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While Jason Kenney has fanned the flames of separatism, he has also started pushing options to detach Alberta from federal influence within Canada’s constitutional structure. Last week, Kenney instructed a group of political allies, including Preston Manning, to barnstorm around the province to sell the possibility of cutting ties with the federal government in areas ranging from pensions to policing to revenue collection. He’s demanding “tax points” as an alternative to federal funding for social programs. And he’s also put a separate Alberta constitution on the table.

Other commentators have pointed out the glaring flaws in Kenney’s proposals from Alberta’s standpoint. Most of them were already studied — and rejected as entirely unfeasible — when Ralph Klein was similarly looking for ways to translate anger with the federal government into provincial power. And virtually all involve incurring massive expenses and risks, to no end other than projecting Alberta’s hostility toward Ottawa.

Which leads to the significance for Saskatchewan: Kenney’s retreat into provincialism leaves even Moe on the outside looking in.

Nothing about Kenney’s panel involves any participation by, nor consideration for, anybody beyond Alberta’s borders. And as ill-advised as Kenney’s plans are for his own province, they’re even worse from the perspective of a neighbour trying to claim Alberta as an ally.

Whatever Kenney’s base wants to pursue, there’s no reason to think that Saskatchewan’s citizens share any interest in abandoning the Canada Pension Plan or the RCMP merely to spite the federal government. We’d be nothing but worse off if Alberta decided to impose provincial governance systems which made it more difficult for businesses and people to work in both provinces. And the theoretical rationale for shifting from federal funding to a transfer of tax points doesn’t apply to Saskatchewan: unlike Alberta, we’d end up worse off in raw dollar terms if that exchange came to pass.