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To the US, Mexico, or…

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Deciding on, and then entering foreign markets requires homework, careful analysis and best practice. If you’re in the oil and gas services sector in Red Deer, industry-based direction setting is available, in this new free “get abroad right” certificate training.

By Lesley Young

Good advice on getting abroad? There’s a wealth of experience from local industries.

For more than a year, Jerry Raduy researched whether to take his small, Calgary-based drilling company, Clear Directional Drilling Solutions, into the Middle East.

After travelling to a free trade zone in the Persian Gulf and investing in professional service firms to investigate what’s involved to do business in Iran—from accounting to shipping equipment to legal and insurance concerns—Raduy recently decided to put the expansion plans on pause… temporarily.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen yet with Canada and U.S. relations when it comes to some Middle Eastern countries,” said Raduy, adding that his research also revealed there were too many unknowns beyond the political uncertainty.

“We don’t want to be first. We want to be a close second. Let somebody else go through the pain and misery to pave the path,” he said. So why did they bother at all? The promise of future growth—day rates for oil and gas services in some Middle Eastern countries are three to four times what they are in North America—is tempting despite the risks, such as waiting six months to a year for receivables.

“It’s high risk, but it’s also high reward,” said Raduy.

Expanding into other markets isn’t for everyone. That’s all the more reason why small to medium-size enterprises (SMEs) need to be smart about their plans to enter foreign markets, said Edy Wong, director of the Centre for International Business Studies at the Alberta School of Business

“Internationalization is not for everyone or for every business. An SME should diversify, but only if they have a product that is truly competitive and if they can reap benefits from economies of scale,” he said.  “Having said that, the economy is now global. So, any business should consider how the global market may become part of their business plans over time and have a long view on that.”

After two earlier training sessions, the Petroleum Services Association of Canada, in partnership with Alberta Economic Development, Alberta School of Business, and the Red Deer College Donald School of Business, will be hosting a 1.5-day training program for Central Alberta’s oil and gas service and technology SMEs to share and expand on international market entry essentials.

What were some of the tips gleaned from these earlier workshops and cases? There were many, such as “choose your time”, “make sure you have money to spend”, “find a partner”, or “consider cultural differences.”  From participants’ feedback though, what mattered most, even beyond such key takeaways, “was the full joint experience of this training.”

 

 For more information and to register go to: www.psac.ca

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

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Automotive

Federal government should swiftly axe foolish EV mandate

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From the Fraser Institute

By Kenneth P. Green

Two recent events exemplify the fundamental irrationality that is Canada’s electric vehicle (EV) policy.

First, the Carney government re-committed to Justin Trudeau’s EV transition mandate that by 2035 all (that’s 100 per cent) of new car sales in Canada consist of “zero emission vehicles” including battery EVs, plug-in hybrid EVs and fuel-cell powered vehicles (which are virtually non-existent in today’s market). This policy has been a foolish idea since inception. The mass of car-buyers in Canada showed little desire to buy them in 2022, when the government announced the plan, and they still don’t want them.

Second, President Trump’s “Big Beautiful” budget bill has slashed taxpayer subsidies for buying new and used EVs, ended federal support for EV charging stations, and limited the ability of states to use fuel standards to force EVs onto the sales lot. Of course, Canada should not craft policy to simply match U.S. policy, but in light of policy changes south of the border Canadian policymakers would be wise to give their own EV policies a rethink.

And in this case, a rethink—that is, scrapping Ottawa’s mandate—would only benefit most Canadians. Indeed, most Canadians disapprove of the mandate; most do not want to buy EVs; most can’t afford to buy EVs (which are more expensive than traditional internal combustion vehicles and more expensive to insure and repair); and if they do manage to swing the cost of an EV, most will likely find it difficult to find public charging stations.

Also, consider this. Globally, the mining sector likely lacks the ability to keep up with the supply of metals needed to produce EVs and satisfy government mandates like we have in Canada, potentially further driving up production costs and ultimately sticker prices.

Finally, if you’re worried about losing the climate and environmental benefits of an EV transition, you should, well, not worry that much. The benefits of vehicle electrification for climate/environmental risk reduction have been oversold. In some circumstances EVs can help reduce GHG emissions—in others, they can make them worse. It depends on the fuel used to generate electricity used to charge them. And EVs have environmental negatives of their own—their fancy tires cause a lot of fine particulate pollution, one of the more harmful types of air pollution that can affect our health. And when they burst into flames (which they do with disturbing regularity) they spew toxic metals and plastics into the air with abandon.

So, to sum up in point form. Prime Minister Carney’s government has re-upped its commitment to the Trudeau-era 2035 EV mandate even while Canadians have shown for years that most don’t want to buy them. EVs don’t provide meaningful environmental benefits. They represent the worst of public policy (picking winning or losing technologies in mass markets). They are unjust (tax-robbing people who can’t afford them to subsidize those who can). And taxpayer-funded “investments” in EVs and EV-battery technology will likely be wasted in light of the diminishing U.S. market for Canadian EV tech.

If ever there was a policy so justifiably axed on its failed merits, it’s Ottawa’s EV mandate. Hopefully, the pragmatists we’ve heard much about since Carney’s election victory will acknowledge EV reality.

Kenneth P. Green

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
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Business

Prime minister can make good on campaign promise by reforming Canada Health Act

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From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail

While running for the job of leading the country, Prime Minister Carney promised to defend the Canada Health Act (CHA) and build a health-care system Canadians can be proud of. Unfortunately, to have any hope of accomplishing the latter promise, he must break the former and reform the CHA.

As long as Ottawa upholds and maintains the CHA in its current form, Canadians will not have a timely, accessible and high-quality universal health-care system they can be proud of.

Consider for a moment the remarkably poor state of health care in Canada today. According to international comparisons of universal health-care systems, Canadians endure some of the lowest access to physicians, medical technologies and hospital beds in the developed world, and wait in queues for health care that routinely rank among the longest in the developed world. This is all happening despite Canadians paying for one of the developed world’s most expensive universal-access health-care systems.

None of this is new. Canada’s poor ranking in the availability of services—despite high spending—reaches back at least two decades. And wait times for health care have nearly tripled since the early 1990s. Back then, in 1993, Canadians could expect to wait 9.3 weeks for medical treatment after GP referral compared to 30 weeks in 2024.

But fortunately, we can find the solutions to our health-care woes in other countries such as Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Australia, which all provide more timely access to quality universal care. Every one of these countries requires patient cost-sharing for physician and hospital services, and allows private competition in the delivery of universally accessible services with money following patients to hospitals and surgical clinics. And all these countries allow private purchases of health care, as this reduces the burden on the publicly-funded system and creates a valuable pressure valve for it.

And this brings us back to the CHA, which contains the federal government’s requirements for provincial policymaking. To receive their full federal cash transfers for health care from Ottawa (totalling nearly $55 billion in 2025/26) provinces must abide by CHA rules and regulations.

And therein lies the rub—the CHA expressly disallows requiring patients to share the cost of treatment while the CHA’s often vaguely defined terms and conditions have been used by federal governments to discourage a larger role for the private sector in the delivery of health-care services.

Clearly, it’s time for Ottawa’s approach to reflect a more contemporary understanding of how to structure a truly world-class universal health-care system.

Prime Minister Carney can begin by learning from the federal government’s own welfare reforms in the 1990s, which reduced federal transfers and allowed provinces more flexibility with policymaking. The resulting period of provincial policy innovation reduced welfare dependency and government spending on social assistance (i.e. savings for taxpayers). When Ottawa stepped back and allowed the provinces to vary policy to their unique circumstances, Canadians got improved outcomes for fewer dollars.

We need that same approach for health care today, and it begins with the federal government reforming the CHA to expressly allow provinces the ability to explore alternate policy approaches, while maintaining the foundational principles of universality.

Next, the Carney government should either hold cash transfers for health care constant (in nominal terms), reduce them or eliminate them entirely with a concordant reduction in federal taxes. By reducing (or eliminating) the pool of cash tied to the strings of the CHA, provinces would have greater freedom to pursue reform policies they consider to be in the best interests of their residents without federal intervention.

After more than four decades of effectively mandating failing health policy, it’s high time to remove ambiguity and minimize uncertainty—and the potential for politically motivated interpretations—in the CHA. If Prime Minister Carney wants Canadians to finally have a world-class health-care system then can be proud of, he should allow the provinces to choose their own set of universal health-care policies. The first step is to fix, rather than defend, the 40-year-old legislation holding the provinces back.

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