Ontario Premier Doug Ford made a pitch for national unity in the face of a “divided” country on Monday morning — the same day that his latest fundraising email accused the federal government of trying to “shut down” the energy industry in western Canada.

“If Trudeau doesn’t get this right, some really big problems are going to get a whole lot worse,” Ford’s latest fundraising email warns. The email blast also aligns Ford with the Premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec, who were described in the note as his “good friends.”

“I’ve never seen the country so divided. And I can see why. You’ve got Alberta putting $20 billion more into the federal government than they get back in services,” the email claims — a reference to the federal equalization payment system, to which Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has been drawing considerable attention. Per CTV News, Kenney — who has been asking Ottawa to change the equalization formula — claimed in a recent speech that the current system was “unfair” to Alberta and accused other provinces of choosing not to “develop their own resources.”

(A 2018 National Post report found that Alberta paid a higher share of Canada’s tax due to its financial standing, both in terms of individual median incomes and cities’ wealth per capita.)

But Ford took on a different tone in person, telling reporters in Etobicoke that he had “all the confidence” in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, despite being vilified regularly by Trudeau and his Liberal candidates on the campaign trail this fall. “You saw the Prime Minister over the last few months. That just rolls off my back,” Ford claimed.

“I’m going to work with him because people expect us to work together,” he added.

READ MORE: Ford says he won’t ‘scrap it out with the feds’ in rare media appearance during campaign

Ford and his team have sparred with the feds several times since taking office, on files from refugee resettlement to the federal carbon tax — a continued issue between the two governments, on which Ford has aligned himself with other Conservative Premiers across the country.

While the Ontario Premier told reporters at his last GTA media availability in August that the “people” would decide the fate of the carbon tax in the recent election, his government subsequently escalated their opposition to the Supreme Court. He was asked by a reporter on Monday morning what he therefore meant by letting the people decide, and did not give a specific answer, saying instead that he ran for office on promises of affordability and competitiveness.

When pressed for whether he believed the federal election results spoke to a decision from the people of Ontario, Ford replied that he’d been elected last year with a pledge to have the levy scrapped. He also declined to answer when asked whether he believed a national Conservative leader could successfully run for office while holding socially conservative personal views.

“I’m not getting involved with the federal campaign … They can sort out their own issues.”

But Ford did speak to the election results as a sign of division across the country, saying he “fully” understood the frustration in western Canada. (The Liberals lost all their seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan, a blow Trudeau acknowledged in his victory speech.) “The people from Alberta are transferring $20 billion to the federal government and they just feel like they’re being ignored,” Ford claimed again. ‘When I was out there, buildings were empty in Calgary. Not fully empty, but there was a lot of empty buildings … and just talking to people on the streets, they’re frustrated.”

READ MORE: Trudeau says he’s heard frustration from Sask., Atla., during victory speech in Montreal

Since the conclusion of the federal election, Ford has met with New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs. The pair then patched in Saskatchewan Premier (and Council of the Federation Chair) Scott Moe, Ford said, and the three discussed the idea of a meeting of Canada’s Premiers to specifically dissect issues of national unity and division. Last Friday, a call was held between the Premiers of each province and territory. The leaders of Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia were not on the call, Ford’s office says, but each had representatives in their place.

“I offered to host it here in Toronto,” Ford told reporters about the potential meeting, which his office says would likely occur before the end of this calendar year. “I think it’s really important. You saw what happened in the last election.”

Ford was also quizzed on Monday about what appears to be a gentler tone from his government. On the heels of a speaker’s memo asking MPPs to reel in confrontational behaviours like repeated standing ovations and heckling, the provincial PCs adopted a milder demeanor in the House during their first week back to the legislature. (There were still some standing ovations from the PCs during their question period.) Ford’s team has also recently walked back several controversial plans, abandoning a bid to upload the Toronto subway system and deciding against a “top-down” approach to reconfiguring municipal governance across the province.

“I think we’ve toned it down at Queen’s Park,” Ford conceded on Monday. In the wake of his government’s decision not to forcibly reconfigure local government — despite Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark continuing to believe Niagara has an outsized number of councillors — Ford was also asked to reflect on his government’s unilateral slashing of Toronto City Council in 2018, and whether he’d make the same decision if given the opportunity for a do-over. He did not give a yes-or-no answer, instead saying Clark made a “great decision” in conclusion to their review.

“We’re taking an approach … that we should leave this up to the towns and the cities,” Ford said. “And that’s how we’re going to move forward, making sure we’re collaborative with all regions in this province … so they’re the ones that are going to be making a vast majority of the decisions.”

Toronto Mayor John Tory, who was also present at the Etobicoke announcement, told reporters that he believed Ford was now adopting a role that Ontario premiers have historically played in the maintenance of national unity. “It’s a federation. And when we were struggling not too long ago, Alberta was helping us. And they’re struggling right now,” Tory claimed, citing his own conversations with Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi.

“There are differences right now that seem to exist between the different regions, but in order to resolve those differences … people have to sit down together and understand each others’ problems,” Tory said. “I commend the premier for the fact he is taking the initiative to get people together, to talk about this. That’s what Ontario historically has done and that is what we should continue to do.”