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Pity the poor Westerners — besieged at every turn, struggling valiantly against adversity, generous to a fault yet unloved by their ungrateful fellow citizens. No wonder they’re alienated, again.

More evidence of Western malaise, if we needed more, has emerged in research from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute suggesting that Canadians west of Ontario are even more peeved than usual about their place in Confederation. Apparently, they do all the work and pay all the bills, but the rest of us don’t care.

To be clear, the survey doesn’t pretend that the West is a monolith. There’s variation in the region’s discontent. Alberta and Saskatchewan are the most restive and resentful, with Manitoba less so. British Columbians, as always, do their own thing. The West has many parts.

The Reid survey, dourly titled Fractured Federation, analyzed how Canadians feel about their country and its provinces, whether we really like each other or barely get along.

The survey suggests that many Westerners believe their distinct culture is misunderstood and under-respected. Mind you, they don’t think much of Eastern culture either, which they consider effete and entitled. This is especially acute in Alberta’s attitude toward Quebec.

Fully 81 per cent of Albertan respondents said they felt Quebec was unfriendly toward their province. Three out of four respondents in Saskatchewan agreed, as did 57 per cent of Manitobans.

But Quebec doesn’t hate the West. About half the Quebec respondents thought Alberta to be unfriendly, but fewer than a third thought that about Saskatchewan. Fewer than one in five thought of Manitoba that way.

Still, Westerners feel exploited by Eastern provinces, which supposedly cash in on federal programs that cost the West, but don’t lift a finger to help when the West needs it, like now amid the oil patch slowdown. Albertans are the most upset about it and they direct a lot of anger at the federal government.

Three in four Albertans believe their province gets a “raw deal” from Confederation. Roughly a third say their province puts more into Canada than it gets back.

Alberta seems just plain grumpy. The Reid survey suggests Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba all hold each other in high esteem, but only 20 per cent in those provinces feel they are duly respected by British Columbia. Perhaps that’s a pipeline thing.

By the way, a lot of people in Atlantic Canada think we’re not being treated fairly either. About half of those polled felt the East Coast gives more to the country than it gets.

These attitudes mean something. But they suggest too many of us are seeing Canada as little more than a financial transaction. I blame politics for that.

It has become standard to blame Ottawa, or Quebec, or equalization or eastern elites or other bogeymen for problems in western provinces. The latest anti-Ottawa craze, the so-called “carbon tax resistance,” has gone way beyond an economic discussion about climate policy or taxation. Carbon pricing is being framed as an assault on the economic freedom of Westerners and a double insult, after Ottawa’s failure to get pipelines built for Alberta’s oil. This is common fodder for the region’s politics: the lie that the energy business is struggling because Central Canada wants the West to fail.

Why any national government would want that defies explanation, and I haven’t heard one.

To me, the chorus of discontent from Alberta comes off sounding pretty hollow. It’s far better off than any other province, with the 9th highest per capita GDP in the world, and the highest incomes and the lowest taxes in Canada.

Alberta and its vast resource wealth benefit immensely from their place in Canada, which, for all its faults, is still the safest and most secure country in the world. Every Canadian wants the West to succeed and be happy.

Canada isn’t just an exchange of tax points or an empty financial arrangement. Albertans used to understand and acknowledge that. It’s time they did again.