By David Sher
Quite frankly, I am stunned.
Year after year, Alabama has been a punching bag for the press.
What a breath of fresh air.
Canada’s Globe and Mail — widely regarded as Canada’s most influential national publication —sent a reporter to the Deep South to figure out how Alabama had become richer than their country.
The headline read: “Out of nowhere, Canada became poorer than Alabama. How is that possible?“
Go ahead and read that again.
Canada has fallen behind Alabama
The numbers come from Canadian economist Trevor Tombe and the International Monetary Fund, who calculated GDP per capita for every U.S. state and Canadian province. After adjusting for purchasing power, Canada had actually fallen behind Alabama. The Globe called it an “ego check” for an entire nation. So they flew here to understand it.
What they found was a state that looks nothing like the old mental image.
Alabama’s two largest metro areas — Birmingham and Huntsville — are nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. “Most people think of Alabama as flat pasture land with cotton fields,” said Daniel Hughes, a real estate executive who took his Montgomery-based company public on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Looking out from a seventh-floor window in Huntsville’s city hall, the Globe reporter noted, the landscape could easily be Vermont.
Transformation Began with Mercedes-Benz
The transformation didn’t happen by accident. When Mercedes-Benz was scouting U.S. locations in the early 1990s, the Germans were charmed by the woods and rolling hills surrounding Birmingham — it reminded them of the countryside around Stuttgart. Vance, just outside Birmingham, won the deal.
That single investment became the tip of a very long spear. Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, and Mazda all followed. In 2024, Alabama produced nearly as many vehicles as the entire province of Ontario.
Greg Canfield, the state’s former commerce secretary — developing what the article describes as “something of a cult following” in economic development circles — now works out of Birmingham at Burr & Forman.
His philosophy was straightforward: competitive incentives, minimal red tape, and speed. “When companies invested in Alabama, they could receive permits and begin construction quickly,” he told the Globe.
Huntsville Unstoppable
Up in Huntsville, five-term mayor Tommy Battle — born in Birmingham, a University of Alabama graduate — has spent 18 years building something remarkable. The city is home to the second-largest biotech research park in the United States and major employers including Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman.
After World War II, German engineers who developed the Saturn rockets settled in Huntsville and never left. That spirit of innovation seeped into the city’s DNA.
In December, it all came together. After a field of 300 bidders, Eli Lilly chose Huntsville for a $6 billion manufacturing plant — the largest private industrial investment in state history. The plant grew out of HudsonAlpha, a life sciences campus seeded in 2004 by two local benefactors who hired the former director of Stanford’s Human Genome Center.
Now home to 40 biotech companies, the Eli Lilly announcement was its home run. Mayor Battle told the Globe that recruits often hear the same response when telling their spouses about the job: “‘Huntsville?’ With one question mark. Then, ‘Alabama???’ With three question marks.” That announcement was his answer to every one of those question marks.
Canadian Who Moved to Birmingham is thrilled with Entrepreneurial Energy
The Globe also spent time with Robert Sbrissa, a Canadian who moved to Birmingham from Montreal in 1996 and never left. He came for a job, assumed he’d stay two years, and this August it will be 30 years.
He describes the entrepreneurial energy as “like nothing I had seen or experienced before” — friendly neighbors, quality public schools, stunning fall foliage, and a food scene earning national attention. Birmingham’s Bayonet was just named one of America’s 50 best restaurants by the New York Times.
The article doesn’t let anyone off the hook. The Globe spent real time in Woodlawn, a Birmingham neighborhood working hard to find its way back. Mashonda Taylor, CEO of Woodlawn United, is leading a serious rebuilding effort — but she’s fighting deep structural inequity tied to how schools are funded. “They didn’t learn how to read. Or do basic math,” she says of young residents trapped in poverty. “So, you can’t get a higher-quality job.”
Alabama’s life expectancy remains just 74 years, fourth-lowest in the nation. These are not footnotes — they are urgent and unfinished challenges.
For years, the national narrative about Birmingham was frozen in 1963. That history belongs to us.
So does everything built since — in Birmingham, in Huntsville, and across this state.
Canada’s national newspaper came looking for answers and found the unexpected.
Time to take a victory lap.
And let the world know that Alabama is actively seeking to redefine its future.
David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown. He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).
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The per capita GDP doesn’t take into account how much comes out of our paychecks for health insurance. In Alabama and most other states this amount soars into the $100’s per pay period while it is $0 in Canada..
We’ve traveled to Canada a few times—British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces. But not to Ontario. This is a well researched and informative article, which appears to be written for readers in Toronto and especially in the Capital City of Ottawa. Is the author’s unwritten purpose to urge Canadian political and business leaders to follow Alabama’s example, by slashing corporate taxes and union power, especially in the automotive and other industrial sectors? As for his upbeat appraisal of Alabama, I think he needed to visit other parts of the state besides booming Huntsville and resurgent Birmingham. Parts of rural and small town Quebec and New Brunswick we drove through would probably be considered poor by Canadian standards. But they are utopia compared to, say, Winston or Wilcox Counties, which suffer greatly due to the state’s very low taxes that fail to adequately fund local schools.
In an effort to compare apples and apples (comparing two cities in a single American state with an entire country is like comparing bananas and bicycles), I tried to think of a Canadian province that might align with the state of Alabama. None are perfect matches. But Alberta comes close despite being 5X larger in area. It’s more politically conservative than the rest of the country. Its population size is roughly comparable, and it also has two prominent cities, Calgary and Edmonton. Just don’t compare the majestic Canadian Rockies west of those cities with Red Mountain and Monte Sano, overlooking Birmingham and Huntsville respectively. Nor the two towns named Jasper.