities.
Its memorandum of agreement (MOU) with the federal government could trigger a national campaign to capitalize internationally on the country’s energy and natural resource wealth for all Canadians.
But Alberta’s oil pipeline-to-the-West Coast endgame is far from any finish line. We have commitments from federal politicians but no guarantees. And what are federal politicians’ commitments worth today?
Also, who is buying Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent conversion to hydrocarbon friend from lifelong fossil-fuel-oil-patch foe?
Canada West Foundation’s Road to Dependability report resulted from its James A. Richardson Discovery Roundtable gathering of leaders from across Western Canada to discuss pathways for diversifying trade, improving infrastructure and elevating the region’s role in national and international economic spheres.
Elsewhere, we have B.C. First Nations vowing that Canada’s long-standing West Coast oil tanker moratorium will never be lifted.
On that file, Canada needs to decide whether it is a country or whether it plans to maintain the Indigenous-as-separate-nations narrative.
The price Canada is paying for cultivating a “nation-to-nation” relationship with Indigenous communities is the unnecessary delay, detour and derailment of projects that are fundamental to the country’s economic prosperity.
Those communities in Canada, for the most part, are not international traders or revenue generators. In short, they are not countries.
They are, however, beneficiaries of a significant share of Canadian taxpayer dollars.
That share has ballooned since Crown‑Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and Indigenous Services Canada replaced the Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs in 2019.
CanadaSpends estimates that the two departments collectively spent $63 billion in 2024. That is roughly 12% of the country’s total program spending for what is currently 5% of Canada’s population.
According to a 2024 Fraser Institute study, the federal government’s annual Indigenous budget has almost tripled over the past 10 years to more than $32 billion from $11 billion.
So, Canada’s dependability restoration equation is complicated and contentious.
The CWF’s Road to Dependability initiative is therefore a welcome addition to the debate.
Its inventory of challenges and suggested solutions was generated from a June 2025 gathering of Western Canadian leaders organized by the CWF’s James A. Richardson Discovery Roundtable “to discuss pathways for diversifying trade, improving infrastructure and elevating the region’s role in both national and international economic spheres.”
The list of pathway obstacles compiled by the roundtable ranges from an over-dependence on U.S. markets and a proliferation of regulatory barriers to neglected infrastructure and underused international trade agreements.
Investment hesitancy, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and a prevailing cultural and interprovincial disconnect were also identified as noteworthy challenges.
CWF roundtable solutions?
For starters:
- Improve rail and road networks;
- Upgrade northern freight and transportation corridors;
- Adopt a “corridor approach” for major trade infrastructure to bypass jurisdictional disputes;
- Make Canada attractive to foreign investors by reducing political interference;
- Develop stronger Indigenous partnerships; and
- Repeal restrictive policies like the West Coast tanker ban.
Good calls all.
But those calls will only deliver positive outcomes if they are embraced by a government that values business and prioritizes investment, innovation and productivity.
Canada has yet to elect one in the 21st century.
This article originally appeared in The Substack Shipping News.
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