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The Alberta Provincial Police just came knocking. Apparently you’re wanted for a breach of national unity. Or they are. So where do we go from here?

An APP isn’t the only idea Alberta Premier Jason Kenney unveiled at a Manning Centre event in Red Deer over the weekend. Nor, probably, the most significant or best. Those titles go to the proposed Alberta Pension Plan, which prompts me to steal a joke from Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss for all us central Canadians.

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“Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Not you anymore.” As columnist Don Braid recently pointed out, with Alberta the youngest and richest province (incongruously, two territories have higher nominal per capita GDP) the Wild Rosers could afford a local Ponzi scheme rather better than the rest of us could without their dirty oil money a-sittin’ in our vault.

Apparently you’re wanted for a breach of national unity. Or they are

Of course Ottawa might try not to hand over the estimated 40 billion Alberta dollars the CPP already has. But it can’t stop Alberta creating its own pension plan like vous savez qui. And driving a nastily hard bargain with a province already seething would be so incredibly stupid even official Ottawa might balk. But what if it didn’t?

What, more broadly, if Ottawa and Quebec City decide to be obtuse and play “chicken” with Western alienation instead of enacting sweeping reforms? The temptation is to dismiss Alberta separatists as “jackasses banging on,” to quote one esteemed columnist (who to be fair then said don’t ignore the problem). As the habitual response to Tory domination of the West is to mock their Beverly Hillbilly inability “to appeal to younger voters, to the university-educated, to women” to quote another who apparently thought Alberta has no women. Perhaps he never went there. And see also “youngest province” above. Alberta could go.