• People Advantage: Canada is a nation of intelligent, educated workers, ranking #1 in the OECD in higher education achievement.
• Business Environment Advantage: The Economic Intelligence Unit has rated Canada the #1 place to do business in the G7 for the next five years.
• Economic Advantage: Canada is better placed than many countries to weather the global financial turbulence and worldwide recession.
• Tax Advantage: Canada offers businesses low tax rates, boasting the lowest payroll taxes among the G7 countries.
• NAFTA Advantage: Canada ’s NAFTA advantage gives investors access to more than 443 million consumers and a combined GDP of more than US$15.4 trillion.
• The Asia-Pacific Gateway and Corridor Initiative (APGCI): Take advantage of Canada’s strategic location as the crossroads between the North American marketplace and the booming economies of Asia

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Canada’s inflation rate for June was negative 0.3%, marking the first time since November 1994 overall prices have declined on a 12-month basis.

Statistics Canada said the decline in prices was primarily due to a 19% drop in energy prices, particularly gasoline. Excluding energy, prices were up 2.1% from a year earlier.

It marked the biggest drop in prices since 1955.

The inflation rate was 0.1% in May.

June’s annualized drop in prices was in line with expectations of analysts polled by Bloomberg.

The price for regular gasoline averaged $1.016 a litre last month, down more than 24% from $1.351 a litre a year earlier, Statistics Canada said Friday.

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While the oil sands business remains challenging because of low oil prices, business conditions are improving thanks to lower costs, more productive labour and hungrier service providers, developers said at an investment conference Wednesday.

“The big change we have seen as an operator is that (staff) turnover is way down,” said Christopher Slubicki, CEO of OPTI Canada Inc., a partner in the Long Lake oil sands project, which is ramping up production at its recently completed first phase.

“We have our people. We are keeping our people. So, our productivity and our performance are improving with the workforce we have, which is much more constant compared to the turnover we had during the construction phase, when everybody was building,” Mr. Slubicki said on the sidelines of a conference on unconventional oil organized by TD Newcrest.

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The government of Alberta, sideswiped by the recession and depressed natural gas prices, is stepping up its efforts to resuscitate drilling and compete against massive supplies of shale gas from British Columbia and the United States.

Premier Ed Stelmach’s government is expected on Thursday to extend royalty breaks on natural gas production. Observers also believe the government could make one permanent change that would see a low rate of 5 per cent on the production from gas wells in their first year, a move considered key by the industry.

A spokesman for the provincial Energy Minister said the government would not announce new incentives but rather extend a program related to existing breaks, allowing drillers to plan.

The changes would mark the fourth adjustment of royalty rules since a decision to raise rates was made in late 2007. But for the first time the province is also expected to acknowledge the stiff competition for investment capital from recent massive shale gas discoveries in British Columbia, Texas and Louisiana. Shale gas is natural gas trapped in barely-porous rock.

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Unlimited overtime pay was just one of the many perks John Halbauer enjoyed as a welder during Alberta’s super-sized energy boom.

That’s disappeared, along with 11 of the 25-year-old’s 13 co-workers who got laid-off in January. “I was worried. I didn’t know if I was going to have to move back home or what,” the Kimberley, B.C., native said.

His employer, Harley’s Welding Inc., is located in Nisku, an industrial park south of Edmonton that caters to the province’s notoriously unpredictable oil and gas industry. Most companies were hit hard when the global economic crisis and plummeting energy prices side-swiped Alberta late last year.

But in recent weeks, Mr. Halbauer and many others in the province have noticed that the economy is slowly improving, especially in the northern half of Alberta.

“We are almost really busy. Work is rolling in,” Mr. Halbauer said.

Indeed, a run-up in oil prices and recent news that two oil sands projects, including Imperial Oil Ltd.’s $8-billion Kearl mine outside Fort McMurray, are going ahead has buoyed many.

But the optimism is guarded, and no one is predicting another unprecedented boom for Alberta, once the country’s hottest economy.

Earlier this year, Statistics Canada estimated that oil-sands spending will drop to $13.2-billion in 2009, down more than 30 per cent from last year. Billions worth of capital projects have either been scrapped or put on hold.

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The Calgary-based energy investment dealer said Tuesday cartel outliers Iran and Venezuela are in the toughest spot, requiring oil at US$90 a barrel for their budgets to break even next year, while Nigeria and Bahrain need crude above US$70 a barrel.

Even producers in the Arabian Gulf are getting close to the oil price they need — US$50 a barrel — for their government budgets to break even. Oil settled at US$50.75 a barrel in New York Tuesday, down US$3.75 on worries the U.S. Energy Department will reveal a growth in oil inventories Wednesday, and down nearly US$100 since mid-July.

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