openpolitics.com

Why do people say that Alberta is the Texas of Canada?

Alberta and Texas are rather similar in many ways. One is that they are very big and nearly the same size. Texas is 269,000 square miles (696,000 km2), while Alberta is 255,000 sq mi (661,000 km2), or 5% smaller than Texas.

The main similarity is that both are the oil producing giants of their respective countries. They both produce a little over 3 million barrels of oil per day. (75% of Alberta’s oil is exported to the US since that is far too much oil for the Canadian market.)

Both have huge agricultural industries, particularly cattle ranching. Alberta has about 5 million head of cattle (40% of the cattle in Canada) while Texas has about 12 million head of cattle (13% of the cattle in the US). As a result people in both places have a tradition of riding horses and wearing cowboy hats.

Both have two main cities which are nearly the same size as each other. Texas has Houston located 240 miles (390 km) south of Dallas, Alberta has Calgary located 180 miles (300 km) south of Edmonton. In both cases the southern of the two cities is the main head office center of the oil industries of their respective countries.

Both are quite conservative by the standards of their respective countries, (although the entire political spectrum of Canada is offset to the left of the US, so Alberta is not as conservative as Texas). This may be a result of their main industries, since workers in both oil and cattle ranching tend to be independent, conservative-thinking people who don’t like government interfering in their lives.

The main difference is that Texas has 7 times the population of Alberta, and its two main cities are about 5 times the size of Alberta’s two main cities. It is the second most populous state in the US, and this gives it a lot more clout in US federal politics than Alberta has in Canada.

As Texans say, “Don’t mess with Texas”, whereas Alberta does get messed with a lot by its federal government, although people in neither place like being interfered with and told what to do.