Kenney is no dope and understands Quebec’s successful tactics for getting what it wants from Ottawa

The combative address Jason Kenney delivered in Red Deer on Saturday didn’t come out of the blue. This is a storm cloud that’s been hovering around Alberta for a very long time. Eventually it was going to erupt.

There have been plenty of precursors. From Pierre Trudeau’s first lunge at Alberta’s oil wealth almost 40 years ago via the National Energy Program, Albertans have kept a wary eye on Ottawa and its grabby revenue fingers. The distrust was there in Preston Manning’s creation of the Reform Party; again in the 2001 “firewall” letter signed by Stephen Harper and others; in “the West wants in” movement and in Rachel Notley’s discovery that electing a New Democrat premier wasn’t enough to break the fixed views and biases of “progressive” activists outside its borders, or to gain their assistance in achieving pragmatic goals.

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Eventually a premier like Kenney was going to say enough is enough, and channel the frustration into a direct challenge to the ambivalence that leaves Albertans so often feeling they’re on their own within the federation.

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“We’ve had it with Ottawa’s indifference to this adversity. Albertans have been working for Ottawa for too long, it’s time for Ottawa to start working for us,” Kenney said at the gathering, organized by the Manning Centre. While insisting he has no time for western separatism, he announced a panel tasked with accumulating ideas for “a fair deal for Alberta” to be sought from Ottawa. Their proposals won’t be binding, but you can bet they’ll represent a direct challenge to federal powers and a headache to a Liberal party that thinks it won “a clear mandate” by racking up seats in Ontario and Quebec while failing to win a single seat in Alberta or Saskatchewan.

What’s different this time is the fear that there’s no boom on the horizon, and the days of easy money gushing from the ground may have come to an end

They will include several propositions lifted straight from the firewall letter, which was addressed to then-premier Ralph Klein in the wake of prime minister Jean Chrétien’s 2000 re-election and accused his Liberals of “a series of attacks not merely designed to defeat its partisan opponents, but to marginalize Alberta and Albertans within Canada’s political system.” It urged Klein to withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan and create an Alberta-only version, to collect income tax revenue rather than leaving it to Ottawa, to create a provincial police force in place of the RCMP and to “force” Senate reform back onto the national agenda.

Kenney’s panel will look at these and other issues, including deep disgruntlement with the equalization program that treats Alberta as a “have” province while sending $13 billion — 65 per cent of the national total — to “have not” Quebec. Quebec’s payment rose sharply this year, even as it announced a $4 billion surplus . Alberta, in contrast, expects a shortfall of $8.7 billion for the same period.

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Kenney is no dope and understands Quebec’s successful tactics for getting what it wants from Ottawa. Quebec has its own pension plan. It has its own provincial police force. It has its own income tax form and has been angling for a single tax return to be administered by the province, a concession Justin Trudeau has resisted but Conservative leader Andrew Scheer was prepared to grant . Quebec just sent 32 members of Parliament to Ottawa from a party that boasts it cares only about Quebecers and what’s good for Quebec.

Quebec’s approach succeeds because Canada endured two independence referendums and a decade-long constitutional debate, and desperately wants to avoid more of the same. Quebecers understand that Ottawa will put up with a great deal rather than risk another confrontation, and skilfully uses that knowledge to extract concessions, reinforcing its perception of itself as a special case within Canada, deserving of special treatment.

“If Quebec can do it, why not Alberta?” the firewall letter demanded, and Kenney is obviously of the same mind. “All we’ve ever asked for is a fair deal, to enjoy the same autonomy rights and respect as all other provinces,” he said in Red Deer. “Nothing we are asking for is unreasonable.”

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While plenty of previous Alberta governments have railed against the east’s faithlessness, there’s a reason Kenney is going a step further. Western alienation tends to rise and fall in cycles, parallel to its fortunes. During oil booms the abundance of easy money makes it easier to ignore the “Laurentian elite.” During tough times the anger grows, but in the past there’s always been a boom to come along and ease the tensions.

What’s different this time is the fear that there’s no boom on the horizon, and the days of easy money gushing from the ground may have come to an end. Plenty of Albertans feel the province is under attack from environmentalists intent on destroying the foundations of its economy, and that they have few friends in defending their corner. Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet openly assailed it during the English-language leaders’ debate, telling Trudeau “we have paid for development of oil in western Canada and you make us pay again with this idea of buying a pipeline over there.” One of Kenney’s earliest actions as premier was to set top a “war room” to challenge attacks on the oil industry, and claims its says are either deliberately false or misleading.

Far from aiding the province, Kenney says Trudeau has been “actively hostile.”

“Energy policy is Ottawa’s primary instrument for inflicting discriminatory economic pain on Alberta and this cannot be allowed to continue,” he said.

It’s unfortunate Alberta feels driven to this, but it’s not without cause. Decades of failure in Ottawa came first.

Twitter.com/kellymcparland

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