Start your day off right with five things you need to know this morning.
Five things you need to know
An independence referendum in Alberta could "have an effect" on investor confidence, Mark Carney has said. The prime minister added: "Our strategy with Alberta has been to go right to the heart of the issue, which is the pipeline. But what else comes with the pipeline pathways? An actual carbon market that works in Alberta ... Having everything on the table, rolling up your sleeves, working on it — that’s the way to address it. Showing that the federation works, and it has benefit. It has a huge immediate payoff if we get it right."
Energy Minister Tim Hodgson has announced he will give out $28.9 million to help fund carbon capture and renewable energy projects across Canada. The largest share of the cash will go to carbon capture projects, with two groups in Saskatchewan receiving close to $15 million to investigate the experimental technology.
A successful Team Canada trip to CERAWeek 2026 completed.
— Tim Hodgson (@timhodgsonmt) March 26, 2026
From global companies to international allies, the message in every conversation was clear: Canada has what the world wants - and now more than ever.
Our response?
We are ready to deliver, and to use our energy as a… pic.twitter.com/mQRdScwrpK
Canada would reap enormous benefits from a new oil pipeline to the West Coast, a study has claimed. Clean Prosperity said the profits from the oil industry's expansion would offset increases to the industrial carbon tax, whose implementation has proved controversial among firms and investors. A separate report from the MEI think tank claimed the price gap between US and Alberta oil tightened by 37.5 per cent in the 18 months following the opening of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which brought more oil to the coast and thus to international markets. That surge in sale price, MEI said, resulted in a US$16.7 billion increase in revenues between June 2024 and November 2025. A policy analyst with the think tank added: "The reduction in the spread means that it is becoming possible to approach the full value of our resources, which helps Canadian firms, but also increases government revenues ... It is urgent that governments remove the regulatory obstacles that obstruct the construction of new energy infrastructure.”
Price surge from Trans Mountain expansion highlights need for new pipelines: MEI. https://t.co/lhp6R3lMHQ
— CityNews Edmonton (@CityNewsYEG) March 26, 2026
In another think tank report released today, this one from the Fraser Institute, the industrial carbon tax isn't dismissed quite so easily. At $170 per tonne – the Liberal Party's plan by 2030 – the tax would "impose substantial costs" and could cause real GDP in Alberta to decline by two per cent compared with a scenario in which there are no increases to the tax, according to the study. That could mean, nationally, a loss of $1,160 per worker and a decline in more than 50,000 jobs.
The deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, Carolyn Rogers, has delivered a bleak message to Canadians. She said: "Canadians have faced a lot of economic upheaval over the past five years, and the next five may not be much calmer." Rogers added that the Iran war is already hurting consumers and businesses. She also conceded that "like most central banks around the world, we underestimated how high and how persistent inflation would become after the pandemic."
From our partners @financialpost: Bank of Canada better at handling supply shocks after 'difficult' inflation lesson, says deputy https://t.co/zd633vclSp
— National Post (@nationalpost) March 26, 2026
