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That’s what makes Berkshire Hathaway’s withdrawal from GNL Quebec’s $9-billion Energie Saguenay project so significant. Previous disappointments happened in provinces that tend to vote for Conservatives and occasionally New Democrats. Quebec is where Liberals get their votes. It’s how they stay in power. It’s what they care about most.

Without Quebec, Justin Trudeau wouldn’t still be prime minister. Without its solid support his father would never have lasted so long in the same office. Between them, Quebec and Ontario are the Liberal party’s bread and butter. Any time it loses the love of one or the other, it finds itself on the opposition benches. Liberals hate being on opposition benches, so they are very careful to accommodate themselves in every way possible to the whims of Quebec voters. There was a very good reason Trudeau bent himself into pretzelian configurations over the SNC-Lavalin scandal. Not, as he repeatedly said, to protect jobs. But to protect jobs in Quebec.

So the Saguenay disappointment has a special resonance, particularly given the reason for Buffett’s departure. It was, according to Stéphanie Fortin, head of communications for GNL Québec, due to the “Canadian political context” and the “instability” of recent weeks. That would be the inability of Ottawa to get anything material done in the face of protests by Indigenous-Canadians, environmentalists and activists of all colour and stripe, who it assiduously courted when it was looking for votes and who now have it flailing around fruitlessly in search of a solution to a problem of its own making.