The Twenty-Four
The Seven, November 13, 2026
Exciting times
By Rob Roach 13 November 2026 7 min read
In this week’s The Seven…
- Scaling up - Canada’s LNG capacity
- AI drama - Tech stocks wobble
- Tariff check in - Fences still up
- Price shock - U.S. inflation
- Next week - Canadian inflation in October
- Interesting Fact: Honey, I shrunk the exports
- Chart of the Week: Oil prices lower, but not low
While presenting to the Calgary office of an international law firm yesterday, I couldn’t help but feel excited about Alberta’s economy. The excitement came despite the first half of the presentation outlining the many headwinds holding back economic growth in Alberta and around the world (e.g., war, trade barriers, the rising cost of living, heightened uncertainty). It’s ugly out there.
The exciting part was the middle of my slide deck where I talk about three powerful engines driving Alberta’s economy forward: population growth, oil and gas, and diversification. (I end with a discussion of Canada’s productivity problem which, while we seem to be making some progress on this front, has too many question marks surrounding it to generate genuine excitement on my part).
Back to those three engines.
Population growth has come way down from recent highs, but Alberta is still growing faster than the rest of the country and is projected to add another million residents by 2040. Oil and gas isn’t booming like it has in the past, but record oil production and LNG export capacity are providing a solid boost. If the Pacific Link pipeline gets built, a boom may well develop.
But it's the role being played by diversification that is particularly exciting because turning sectors such as (but not limited to) tourism, aviation, logistics, food processing, petrochemicals, tech, and renewables from green shoots into big trees has been a multi-decade project. The oil and gas sector is still the tail that wags the Alberta economic dog, but the combined impact of these other industries has emerged as another major source of growth in Alberta. That’s exciting.
In the meantime, inflation is still a problem, tariffs remain an impediment, and, as the Editor-in-Chief of The Economist recently put it, “there’s so much drama in the tech world right now that it feels more like a Netflix nail-biter than real life.” More on these issues below.
Scaling up - Canada’s LNG capacity
Canada has a lot of natural gas. Until recently, however, there hasn’t been a way to sell meaningful amounts of it to countries other than the United States.
That changed on June 30, 2025, when the first shipment of liquefied natural gas left LNG Canada’s new export facility. Since then, overseas exports have gone from essentially zero to 1.4 billion cubic feet per day as of August.
So what’s next for Canada’s LNG industry?
The latest installment of the “Now you’re thinking” series from Studio.Energy provides an answer: momentum is building, but “Canada must prove it can build on budget and on schedule, and ensure fiscal and regulatory regimes are competitive with the U.S.”
The Prime Minister, meanwhile, has been promoting the expansion of Canada’s LNG industry, suggesting a target of 50 million tons per annum (MTPA) of exports by the end of the decade. According to Studio.Energy, that level of exports “would move Canada from a market hostage position toward a global supplier with genuine influence.”
Currently, 34 MTPA of Canadian LNG capacity is operating, under construction or committed via final investment decisions. If other proposed projects move forward, the 50 MTPA target is within reach.
We worked with Studio.Energy to quantify the economic impact of expanding Canada’s LNG capacity and will be releasing the results later this month.
AI drama - Tech stocks wobble
Anytime there’s a boom, there’s anxiety that it won’t last, or worse, that it will lead to a bust. This is currently the case with the AI investment cycle that has been helping to drive up equity markets and economic growth. Concerns have been raised about how quickly, and to what degree, AI will deliver on the promised productivity boost, the results of the U.S. midterms point to greater traction for opposition to AI data centres and AI deployment, and a sex/spy scandal involving Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has roiled markets.
The recent sell-off in tech stocks seems to have calmed down, the market boost from the AI boom is far from being erased (see the chart below on the tech-heavy NASDAQ stock index) and AI spending and growing AI usage are unlikely to stall. But the anxiety remains and we may see a switch from what could be described as a goldrush mentality to a more cautious risk-reward approach. Anthropic’s initial public offering, which is scheduled to take place next week, will provide more insight into how investors are feeling about what’s next for the AI revolution.
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Tariff check in - Fences still up
It makes a lot of sense for Canada to expand its trade with countries other than the U.S. With that said, the U.S. remains our bread and butter and increased trade with other countries won’t change that.
While we wait to see if ongoing negotiations between Canada and the U.S. lead to some sort of deal, the tariffs remain in place. According to the Budget Lab at Yale University, the average U.S. tariff rate on Canadian imports is 8.3%, which is where it has been since the end of September when the U.S. added a number of import bans on specific Canadian products (see the chart below).
Our fingers are crossed that the negotiations, pressure from the U.S. public, the shift in power in the U.S. Congress, or a change of heart on the part of the President for his own reasons will see that tariff rate go down. If it does, it would be a welcome shot in the arm for a fragile Canadian economy.
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Price shock - U.S. inflation in October
The U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) report on Tuesday showed that inflation continued to run hot in October and all but guarantees that the Fed will hike interest rates at its December meeting.
If (and it’s a big if), the recent drop in oil prices is sustained, lower inflation will follow as energy costs come down and pass-through effects ease, but it will take time for this to happen and there are other sources of price pressure in the U.S. such as rising shelter costs, tariffs and above-target inflation in the services sector. As a result, “higher for longer” borrowing costs in the U.S. remains the general prognosis.
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Next week - Inflation in Canada
Inflation in Canada has not been running as hot as it has in the U.S., but it has been above the Bank of Canada’s 2% target since March. Monday’s inflation report—the last one before the next scheduled interest rate announcement on December 9—is expected to show headline inflation in October of around 3% with the Bank’s preferred measures of core inflation once again coming in below 2%.
What does this mean? For consumers, it means another month of painful price growth. It’s nowhere near as bad as it was in the summer of 2022 when headline inflation was over 8%, but the price growth will add to concerns about the rising cost of living.
For the Bank of Canada, the implications are less clear. On the one hand, the pass-through of higher energy costs to other areas has been limited. On the other hand, headline inflation is still well above target and the Bank might not think that a single rate increase is sufficient to keep the spillover from the energy shock at bay.
Interesting Fact: Honey producers face the wrath of Section 338 tariffs
While over 80% of Canadian exports to the U.S. remain protected under rules-of-origin provisions, targeted tariffs have hit specific industries hard. Following the implementation of 50% tariffs under Section 338 in September, Canadian honey exports to the U.S. plummeted. After spiking 940% in August as importers rushed to buy ahead of the deadline, export values collapsed in September to just one-tenth of pre-tariff levels.
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Chart of the Week: Lower, but not low oil prices
Oil prices are often described as a rollercoaster ride and recent trends reinforce this metaphor. After hitting over US$104 per barrel on October 30, the West Texas Intermediate benchmark fell to US$86 on November 10 for a drop of 17% in just a few days.
It’s tempting to reduce these shifts down to a single cause, but we should always keep in mind that there are many moving parts affecting oil prices including storage levels, demand projections, physical disruptions, risk premiums, geopolitical events, seasonal shifts, production levels, OPEC policy, and so on.
With that said, let’s go ahead and point to a single cause to explain what’s been happening: the assumption that the U.S. will refrain from ramping up military action in the Middle East (what the President referred to earlier this month as giving Iran “the hammer”) as it shifts to a focus on economic measures such as blockading Iran.
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Answer to the previous trivia question: Modern Canadian charity law is rooted in the English Charitable Uses Act 1601 (commonly known as the Statute of Elizabeth), which was enacted near the end of Elizabeth the First’s reign.
Today’s trivia question: The Grey Cup is being held at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium on Sunday. When was the stadium built?