What does Canada produce and export?

The Athabasca oil sands are not a conventional reservoir but bitumen held in sand, too viscous to flow at surface temperature. Shallow deposits are mined with shovels and trucks; deeper ones are heated in place with steam. Both require large upfront capital and produce for decades once built, which is why Canadian output responds slowly to price. Canada produced 6.1% of world crude oil in 2025 (Energy Institute) and held 8.2% of world crude export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). Almost all of it has moved by pipeline into the United States, where refineries on the Gulf Coast and in the Midwest are configured for heavy sour crude; the resulting single-buyer dependence is what the Trans Mountain expansion to the Pacific coast, completed in 2024, was built to loosen. Gas from the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin gave 4.9% of world natural gas production in 2025 (Energy Institute).

Prairie wheat rests on a different accident: the chernozem soils of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, and short-season hard red spring varieties bred in the early twentieth century to ripen before frost. High protein content makes the grain a blending wheat for millers worldwide. Canada grew 4.5% of world wheat in 2024 (FAOSTAT) and held 14% of world wheat export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), moved west by rail to Vancouver and Prince Rupert since the marketing monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board ended in 2012.

Smelting is a hydropower story. Quebec's James Bay and Saguenay stations supply long-term, low-cost electricity, so smelters cluster there and import their alumina by sea rather than refining domestic ore. Canada made 4.5% of the world's primary aluminum in 2025 (USGS) but was the largest exporter by value, at 10% of world aluminum export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), because so little of the metal stays home. Mines in the Abitibi greenstone belt of Ontario and Quebec produced 6.1% of world gold in 2025 (USGS).