Natural resource-based goods play an outsized role in Canada's export portfolio. Added together, energy, non-metallic minerals and related products, metal ores, forest products and agri-food make up roughly half of all exports.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

Jock Finlayson is the chief economist at the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association. David Williams is vice-president of policy at the Business Council of British Columbia.

It is hard to overstate the importance of energy to Canada’s trade balance. In its latest “scorecard” report, the Coalition for a Better Future observes that “over the past decade, Canada recorded a cumulative trade deficit of $130-billion. Had it not been for energy, our trade deficit would have been about $1-trillion.”

But one rarely hears federal government policy makers acknowledge that energy production and exports play a disproportionate role in “paying the bills” in Canada. In recent weeks we did some light research to see if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or any of his ministers had ever talked up Canada’s global comparative advantage in energy (hydrocarbons) and were unable to find a single example.

Generally, Ottawa doesn’t like to talk about the industry – except in the........

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