It’s hardly surprising a few angry Albertans recently chanted “lock her up” at a demonstration opposing Premier Rachel Notley’s carbon tax.

The rally was organized by Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media, so you should know that while I had nothing to do with the protest, I appear as a bi-monthly commentator on Rebel Media, mainly on climate change and energy issues, for which I receive a small fee.

Despite predictable pearl clutching by some politicians and pundits, including easily spooked Conservative leadership candidates, this shot at Notley was no different from David Suzuki calling for Stephen Harper and then Alberta premier Ed Stelmach to be jailed for "intergenerational" climate crimes against humanity.

You can look it up. Now, back to the real world.

Notley is the duly constituted premier of Alberta -- she didn’t win in a sneak attack. She has committed no crimes and it is silly and wrong to call for her to be locked up.

Ditto Suzuki calling for the same thing for Harper and Stelmach, although I don’t recall a national outpouring of angst from Liberal and NDP politicians and pundits when he was being silly and wrong.

The point is, knee-jerk condemnation of a few protesters for being angry about Notley’s carbon tax, when Alberta is still reeling economically from the global crash in oil prices, rather spectacularly misses the point.

The issue is not that these were, sigh, “Donald Trump tactics” invading Canada, a superficial reference to the fact supporters of the U.S. president-elect frequently chanted “lock her up”.

This with regard to Hillary Clinton’s misadventures with classified emails and cash-for-access political corruption involving the Clinton Foundation.

To obsess over it is to belittle the legitimate concerns of many Albertans about provincial NDP economic policies, to say nothing of ignoring the huge political differences between the U.S. and Canada, where our politics, across the spectrum, are considerably to the left of our southern neighbours.

Dwelling on “lock her up” chants, whether in Canada or the U.S., is a deliberate refusal to acknowledge what is actually significant.

That is, the growing anger of ordinary citizens across North America, who feel themselves disenfranchised and excluded from the existing political and economic power structures, and who believe political elites have stopped listening to their concerns.

Ignoring that reality, as Clinton did, led to Trump’s “shocking” victory in the presidential election.

Shocking, that is, to pundits and pollsters who spent over a year smugly explaining to the great unwashed why Trump couldn’t win. Oops.

Regardless of what one thinks of Notley, Clinton or Trump, when ordinary citizens feel their political elites are ignoring their genuine economic fears and concerns, they may, unsurprisingly, express themselves in ways the perpetually offended will find offensive.

Or, in the Canadian context of a carbon tax, as the great American conservative thinker William F. Buckley once put it: “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”

It is the height of arrogance for political elites to ignore the very real concerns of Albertans, and all Canadians, for their economic future, and to pretend their views, however crudely expressed, have no legitimate place in the political discourse of the nation.

That tactic may comfort the pearl clutchers. But, as we have seen in the U.S., it is about as far away from political reality, and realpolitik, as you can get.