Canada’s growing inability to get its oil and gas to export markets is “depressing,” according to GMP Capital Inc.’s chief executive.

“We’re not competing well in commodities, and oil and gas would be the poster child,” Harris Fricker told BNN Bloomberg in an interview on Friday. “Our inability to get product to tidewater on either coast is really depressing, quite frankly.”

Despite heated debate over the future of Canada’s ability to export oil via pipelines and an increasing dependence on crude-by-rail, Fricker said he maintains a positive outlook on the future of the country’s resource-based economy. However, he said the country’s energy players need to be more practical.

“I’m long-term bullish on Canada. I obviously believe it’s a great country,” Fricker said. “I would like to see us take a more practical approach to harvesting – responsibly – the resource wealth we’ve been blessed with as a country.”

Fricker’s comments come just three days after newly-retired GMP FirstEnergy chairman Jim Davidson called the capital flight from Canada’s oil patch “the worst he’s ever seen.”

Citing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s January 2017 comments that Canada needs to “phase out” the oil sands, both Fricker and Davidson said that would be the wrong approach to ensure the country’s economic prosperity. Fricker added that GMP FirstEnergy estimated the current infrastructure lockup is costing Canada $16 billion annually.

“We have high, high, high, high resource wealth… the envy of the world,” Fricker said. “Harvesting that responsibly has been the hallmark of making us a G7 country. That’s not going to go away.”

However, Fricker said that balancing oil and gas with new technology and renewable energy is the way forward for Canada’s energy economy, as long as a balance can be struck between the two.

“While I am fully versed in technology [and] renewables, and believe in them, as the British say: ‘Mind the gap,’” he said. “Don’t adopt too quickly or you’ll end up in the self-congratulatory dark, because you’ll have no energy.

“I think it’s a mix of the two, but the oil patch in Canada is completely viable for the long-term.”