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We run marketing out of Calgary, and since March most budget conversations have had an oil price in them. Some of that is history: in Alberta a high oil price has usually meant good news, and for the treasury it still does. Some of it is the customer: fuel is up, freight is up, and the people our clients sell to have less left at the end of the month. Before changing anyone's plan we wanted the actual numbers, so here they are. The crisis timeline from the energy agencies. The price data from Statistics Canada and Natural Resources Canada. The demand data from the Bank of Canada and CFIB, the carriers' own surcharge tables, and the peer-reviewed research on what advertising, pricing and shipping fees do when customers are squeezed. Every figure is dated, because several of them change weekly.

Nearly seven months of a closed strait, in numbers

The war began on February 28. On March 2, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps confirmed that the strait was closed, and on March 12 the International Energy Agency (IEA) called it "the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market." Brent passed US$100 a barrel that day. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) puts the arc plainly: Brent began the year at US$61, finished the first quarter at US$118 (rounded), and set its highest 2026 settlement on April 29 at US$118.03, with an intraday print of US$126 the next day.

Two September escalations put the price back above US$100 and held it there. On September 5, US Central Command struck three Iranian vessels after missile fire at US warships, and Brent went from about US$97 on September 7 to US$101.21 on September 9. Then on September 10 and 11, drones launched from Iraq hit Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, which carries 4 to 5 million barrels a day, and the Saudi Energy Ministry shut it as a precaution. The IEA's September 11 report has Gulf diesel exports at "just over a quarter of pre-war levels" and Brent "45% above pre-war levels". Traffic through the strait is a fraction of what it was: Kpler's ten-day average in early September was about 13 transits a day against about 100 before the war, though it improved in the third week of September, when the US Central Command commander called two-week volumes the highest in six months. No ceasefire is in force, talks on an Omani reopening plan were postponed indefinitely on September 13, and the UN General Assembly runs September 22 to 29. The EIA's September 9 outlook has Brent near US$90 for the rest of 2026 and US$74 in 2027. That is a forecast, and every forecast this year has been overtaken by events.

Gasoline is up 22.8%, and the money has to come from somewhere

Statistics Canada's September 14 release has the Consumer Price Index (CPI) up 3.0% year over year in August, matching July. Gasoline rose 22.8% year over year, after 25.7% in July. Strip gasoline out and inflation was 2.4%. Fuel oil was up 43.7% and transportation as a whole 7.5%. Back in March, gasoline "surged 21.2% on a monthly basis, the largest price increase for gasoline on record", and April's reading was 28.6% above a year earlier. By province, August inflation included 3.8% in Alberta against 3.0% nationally, with 3.0% in British Columbia, 2.4% in Ontario and 5.1% in Nova Scotia. The year-over-year figure runs off an August 2025 base; since the week of January 6 the national pump average is up 45%.

Diesel is the sharper shock: Kalibrate's national average hit a record $2.751 a litre on September 17. And none of it is carbon tax. The consumer carbon price has been zero since April 1, 2025, and the federal relief is already in the pump price. Ottawa suspended the federal excise tax on gasoline and diesel on April 20, then on September 2 extended the suspension to January 31, 2027. Finance Canada puts the total fuel tax relief for 2026-27 at about $5.3 billion. Alberta's own relief takes the province's 13-cent fuel tax off for a quarter when West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude averages US$90 or more. For July to September the province replaced it with a $100 rebate, so the Calgary price above still carries the 13 cents.

The mechanism is not complicated, and the Bank of Canada wrote it in one sentence in its April Monetary Policy Report: "Higher oil prices reduce household purchasing power because higher gasoline prices mean households have less money to spend on everything else." The research puts a number on it. Gelman and co-authors, in the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics in 2023, tracked transaction records for more than half a million US consumers through the 2013 to 2016 gasoline price fall. Households spent all of the savings on non-gasoline items, a marginal propensity to consume of "approximately one", and higher still for lower incomes. The study measured a price fall. Whether households cut other spending one for one when the price rises, or lean on savings and credit first, is what the Canadian data below is about.

What people cut is the more useful finding. Ma, Ailawadi, Gauri and Grewal, in the Journal of Marketing in 2011, followed a US household panel across nearly 300 grocery categories through the 2006 to 2008 gasoline spike. Higher gasoline prices cut shopping trips and volume, pushed baskets toward supercentres and promoted items, and shifted share by tier: "bottom-tier brands lose share, midtier brands gain share, and top-tier brand share is relatively unaffected." Gasoline prices had "a much larger impact on grocery shopping behavior than broad economic factors."

Canadian households report the same pattern. In the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations for the second quarter, about 70% expect the conflict to push inflation up, and affected households report "substituting toward cheaper essentials, reducing discretionary purchases and driving less". A June Leger poll cited by CFIB (2,620 Canadians) had 72% reporting a hit to their finances from fuel prices and 38% going out less often; CFIB puts the extra cost at about $53 per vehicle per month. And yet the top line has held. RBC's second-quarter cardholder tracker had core retail spending excluding gasoline up 2.4% from the previous quarter, with households "likely sustaining broader spending growth by collectively saving less or borrowing more, a trend that can't persist indefinitely". The Bank's September 2 statement said "Consumption showed solid gains." RBC's inference is that spending is holding on thinner savings and more credit, which it says cannot persist. Lower-income households spend the largest share of their income on fuel.

Demand has overtaken labour as the constraint on small business sales

CFIB has been polling its members on fuel since the strait closed, and the series reads like a squeeze in three acts. In April (1,130 responses to April 9), 74% of small businesses reported fuel as an input cost causing difficulties, the highest share in the history of CFIB's Business Barometer. Seven in ten of those affected were absorbing the cost through lower profits, half had raised prices, and a third had delayed planned investment.

Then the demand side arrived. On July 20, CFIB reported that "Insufficient demand has overtaken labour shortages, distribution and space limitations, and input shortages as the leading factor in limiting sales and production." Its July Barometer had fuel the top cost constraint for 60% of small firms, and shipping and receiving costs a constraint for 45%, rising to 63% of manufacturers. In August, insufficient demand was cited by 48% and fuel had slipped to the third-ranked cost constraint, with gasoline still 22.8% above a year earlier. The cost did not go away. It stopped being the thing owners named first.

The Bank of Canada's second-quarter Business Outlook Survey matches it from the other side. Nearly three-quarters of firms said their costs had risen because of the war. About 40% were not passing the increase on and another 25% only partly, and outlooks had weakened for businesses tied to consumer discretionary spending. In the summary of its September deliberations, the Bank's Governing Council saw "little evidence that higher gasoline prices were passing through broadly to the prices of other goods and services". It described a labour market that was "still soft", with unemployment around 6.5% and subdued wage growth, and named US trade policy and the war as the two biggest risks.

Costs up, pass-through partial, demand named as the constraint. In our experience that is the setup in which the marketing line gets cut first. So the next question is what the research says happens when you do.

What the research says about cutting ad spend in a squeeze

Every downturn produces the same slide: the brands that kept advertising in 1990 or 2008 grew, and the brands that cut shrank. Most of those slides trace back to media owners and award entries. Here is what survives peer review, with the sample sizes and the catches.

One caution first. Almost every study below defines its treatment as a fall in gross domestic product (GDP), and Canada is not in one: the Bank's September 2 release had second-quarter growth of 3.3% and consumption showing solid gains. What 2026 shares with those episodes is the customer side, rising price sensitivity, wages below inflation, and small firms naming demand as the binding constraint. Read them as the closest measured analogue, not as a description of this economy.

The review. Tellis and Tellis, in the Journal of Advertising Research in 2009, went through the empirical literature and found "strong and consistent evidence that cutting back on advertising during a recession can hurt sales during and after the recession, without generating any substantial increase in profits." They list the catches themselves. Only three of the ten empirical studies controlled for self-selection, which matters because the companies that keep advertising are the companies that can afford to. Two studies found no gain in return on investment from increasing ads. Some of the underlying work was paid for by media companies, and the working version of the review carries a sports broadcaster's sponsorship.

The big samples. Deleersnyder, Dekimpe, Steenkamp and Leeflang, in the Journal of Marketing Research in 2009, measured advertising across 37 countries and four media and found it moves with GDP at an elasticity of about 1.4, so a 1% move in the economy went with a 1.4% move in ad spending. Everyone cuts together, which is the point. Steenkamp and Fang, in Marketing Science in 2011, covered 1,175 US firms over three decades: "Increasing advertising share in contractions has a stronger effect on profit and market share than increasing advertising share in expansions." The effect is concentrated in cyclical industries, where they measured a 50% larger share effect and a 200% larger profit effect, and is "small or even nonsignificant" in stable ones. If a company has to choose between advertising and research and development, "maintaining R&D is associated with better company performance."

The exception. Srinivasan, Lilien and Sridhar, in the Journal of Marketing in 2011, ran more than 10,000 firm-years across seven recessions and found the answer depends on market share, debt and what you sell. For business-to-business (B2B) goods and services, advertising in a recession "decreases both profits and stock returns".

Going dark. Hartnett, Gelzinis, Beal, Kennedy and Sharp, in the Journal of Advertising Research in 2021, tracked 70 brands in one Australian consumer-goods category over more than 20 years and found 57 cases where a brand stopped advertising for a year or more. Sales fell 16% after one year, 25% after two and 36% after three. Large, growing brands often kept growing for a year or two before the decline; small, growing brands reversed quickly. One category, one country, so treat the sizes as indicative, though the direction held in most cases.

What changes about the customer. Van Heerde, Gijsenberg, Dekimpe and Steenkamp, in the Journal of Marketing Research in 2013, modelled 150 brands across 36 UK packaged-goods categories from 1993 to 2010: "During contractions, the long-term own and cross price elasticities increase." Lamey, Deleersnyder, Dekimpe and Steenkamp, in the Journal of Marketing in 2007 and 2012, found consumers switch to store brands more in bad times than they switch back, and that "part of the boost in private-label share during contractions is permanent."

Fees get noticed, and a checkout surcharge is the pattern the Act names

The instinct when the carrier bill jumps is to add a line: "fuel surcharge, 15%". The behavioural research says that works, for a while. Morwitz, Greenleaf and Johnson showed in the Journal of Marketing Research in 1998 that splitting a price into a base and a surcharge lowers the total people remember and raises demand. Greenleaf, Johnson, Morwitz and Shalev's 2016 review of partitioned pricing in the Journal of Consumer Psychology adds the limit: "when surcharges are small consumers may not fully account for them, but when they are large the effect of PP [partitioned pricing] diminishes and can even reverse". Fees that look unfair also cut future shopping. Blake, Moshary, Sweeney and Tadelis ran the cleanest test, a randomized experiment on StubHub published in Marketing Science in 2021: showing fees at the end instead of up front produced "almost 21%" more spending and a 14.1% higher transaction rate. Drip pricing lifts conversion. That is exactly why the Act now names it.

Section 74.01(1.1) of the Competition Act has been in force since June 23, 2022, and its exemption was narrowed on June 20, 2024. It makes a price that is "not attainable due to fixed obligatory charges or fees" a false or misleading representation, unless those charges are "only an amount imposed on a purchaser ... by or under an Act of Parliament or the legislature of a province". Sales taxes and other statutory levies qualify. A fuel surcharge you set does not, and neither does a "service" or "handling" fee. For a corporation the penalty under section 74.1 can reach the greater of $10 million on a first order and three times the benefit, or 3% of annual worldwide gross revenue where the benefit cannot be determined, with the Tribunal setting the amount and restitution available. Since June 20, 2025, private parties can apply to the Competition Tribunal themselves on deceptive marketing.

The Cineplex case is the one to remember. A $1.50 online booking fee, shown after the ticket price, produced a $38.9 million penalty "calculated as the total amount Cineplex collected from the online booking fee between June 2022 and December 2023" (2024 Comp Trib 5), and the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed Cineplex's appeal on January 21, 2026 (2026 FCA 10). The case that matches this year's problem is Deane v. Canada Post, certified by the Federal Court in July 2025 (2025 FC 1194) as the first drip-pricing class action in Canada, pleaded under the parallel provision in section 52 rather than section 74.01: a fuel surcharge of "between 13-26% of the price of a chosen shipping service", shown only after the customer picked a service. It is under appeal. Quebec goes further still: its Consumer Protection Act requires the advertised price to include everything but GST and QST and to be "displayed more prominently than the amounts it includes". In 2025 the Quebec Court of Appeal put punitive damages for drip pricing at $10 million in Union des consommateurs c. Air Canada (2025 QCCA 480).

The rule for a store, then. The first price the customer sees has to be the price they can pay, before sales tax. You can still print "fuel" as a line on the invoice, and you can still charge more than you did in January. What is exposed is quoting $12 shipping and adding $5.34 on the next screen, which is the Canada Post pattern now certified for trial. "Was" prices carry their own test: under section 74.01(3) the onus is on the seller to substantiate the ordinary price. We are marketers, not lawyers. Check the sections before the checkout copy goes live.

Shipping: reset the threshold, not just the fee

Here is what the surcharge lines look like as this goes to press. Canada Post resets its parcel surcharge weekly from Kalibrate's diesel average; FedEx sets its within-Canada rate from Natural Resources Canada's diesel index with a two-week lag; Purolator publishes for four-week periods.

Before the war, Canada Post's domestic surcharge was reported in the 25 to 30% range and UPS Canada's at about 23.5% in January. On a $12 base rate, the surcharge line has gone from $3.00 at 25% to $5.34 at 44.5%. And the record diesel price of September 17 is not in FedEx's number yet, given the two-week lag; Canada Post's weekly reset will catch it sooner.

The research on what to do with a shipping fee is older than the shock and still right. Lewis, in the Journal of Retailing in 2006, using an online grocer's records, found that "shipping fees greatly influence order incidence rates", that "customer acquisition is more sensitive to order size incentives while retention is more influenced by base shipping fee levels", and that threshold policies "may outperform free shipping promotions". Lewis, Singh and Fay, in Marketing Science the same year, found that free-shipping and threshold promotions do generate extra sales, and that once the lost shipping revenue and the customers who would have bought anyway are counted, they are sometimes "unprofitable to the retailer". So the move starts as arithmetic. Recompute the landed cost of an order at the threshold at this month's surcharge. If the margin on that order no longer covers it, raise the threshold or move to a flat rate that has the surcharge inside it, and keep the customer-facing number all-in. Spending is still growing in aggregate: Statistics Canada's June retail release had e-commerce sales up 9.9% from a year earlier, at $5.7 billion, 7.7% of retail. The margin is what moved.

Ad prices: what the platform and agency data show

The other cost line marketers ask about is the auction. Meta's second-quarter results (July 29) had worldwide revenue of US$60.80 billion, up 28%, on 14% more impressions and a 12% higher average price per ad. For the United States and Canada combined, the price per ad rose 11%, 13% and 9% across the last three quarters of 2025, 14% in the first quarter of 2026 and 20% in the second. Meta attributes nothing to oil, and the increases were already double-digit through 2025. On search, two widely cited agency datasets disagree on direction: Skai had paid search spend up 17% on flat clicks, which means cost per click rose, while Tinuiti had Google Search spend up 14% on 13% more clicks with cost per click up 1%. We print both; your own account's trend is the one to trust. We could not find a published Canada-only 2026 cost-per-thousand series. The figures that circulate are vendor or agency aggregates of their own accounts, and should be labelled that way.

The Alberta exception, with an asterisk

Alberta's first-quarter fiscal update on August 27 turned a budgeted $9.4 billion deficit into a $2 billion surplus, an $11.4 billion swing. Resource revenue is now forecast at $23 billion, up $9.7 billion, on a WTI assumption raised to US$73.50 from the US$60.50 in Budget 2026. WTI averaged about US$93 over April to June, the fiscal first quarter, and by the update's own sensitivity every dollar above the budget assumption adds about $680 million to the year. Jason Nixon, President of Treasury Board and Minister of Finance: "Alberta has been given an opportunity and Alberta's government will not waste it." Households got a $100 Alberta Energy Rebate instead, for household incomes up to $225,000, with applications closing September 30. Whether the fuel tax comes off again on October 1 had not been announced when this was written.

Now the asterisk. Alberta's inflation in August was 3.8%, the highest west of the Atlantic provinces. Unemployment was 6.8% with employment down 0.3% on the month, and national wage growth of 2.0% was the slowest since 2017. Retail sales fell 1.3% in June, the largest decline of any province. ATB Financial's July survey had fuel costs a difficulty for 68% of Alberta businesses and insufficient demand for 48%, the same number CFIB found nationally in August. The Business Council of Alberta's July CEO survey is the other half: 65% expect conditions to improve and 55% plan more capital spending, even as 74% call input costs a barrier. Two ledgers. The treasury's forecast surplus and the capital plans in the CEO survey are one. On the other, Alberta households face 3.8% inflation and 6.8% unemployment on the slowest wage growth since 2017. And whatever is driving Alberta's gap, the pump table says it is not gasoline: Calgary's price rose less this year than Toronto's. Sell into the capital budgets. Price for the household.

What we take from this for a marketing budget

Do not go dark. The finding the reviews converge on is the cost of silence: sales can fall during and after, and the profit you thought you saved does not show up. The studies report their own exceptions, business-to-business advertising and stable industries. If the budget has to shrink, shrink it by cutting the weakest incremental channel and the creative that stopped converting. Keep the reach and the list.

Move the money toward what a squeezed customer buys. Price elasticities rise in contractions, mid-tier brands gain, promoted items gain, and store brands keep part of what they take. In the US gasoline spike the losers were bottom-tier brands and the winners mid-tier, with top-tier share relatively unaffected. That argues for a mid-tier offer and a real promotion calendar, against fighting on the bottom rung, and, as our inference rather than a finding, for leading with the all-in price where you can show it.

Price all-in. The first number the customer sees has to be attainable. Fold the surcharge into the first price the customer sees, never the next screen. The research says fees shown late would lift conversion. In Cineplex the Tribunal set the penalty at everything the fee had collected.

Reset the shipping economics at this month's surcharge. A free-shipping threshold set when the surcharge was 25% is subsidizing 36.5 to 51.5% today. Recompute the landed cost at the threshold, raise it or move to an all-in flat rate, and use the threshold rather than blanket free shipping, because in Lewis's grocer data order-size incentives pulled new customers in while the base fee was what kept existing ones ordering. A higher threshold costs orders, so the question is whether it costs fewer dollars than the surcharge does.

If you sell to businesses, follow the capital plans. The evidence on B2B advertising in recessions is negative. On the Business Council of Alberta's July survey, 55% of Alberta CEOs plan more capital spending. Put the money into product, direct outreach and proof, and point it at the customers whose budgets grew.

Four dates. Statistics Canada publishes July retail sales on September 24. Alberta's rebate applications close September 30. The UN General Assembly runs to September 29, where any Iran contact would show up first; Tehran says there are no talks until its conditions are met. The Bank of Canada's next decision and Monetary Policy Report land October 28; its July report assumed Brent near US$75 for the third quarter, and the price has run at or above US$100. Reread the surcharge tables the Monday after each one.

Methodology and limitations

Oil market figures are from the EIA's Today in Energy (April 7, 2026) and Short-Term Energy Outlook (September 9), the IEA's Oil Market Reports of March 12 and September 11, and settlement prices as reported by DTN and the news wires; the timeline draws on Al Jazeera, Associated Press and Reuters reporting to September 21, which is the as-of date for the strait's status. Canadian price data are from Statistics Canada's Consumer Price Index releases for March, April and August 2026, Natural Resources Canada's weekly pump-price survey and Kalibrate's diesel average as reported by CP24 on September 17. Demand evidence comes from four places. The Bank of Canada: its September 2 rate announcement, its September 16 summary of deliberations, its April and July Monetary Policy Reports, and its second-quarter Business Outlook Survey and Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations. CFIB: its reports of April 24 and July 20 and its July and August Business Barometers, with sample sizes as stated, noting that CFIB polls its own members. The June Leger poll CFIB cites. And RBC's Consumer Spending Tracker, which is cardholder data, not a national account. Surcharge rates are the carriers' published tables for the weeks stated; pre-war levels are as reported by news outlets. Alberta figures are from the province's first-quarter fiscal update of August 27, Statistics Canada's August Labour Force Survey and June retail trade release, ATB Financial's July survey and the Business Council of Alberta's July CEO survey.

The academic findings are quoted from the published papers, each located through Crossref, with journal, year and digital object identifier given so the wording can be checked. All of the advertising studies are observational, several rest on companies' own reported spending, and the self-selection problem Tellis and Tellis describe applies to most of them. The Hartnett study covers one category in one country. The gasoline studies are American and, in Gelman's case, measure a price fall; we apply them to a Canadian price rise by inference. The StubHub experiment is the only randomized field experiment cited. Legal provisions are quoted from the Competition Act on the Justice Laws site, from the Competition Bureau's published decisions and consent agreements, from the decisions cited by their neutral citations, and from Quebec's Consumer Protection Act. Ad-cost figures are company or vendor data with no Canada-only series, and Meta's price-per-ad figure is for the United States and Canada combined. Read every number here as a dated snapshot. Most of them will be different by the time the Bank of Canada meets again.

Frequently asked questions

How much have gas prices gone up in Canada in 2026?

Gasoline prices in Canada were 22.8% higher in August 2026 than a year earlier, after a 25.7% rise in July, according to Statistics Canada's Consumer Price Index. At the pump, Natural Resources Canada's weekly national average for regular gasoline went from 128.5 cents a litre in the week of January 6 to 187.0 cents in the week of September 15. Diesel set a national record of $2.751 a litre on September 17, by Kalibrate's count. None of it is carbon tax, which has been zero for consumers since April 2025.

Is the Strait of Hormuz still closed?

The Strait of Hormuz is not closed outright, but as of September 21, 2026, traffic remains a fraction of normal and no ceasefire is in force. Iran confirmed on March 2 that the strait was closed, an April 7 ceasefire was followed by a US blockade of Iranian ports from April 13, a June 17 memorandum that collapsed on July 7 and 8, and a renewed blockade from July 14. In early September Kpler counted about 13 transits a day against about 100 before the war. Flows improved in the third week of September, and Brent crude settled at US$103.87 on September 18.

Should a small business cut its marketing budget during the oil shock?

The peer-reviewed evidence says cutting advertising in a downturn hurts sales during and after it without improving profit, so a small business should hold its advertising where it can fund it and cut waste rather than reach. The strongest published effects are for large public firms in cyclical industries, and the same studies find little effect in stable ones. Tellis and Tellis's 2009 review called that result "strong and consistent", and in one Australian category Hartnett and colleagues found brands that stopped advertising were selling 16% less a year later. The exception is business-to-business goods and services, where Srinivasan, Lilien and Sridhar found recession advertising lowered profits. Most of these studies are observational, and companies that keep spending tend to be the ones that can afford to.

What are the current fuel surcharges at Canada Post, FedEx and Purolator?

For the week of September 21 to 27, 2026, Canada Post's fuel surcharge on domestic parcels is 44.5% (25.5% for US and international), FedEx's surcharge on shipments within Canada is 51.5%, and Purolator's courier surcharge is 36.5% for September 7 to October 4. Canada Post resets weekly from the Kalibrate diesel average, and FedEx follows the Natural Resources Canada diesel index with a two-week lag, so the record diesel price of September 17 is not in these rates yet and lands in the next resets.

Can a Canadian business add a fuel surcharge at checkout?

A Canadian business can charge a fuel surcharge, but it should sit in the first price the customer sees. Advertising a price that cannot be paid because of fixed obligatory fees is drip pricing under section 74.01(1.1) of the Competition Act, prohibited since June 23, 2022, and since a June 2024 amendment only charges imposed by federal or provincial law, such as sales tax, are exempt. A surcharge set by the business is not. Cineplex was ordered to pay $38.9 million over a $1.50 online booking fee, upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal on January 21, 2026, and a class action over Canada Post's fuel surcharge was certified by the Federal Court in 2025 under the parallel provision in section 52 and is under appeal.

Are Meta and Google ads more expensive in 2026?

Meta's ads are more expensive in 2026 and the picture on Google search is mixed. Meta's average price per ad in the United States and Canada was 20% higher in the second quarter of 2026 than a year earlier, after rises of 14% in the first quarter of 2026 and 9% in the fourth quarter of 2025, on Meta's own results. The company does not attribute the increase to oil prices, and the climb began before the war. Search costs are less clear, with Skai and Tinuiti's second-quarter datasets disagreeing on the direction of cost per click, and we could not find a published Canada-only 2026 series for ad costs, so a business should judge by the trend in its own accounts.

Is the oil shock good for Alberta?

The oil shock is a windfall for Alberta's treasury and hard on Alberta's households. The province's first-quarter update turned a budgeted $9.4 billion deficit into a $2 billion surplus on $23 billion of resource revenue, and 55% of CEOs surveyed by the Business Council of Alberta plan more capital spending. At the same time, Alberta's inflation was 3.8% in August, the highest west of the Atlantic provinces, unemployment was 6.8%, retail sales fell 1.3% in June, and 68% of Alberta businesses told ATB Financial that fuel costs were a difficulty.

Related reading

• The decoy effect, and four more pricing claims retested: what survives replication in pricing research.
• Your Q4 problem is probably not traffic: the conversion checklist for the quarter that starts in a week.
• How to scale paid ads without killing your ROAS: the mechanics of moving budget between channels.
• The Canada-US alcohol trade dispute: timeline and current status, on the other shock hitting Canadian sellers this year.