What’s next for Canada’s economy

“EVERYBODY thinks this is a 50-pound sack of seeds,” says Steven Fabijanski as he hefts a large white bag onto a table. “Actually, it’s 8,000 litres of jet fuel.” That is what Agrisoma Biosciences, the company Mr Fabijanski runs in Quebec, plans to make from the bagful of carinata, or Ethiopian mustard seed. In January a Boeing 787 Dreamliner operated by Qantas flew from Los Angeles to Melbourne on a mixture of jet fuel and juice extracted from Agrisoma’s mustard seeds. Eventually, a third of biofuel for aviation will come from seeds bred by the company, Mr Fabijanski predicts. His slogan is: “don’t drill, plant.”

Biofuel looks like an industry of the future in a country that depends on those of the past. Oil and vehicles, Canada’s two biggest exports, are both declining, and may continue to do so. Oil from Alberta’s tar sands is expensive to produce. The United States, by far its biggest foreign customer, is fracking more and importing less. Carmaking has never fully recovered from a recession in the United States in 2008. Production has dropped from a peak of 3m vehicles in 1999 to 2.2m last year.