CALGARY—Western Canadian independence has been on Daniel Dahl’s mind since the federal Liberals won the 2015 election with Justin Trudeau at the helm. Monday night’s federal election results didn’t dissuade him.

Trudeau’s return to power, albeit in minority government, sparked outrage among some in Western Canada who see him as unsympathetic to the region’s concerns — if not openly hostile to them. Dahl believes the Liberals bungled their purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project despite the government’s attempts to save it. Under their watch, he said, Alberta suffered massive job losses during the global oil price crash. He isn’t alone.

When Dahl, the owner of a Grande Prairie-based contracting company, received an invite to join votewexit.com, a Facebook group calling for Western Canada to separate from Canada, he accepted and passed it along to his friends. Tens of thousands of other accounts have joined since Monday night.

The Facebook group’s banner features the name of the group in white text on a black background with a map of the western provinces of B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba and the slogan “The West wants out.”

“I don’t see much of a future for us unless something is done,” Dahl said.

Critics have slammed Western Canadian separation as an act of irrational political anger that won’t solve the region’s grievances with a sluggish oil and gas industry, a lack of political representation in Ottawa, or the federal equalization formula. But experts say Trudeau should still pay attention to Western Canada’s separatist sentiment as he tries to move forward with his new government.

Western Canada’s sense of political alienation from the rest of the country isn’t new, nor is it confined to Alberta. But the province is the beating heart of an independence movement that appears to be more prominent than ever. Drew Lake, an oil and gas worker in Lloydminster who is sympathetic to the idea of Western separation, recalled the movement being closer to a fringe belief during the days of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

“The funny thing is that average, rational, normal, intelligent people are now supporting this movement,” he said. “It’s quite unbelievable.”

As hashtags like Alberta Separation and Wexit began to trend on social media, others weren’t so sure.

“To prevent the risk of my eyes being polluted with western separation talks, I’m not going to be paying much attention to social media for the next couple days. Hopefully the BS knee-jerk separation argument will have calmed down by then,” wrote @BearPawChris, a Twitter user from Edmonton.

David Stewart, a political science professor at the University of Calgary, said the movement was also alive and well during former prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative governments. He suspects this feeling of alienation in Western Canada was amplified when Trudeau justified defering prosecution of SNC-Lavalin by saying it would save jobs in Quebec. Albertans, he said, didn’t notice the same response from Trudeau after job losses in the region’s oil industry.

“I think it’s a lot more pronounced,” he said. “But if you look at public opinion surveys during the Harper era, there was still this belief that Alberta concerns were not taken seriously and that national political parties paid far more attention to Ontario and Quebec than they did to Alberta.”

Separation from Canada is still a long shot in Alberta. A July poll from Abacus Data found only a quarter of those surveyed would vote to leave the country. Lori Williams, an associate professor of policy studies at Mount Royal University, said the recent surge in separation sentiment sends a clear message to Ottawa that it hasn’t properly recognized Alberta’s hardships. However, she suspsects current support for separation still wouldn’t be enough to get it done.

“I think that’s highly unlikely,” she said. “But it’s not an impossibility.”

Following the federal election, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said on Tuesday that many Albertans feel betrayed by Ottawa. He didn’t speak about separation, but did mention a “profound sense of alienation” in the province that must be taken seriously.

Kenney added that the overwhelmingly Conservative vote in Western Canada is “one loud voice of defiance,” and he challenged Trudeau to pay attention to the demands of these provinces.

“We demand fairness, we demand respect, we demand the right to responsibly develop ... the wealth on which our whole country depends,” Kenney said.

In the past, Kenney has also vowed to launch a referendum on equalization payments in response to what he considers a formula that unfairly takes far too much money from the province. Constitutional lawyers reached by Star Edmonton in the past have said this would be practically meaningless.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe issued a letter on Tuesday demanding a “new deal with Canada,” saying the current Liberal government has no elected representation from either Saskatchewan or Alberta.

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This new deal, according to the letter, would include a cancellation of the federal carbon tax and a commitment to renegotiate an equalization formula that is “fair” to both Saskatchewan and Alberta. It also calls for the federal government to develop a plan to allow both provinces to export to international markets — in other words, oil and gas.

“Prime Minister, you said you heard our frustrations and want to support us,” Moe wrote. “We are ready for you to prove it.”

Demands aside, Williams said the question of Western alienation and its role in the Liberals’ new minority government will need to be taken more seriously by Trudeau going forward. The complete lack of Liberal representation in Alberta and Saskatchewan also won’t help perceptions of neglect by the federal government.

But Williams said reckoning with the situation will grant Trudeau — but also Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer and even Kenney — an opportunity to “bridge the divisions that have been laid bare in this election.”

Stewart said this approach is about more than just an attempt to reconcile or keep a government stable. If Albertans want the Trans Mountain pipeline to be built, he said, they’ll need to co-operate with the federal government.

“We might not like the outcome, but Mr. Trudeau won the election — and we have to work with whoever the Prime Minister is,” he said.

With files from Nadine Yousif

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