WESTERN SEPARATISM ALL SOUND AND FURY

By Kirk Winter

Since the election of the Liberal minority government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday evening, numerous articles have appeared warning that the election of the Liberals would signal everything from the rise of western separatism to the outright dissolution of the federation. Even more so, people are behaving like this has never happened before.

As someone who grew up in western Canada and has more gray hair than red, I would like to share some insights regarding this issue and I would like to set the stage for this editorial with a look at another election.

In 1972, Justin Trudeau’s father Pierre was returned to office after a hard-fought election campaign with the narrowest of minority governments, only finishing two seats in front of the Progressive Conservatives led by Robert Stanfield. The Liberals, who had done well in the west in 1968, were decimated there in 1972, finishing with only seven seats between Winnipeg and Vancouver. In Alberta, the Progressive Conservatives won all 19 seats shutting out the Liberals completely.

Why were westerners furious at Pierre Trudeau? It wasn’t oil in 1972, it was official bilingualism. My western relatives, to a person, raged about French on the Corn Flakes boxes and how this was the end of Canada as we knew it. Within months of the 1972 election, a nascent separatist movement based in Alberta took form only to be strengthened when Trudeau the elder passed the National Energy Program later that decade and got the government involved in the oil business by the creation of the crown corporation, Petro-Canada.

Bumper stickers soon began to appear in Calgary and environs saying, “Let those Eastern bastards freeze in the dark.” It appeared as if western separatism was a real thing, but it amounted to nothing except sound and fury of a disaffected few and the movement soon disappeared from public view.

Now, fast forward to 2019. Another Trudeau, Justin, has been elected to helm a minority government with representation from Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. Justin’s Liberals were decimated in Saskatchewan and Alberta just like his father’s. The same kind of voices are once again being heard, from the oil patch in particular, making idle threats about separation, and that ante was upped by a statement released by Premier Scott Moe of Saskatchewan. He suggested that the west needed a “new deal” that could only be negotiated after the scrapping of the carbon tax. Sorry Premier Moe, with the parties currently in power that won’t be happening any time soon.

Western separatists need to be reminded of a basic fact that was made clear in the election on Monday evening. Despite the Conservatives narrowly winning the popular vote, close to 60 percent of Canadians voted for center-left parties who accept climate calamity as a reality. All these parties have, in varying degrees, plans to tackle this catastrophe. The combined Conservative/Peoples' Party vote paled in comparison. The fossil fuel industry, who now runs Alberta and Saskatchewan like their personal fiefdoms, is one of the biggest contributors to this climate disruption, and something has to change before many of us will have to learn how to swim.

Albertans in particular have no one but themselves to blame for their continued addiction to the fossil fuel industry. In 1976, Premier Peter Lougheed created the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund to invest oil and natural gas revenues. One of its stated goals was to “strengthen and diversify the Alberta economy and to improve the quality of life for Albertans.” The fund, according to some, has been badly mismanaged and undercapitalized for generations as a succession of Conservative governments used the fund as an ATM to make up for the absence of a provincial sales tax. Supposedly hundreds of billions have been invested in the fund for the time Alberta reaches peak oil and needs to move away from a simple petro-based economy. Outside experts who have studied the fund have failed to find many examples of the fund being successfully used to create non-petroleum related jobs in the province. Similar funds in Alaska and Norway have been found to be much better managed and have produced more tangible results on the ground than the Alberta fund. Saudi Arabia has invested billions into their transition away from oil, hoping to make the kingdom a bio-medical capital of the world. Alberta has had 43 years to prepare for life after fossil fuels, and still isn’t ready. That is not the fault of anyone named Trudeau, and separatists should be ashamed to suggest it is.

Andrew Scheer, the Conservative leader, has made his bed with the resource producers in western Canada, and his party’s clear lack of a platform on how to combat climate change likely cost him the election on Monday as St. John’s, Halifax, Moncton, Charlottetown, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver roundly rejected his vision of pipelines and “big energy projects” in the future. Instead of complaining about Ottawa, western separatists should be asking their provincial governments where all the money went, and why they aren’t ready for life after oil. I would love to know what Premiers Jason Kenney and Scott Moe have to say.