In addition, an independent Alberta/Saskatchewan would have significant leverage to push resource transport agreements with B.C., as this article by the Financial Post’s Lawrence Solomon points out. Control over civil aviation overflights is one major area, the threat of interrupting rail shipments another. The critics, Solomon argues, have it backwards: Alberta already is hemmed in, while independence would strengthen its negotiating power.

Either way, Albertans who favour some form of independence will have to win over the many fellow residents who remain attached to Canada pragmatically or emotionally. One of the latter is former Edmontonian, now Calgarian Melanie Johnston. In Johnston’s view, it’s not about economics. She just feels Canada will be “stronger together than we are on our own.”

Albertans interviewed for this article are also divided over whether to use the threat of separation as a tactic to extract concessions from Ottawa. Dan Gaynor, a business consultant and former publisher of the Calgary Herald, says he’s become convinced Alberta will never get a fair shake from central Canada. He points to Premier Jason Kenney’s Fair Deal Panel, announced in early November and led by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning. The nine-member panel is already holding public meetings.

It will report by March 2020 on possible policies and tactics Alberta might use to make itself less vulnerable to destructive federal policies and gain more control over its future while remaining within Confederation. Areas it’s examining include essentially the entire Alberta Agenda as well as several new ideas. These include withdrawing from the Canada Pension Plan to set up a provincial plan, withdrawing from the federal Tax Collection Agreement, establishing a provincial police force, reforming the equalization formula, and pushing the federal government for so-called “tax points” in place of cash transfers to fund health care and other social programs. The Fair Deal Panel has led to Kenney, an avowed federalist, being accused of stirring the separatist pot.

Pollster Marc Henry, president of ThinkHQ, doesn’t think that’s valid, however. The Fair Deal Panel, he says, “acts as a relief valve” for unhappy citizens who are “frustrated Albertans rather than separatists.” Critics, however, shoot back that if this is true, the “relief valve” strategy effectively means that Manning’s promise to look at all options – including independence – is little more than a striptease to satisfy over-excited Albertans. One reason such critics are nervous is that a panel of MLAs struck in 2004 to examine the Alberta Agenda rejected it in its entirety. That committee’s work was widely derided as shoddy, however, and hopes are much stronger for the Manning Panel. Its leadership and membership are more credible, the stakes are much higher and no-one can doubt Manning’s expertise with the subject matter.

John Evans, 31-year-old owner of Everline Coating and Services in Calgary, understands the motivations for the panel but questions the value of its work. “I get what Jason Kenney is doing, but a lot of people don’t understand equalization anyway,” he says. “Kenney is not really helping that.” Evans sees the process as “posturing” which, in turn, can lead people to support the wrong cause. “You saw it with Brexit,” he cites as an example, believing that, “A lot of people didn’t even know what they were voting for.”

Evans also feels threats to leave the country are bad for business – which is similarly central to the case made by the U.K.’s Remainers and their European counterparts. “As businesspeople, you can’t think like that,” says Evans. Were a Wexit to go through, he believes that trying to sell his company’s products and services to other provinces (at least those outside the new country) “would get way more complicated. I’d seriously have to consider moving.”

Prairie people’s sense that their region has been treated like an orphan child is as old as the country itself, going back to the Red River and Northwest rebellions in the 1860s and 1880s, and extending to the creation of the vast Northwest Territory that included present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan and was viewed by Central Canada as a resource-producing hinterland to be harvested. Some Prairie visionaries pushed to create a single, large (and, they hoped, one day powerful) province known as Buffalo that could cross swords with Ottawa. But it was not to be.

Modern-day Central Canada’s attitude was perhaps most vividly exemplified in one contemptuous gesture from the senior Trudeau during a 1982 train ride out West, shortly after his government repatriated the Constitution and not so long after he had defeated the short-lived minority Conservative government of Joe Clark. Alberta’s energy sector was staggering from the recently imposed National Energy Program, and when protesters showed up to register their displeasure, Trudeau responded by raising his middle finger at them. Despite the passage of decades, his infamous one-finger salute still contributes to Western distrust of Justin Trudeau, who was a 10-year-old boy on that train with his brothers and dad.

Steve Magus was also 10 when his father drove him to Banff to see the prime minister; he’s never forgotten the impact of that raised finger. “I said to myself, is that what the leader of our country does?” Now senior vice-president of his family’s firm, Magus Engineering Limited, Magus has seen the company struggle over the past four years as more and more of its clients – energy companies – close down. Magus Engineering has restructured to stay afloat but Steve Magus is worried about how long it can hang on. “I’m just pretty much angry with [the rest of] this country in general,” he says. “I love this country, but I can only get pushed around so much.”

Magus’s discussions with his wife’s family, who live in Ontario, have led him to conclude that, “They’re just totally oblivious to what’s going on.” He says Ontario and Quebec need to start understanding our financial situation. “If they were bleeding like us, there would be some sort of revolt going on,” he says. Magus points to the recently announced move of Encana Corp. (once Canada’s largest natural gas producer) to the U.S., and Trudeau’s muted response. “If that was SNC Lavalin, if that was Bombardier, [Trudeau would] fight tooth and nail to keep the company here,” Magus says.

The pollsters remind us that independence is still a long way from gaining the allegiance of a majority of voters in any province, and some of them also claim separatism is largely driven by emotion or even irrationality. Both observations may be largely beside the point, however. First, the fight over independence has hardly begun, so anything could happen with public opinion. Second, if 30-40 percent of Albertans already support separation, how many more are waiting in the wings, and what might happen if an arrogant Trudeau refuses to budge and the Prairie provinces continue to suffer? Third, how many more people could come around to supporting significant changes that stopped short of complete independence?