Insatiable appetite for new goods and skilled workers
“It’s a big opportunity and it’s a growing opportunity,” says Alps president Dennis Dussin. “There’s more activity and more work in the oil sands than what the manufacturing industry in Alberta can handle.”
That must sound like welcome news to Ontario’s manufacturing sector, which has lost more than 300,000 jobs in the past decade. Meanwhile, booming Alberta has a seemingly insatiable appetite for new goods and skilled workers. But so far, firms like Alps are proving to be the exception, rather than the rule, when it comes to the ability of Ontario manufacturers to expand their business into the oil sands. Thanks to the steady bleed of manufacturing jobs overseas and the boom-bust nature of the Alberta economy, some doubt that Canada’s energy sector will ever become the silver bullet that will save Ontario manufacturing.
The vast majority of what Ontario exports to other provinces are its services, particularly its financial, business and computer expertise. Meanwhile, between 2000 and 2010, the amount of manufactured goods Ontario exported to other provinces actually dropped—from 8.7 per cent of GDP to 7.7 per cent. As of 2009, the last year for which numbers exist, Ontario exported just $600 million in manufactured goods to the oil sands. That’s a huge figure, but it represents a tiny sliver of the more than $10 billion in goods that Alberta oil companies imported that year, according to a report last year by Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters.
In fact, it’s Alberta manufacturers who have been the greatest beneficiaries of the oil sands boom. The Conference Board of Canada estimates Alberta is home to 70 per cent of all Canadian manufacturing for the oil sands, compared to 14 per cent for Ontario. Alberta companies sold more than $3 billion in goods to the oil sands in 2009. Over the past decade, Alberta’s manufacturing sector has grown by $27.6 billion, while Ontario’s industry has shrunk by roughly as much.
