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Elvis didn’t exactly open up the Townes Van Zandt catalogue when choosing his songs. They were never encumbered by the weightiest of subject matters. Yet this one offers excellent counsel for the feds at a very important moment in the life of this country.

This is not a time for talk or process obsession. This is a time for action.

Trudeau’s words last week were nice. The desire to ensure representation at the cabinet table from the two provinces that were supposed to form the one province of Buffalo 114 years ago is laudable. But it would be little more than what’s been the case for the past four years.

We did have a voice at the cabinet table prior to the election, three in fact. One of them was the formidable Ralph Goodale.

The very Ralph Goodale who had survived and thrived in his Saskatchewan seat through a lot of tough times for and from his party. He survived the hated long-gun registry. He survived the leaderships of Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, the latter of which reduced his party to 34 seats and third place in the worst election result for the Liberals in Canadian history. But even Goodale could not survive the anger generated by the Trudeau government’s perceived mistreatment of the West over the past four years. Not even close.

No, it was a fully representative Liberal cabinet table that brought us a capitulation on the Northern Gateway pipeline and KXL. It brought us National Energy Board changes midstream of Energy East that effectively killed that pipeline. It brought us a federally imposed carbon tax and the promise of no new pipelines thanks to Bills C-69 and C-48. It brought us talk of phasing out the Canadian fossil fuel industry and the tickle-trunk tour of India that might have made things worse for Prairie pulse crop growers.