Prime Minister Mark Carney has been playing up protecting Canada’s energy sovereignty by expanding fossil fuel extraction. But who owns the oil patch?

The reality is that U.S. capital controls the majority of oil and gas companies operating in Canada and that American ownership of the Canadian oil resources is increasing. Recent reporting from Oilprice.com shows that U.S. equity owns 59 percent of Canadian fossil fuel companies, up from 56 percent in 2024. Over the same period, Canadian ownership declined from 37 percent to 34 percent. Is this what Canada Strong looks like?

The situation is even more stark for the four largest Canadian bitumen producers, according to a recent report from the nonprofit group Canadians for Tax Fairness. Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial Oil, and Suncor Energy are 73 percent foreign-owned, and 60 percent U.S.-owned, the report shows. Canadian investors control only 27 percent of these “Big Four” sands giants.

These companies raked in $131.6 billion in profits between 2021 and 2024 and paid out almost $80 billion of this windfall to foreign shareholder buyback and dividends. This is considerably more than the $60 billion paid over the same period to the Albertan owners of the resource through provincial bitumen royalties. Since the majority of shareholders are outside Alberta, $49.3 billion of buyback and dividend revenue ended up in the pockets of U.S. investors.

Much Alberta oil wealth also ended up in obscenely lucrative executive compensation. Suncor’s CEO was paid over $36 million in 2023, or about $18,000 per hour. The CEO of ConocoPhillips Canada had to make do with only $20 million that year, and Imperial Oil’s boss scraped by with a mere $14.8 million, or about 260 times the average Canadian wage that year.

Meanwhile, Alberta’s oil patch employment is plunging, with 38,000 direct jobs lost between 2014 and 2024 as companies shed workers in favour of automation, according to a report by Centre for Future Work released last week. Production increased almost 50 percent during that decade while jobs per barrel fell by 43 percent. Direct oil and gas employment now represents less than 1 percent of Canadian jobs and the sector is shedding positions so quickly, it is on track to reach zero by 2050.

Albertans Need to ‘Act Like an Owner’

To see how far Canadian fossil fuel sovereignty has fallen we need to recall the words of former Premier Peter Lougheed who implored Albertans to “act like an owner.” His government enacted bold policies in the early 1970s to assert authority over the province’s vast fossil fuel wealth, including royalty reform — he set up the Alberta Heritage Trust Fund and incorporated a publicly owned oil company to ensure that Alberta was not merely a branch office of American oil giants.

The oil sands would not have happened without a massive initial investment from Ottawa and the Alberta government. Lougheed’s government funneled funds through the then-newly formed Alberta Energy Company, jointly owned by the provincial government and individual Alberta shareholders. 

Fast forward 58years and Lougheed’s prescient words echo from the grave across decades of his squandered legacy. The Alberta Energy Company was sold to the private sector in 1993 by Ralph Klein in one of his first acts after being elected premier. According to annual reports, the Alberta Heritage Fund has not seen a dime of additional royalty contribution since 1987, and has since lost two thirds of its value due to  inflation and population growth. The largest bitumen producers now provide more revenue to their shareholders than the province that owns the resource.

Carney Pushes for American-backed LNG Projects

Mark Carney has also been embracing liquified natural gas as an alleged defence of Canadian energy sovereignty. The Ksi Lisims LNG project being fast-tracked by his government is wholly owned by Texas-based Western LNG with financial backing from Wall Street giant Blackstone.  Blackstone’s CEO was a prominent donor to Trump’s 2024 campaign and remains a key advisor to a president who continues to disparage Canada’s sovereignty.

And while the Canadian government is betting on a potential new pipeline to the BC coast, private companies are choosing to plough profits into investor incentives rather than capital expenditures. Despite banking record profits between 2021 and 2024, the Big Four bitumen producers invested only $15.9 billion in their operations, a 43 percent decrease compared to 10 years earlier. During the same period, they shoveled $58.4 billion to their foreign shareholders in buybacks and dividends.

If the biggest bitumen companies are not invested in their future, why should the Canadian taxpayer?

However, the public largess towards the oil patch just keeps coming. Ottawa has offered the biggest bitumen producers a 50 percent tax credit worth $5.7 billion towards the dubious Pathways Alliance carbon capture proposal. Unsatisfied with this public windfall, industry wants Canadian taxpayers to cover two-thirds of the cost with additional billions in incentives from the Alberta government.

The ink was barely dry on the recent memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreement between Ottawa and Alberta for a new pipeline from Alberta to the northwest coast when the province further weakened industrial carbon pricing, making the business case for the Pathways project even more doubtful. As the global energy transition accelerates, the oil lobby will no doubt expand their already impressive efforts to have the public prop up their declining sector.

The fossil fuel industry in Canada is increasingly owned by Americans and operated for their benefit. Prime Minister Carney should stop pretending that expanding oil extraction will somehow make “Canada strong” rather than causing our economy to become even more dependent on our erratic southern neighbour.