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Westerners, we’re forcefully told, are sick and tired of people speaking for them, whom they don’t like and didn’t vote for. That especially means Justin Trudeau and his Liberals, but really also anyone east of Winnipeg or near any coastline.

Some Westerners are so fed up, they want to separate Alberta and Saskatchewan from Canada, splintering the country into smaller states. They consider their grievances profound enough to justify the wilful demolition of one of the wealthiest, safest and most peaceful countries on Earth.

Pursuing that objective, the separatists have applied for status as a recognized political party like the Bloc Québécois, famed for seeking power in the Parliament of a country it wants to destroy. Yes, that is an inherent contradiction.

Why separation? Because according to the separatists, Canada doesn’t work. Mainly, that means the oil part of the western economy isn’t booming anymore, and Canadians aren’t helping it boom again.

Even worse, Ottawa, some provinces and Indigenous people keep listening to anti-oil environmentalists. Adding further insult, parties that the separatists oppose keep winning elections, which means Confederation has failed, the federal government isn’t legitimate and, therefore, Canada should be dismantled.

I’d point out that only four short years ago, a Calgary MP was prime minister and his cabinet was heavily stocked with western ministers. It had been that way pretty much for 10 years.

So before we skate too far over the thin ice of western separatism, we should pause to recognize that it is a noisy movement, but not a majority — far from it. Many westerners are justifiably frustrated, but few credible leaders, if any, support separation.

Independence campaigns don’t succeed without credible leaders. Mohandas K. Gandhi led the movement for Indian independence. Lech Wałęsa faced down the Russians in Poland. René Lévesque fought for an independent Quebec. These people were authentic leaders.

By contrast, the so-called Wexit movement is led by Trump-style authoritarian populists. They fume about immigration, with the usual racial overtones, as if it were the cause of the West’s economic problems. Wexit leaders talk about “white genocide” and “mass immigration” by undesirable foreigners.

Pro-Wexit billboards around Alberta accused Trudeau and the Liberals of “leading us to civil war,” of “normalizing pedophilia,” and promoting the menaces of globalism, environmentalism and women’s rights. They claim easterners don’t understand the West, yet stereotype all of us as effete and overeducated elites.

Their main spokesman, Peter Downing, is an ex-Mountie who left the force after a court handed him a conditional discharge on allegations of threatening a spouse. He’s a former candidate for the anti-immigrant Christian Heritage Party.

Downing’s rallies feature the Canadian flag hung upside down and promises to kick Newfoundlanders and Maritimers out of the oil patch. In the independent future, oil jobs will be reserved for bona fide Albertans only. His supporters promise to stop “judicial prejudice against men” in divorce and family courts.

These are not the credible leaders who build new countries. To the contrary, manipulators in Moscow must relish the disruption being caused by such “useful idiots” in an otherwise peaceful and orderly democracy.

It’s a long way from disputes over pipelines to the idea that Alberta and Saskatchewan somehow are bastions of white European culture that must be defended against dilution by scary others, even at the risk of destroying Canada.

And while they’re rallying and conspiring, the separatists are distracting attention from the legitimate problems in the western economy and undermining elected representatives making their case in Ottawa.

One of them, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, has a far more sensible agenda, calling on the Trudeau government to bolster national unity, enforce government ethics, fight to improve the economy and to put things right in the energy sector.

This is what the country needs: a central government with effective policies that address real problems, not threats and overheated talk from people who represent no one but themselves.

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