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Trudeau and his government aren’t wildly popular in Calgary, despite having elected two MPs, Kent Hehr and Darshan Kang. Many people suspect he’s not really in favour of new pipeline construction, simply masking his true beliefs with bland statements about favouring access to markets.

Photo by Lyle Aspinall / Postmedia

Alberta Conservatives have bleak fears of the Liberal spending program. They hate Trudeau’s climate-change alliance with Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley.

And, of course, many older Albertans remember Pierre Trudeau’s 1980 National Energy Program, and wonder how anyone could possibly trust a Liberal prime minister, let alone one from that family.

I went through all that and now find myself torn by the same conflicting emotions. My experiences with Pierre Trudeau, like those of many journalists, were coloured by one of the great regional conflicts in Canadian history.

But now we are faced with a new prime minister who comes to Alberta, clearly recognizes the deep crisis facing the province, loosens EI rules for the hardest-hit areas, talks to the people most affected and pleads for other Canadians to show friendship and understanding rather than hostility.

Trudeau says this crisis, which affects workers and economies across the country, is an opportunity for Canadians to show what they truly are: people who help partners in trouble. He refuses even to talk about regional alienation, let alone exploit it. He does all this with no hint of condescension toward Albertans or anyone else.

Is it just barely possible that a prime minister who talks like a friend, acts like a friend and visits in hard times like a friend, might just be a friend?

The unemployed people who met Trudeau seemed to think so. They felt pretty good about it all, even as they walked out to a Calgary street frequented by people who don’t worry about becoming homeless, because they already are.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

dbraid@calgaryherald.com