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NP: Assuming Justin Trudeau’s Liberals wanted to see a Notley government rather than a Kenney government in Alberta, is there anything they could have done differently to help you get re-elected in 2019? Is there anything that you just wish they had done or hadn’t done?

RN: I mean, obviously, I think they could have come to the table more aggressively and fulsomely for the people of Alberta. I mean, yes, we got the pipeline and that is good. But at the same time, you know, they were pushing ahead in a pretty tone deaf way with C-69, pushing ahead with C-48. And not stepping up with the kinds of supports that workers in our industry could have used. For instance, matching some of the kinds of supports that you saw for other industries in central Canada.

And so I think working people in Alberta were viscerally destabilized by what happened within the economy. And when it didn’t pick up again within that 12-month cycle, which it had done the previous couple of times, they started getting really, really worried. And they didn’t believe that Ottawa was listening and Ottawa seemed to have to be dragged to the table to do what needed to be done. And so it’s not unreasonable, this sense of not being front and centre in the deliberations of decision-makers here in Ottawa. The fact of the matter is that the farther away you are from Ottawa, the less attention you get.

You know from a purely policy point of view one can make the argument that this federal government has achieved more for Alberta than the former federal government, especially as it relates to the position we’re at right now with respect to this pipeline. But they didn’t do a very good job of responding to what exactly it was that Albertans were looking for.