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Instead of soaring food and energy prices encouraging food and energy producers to export more, they may export less and divert more of their output to domestic markets. The reason is simple: to keep domestic prices from matching soaring world prices.

But when it is food and energy prices, the political pressures become immense. They are so immense you can toss your economics textbook out the window.

Instead, no less than 29 food-exporting countries responded by banning food exports and kept their crop production for a hungry domestic market.

Canada would benefit just as much from the creation of a national electricity grid as it did from the development of the railway and the pipeline. As a nation-building effort, developing these grid connections would give provinces options to buy and sell power of all stripes. Unlike crude oil, it is a consumer product that can be used everywhere, and Canadian supplies of electricity are increasingly renewable in form. Such a project would increase the renewable power potential for Alberta and Saskatchewan by linking existing and future hydro development in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia to these markets. While the distances here are excessive, the challenge is not insurmountable.

Many Canadians may not realize this, but most of Canada’s long-distance, high-capacity connections for oil and electricity run north-south, not east-west. In these key industries, we have focused almost exclusively on serving the U.S. This is one of the great strengths of our nation -- the ability of each province to create its own best strategy for developing revenue streams. It’s also a weakness, because lack of access to other provincial markets has effectively siloed our energy strategies along provincial lines, leading to a patchwork of development across the country that does not take advantage of potential synergies across regions.

If Canada's energy firms don't start exporting to China now, others might beat them to it, according to an Enbridge Inc. vice-president.

They argued the window of opportunity to sell to China won't always be open largely due to competition and the chance the world's second largest economy may cease growing at its current staggering pace - reducing the money its investors can spend.

Colombian oil producer Ecopetrol plans to shift the majority of its oil exports from the United States to Asia in a decade due to higher sales profitability on the latter continent.Enbridge is on a similar quest.The company is seeking regulatory approval for its $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline project to connect Canadian oilsands and natural gas fields to the West Coast, where liquefied natural gas could be shipped to Asia.

Exports tumbled 4.9 per cent in February, outpacing a 4-per-cent drop in imports and slicing the country’s trade surplus to just $33-million, trade figures showed Tuesday.

Canadian export levels remain 19 per cent below their peak of July, 2008.

The sharp drop in February’s trade volumes “portends a slowdown in the Canadian economy in the second quarter of 2011 – a slowdown connected with less robust growth in the U.S., as well as major disruptions to North American vehicle output as a result of critical parts shortages from Japan,” said Brian Bethune, chief economist for Canada at IHS Global Insight.

Two-way trade between the United States and Canada amounted to nearly $750-billion in 2008 before falling to $600-billion in 2009, thanks largely to the decline in energy prices and weakness in the auto sector; in both areas, Canada is the United States’ largest foreign supplier.

Thus, Canada’s $100-billion drop in exports to the United States between 2008 and 2009 was three times as large as the decline in Canada’s GDP during that period.

The point is not that internal trade flows or barriers to them are unimportant: in large countries, in particular, internal trade is often significantly larger overall than international trade and therefore even relatively small impediments to it can matter a great deal.

Consumers typically account for 60 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, and rising living costs along with elevated debt levels suggest they won’t be much help this year

Gross domestic product expanded at an annualized 3.9 per cent in the first quarter, the fastest pace in a year, led by business investment and manufacturing, Statistics Canada said

that pace will be cut by almost half in the second quarter, while Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters Monday he’s anticipating “more modest” growth in the rest of the year

Canadians' average non-mortgage debt grew 4.5 per cent to $25,597 in the first quarter compared to a year earlier, signalling that consumers aren't necessarily clamping down on borrowing even as they rein in spending.

Total debt per consumer, including credit cards, car loans and lines of credit but excluding mortgages, was up from $24,497 in the same quarter of 2010,

most in Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, with debt rising by 7.8 per cent in both provinces, while British Columbians had the highest average consumer debt at $36,649

The new Conservative government’s business-friendly economic strategy will be tested by uncertain global conditions and a stubbornly high jobless rate in Canada. One of the first items on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s agenda when Parliament re

The new Conservative government’s business-friendly economic strategy will be tested by uncertain global conditions and a stubbornly high jobless rate in Canada.

n February, Canada’s output sank by 0.2 per cent, the worst monthly performance since May 2009.