FILDEBRANDT: Carney prepares for economic warfare, against the West

Liberal Leader Mark Carney just opened another front in the Canada-US trade war: Western Canada. Before the Liberals swapped out Justin Trudeau for Mark Carney, the former prime minister made clear that he was willing to consider an export tax against Alberta oil and Saskatchewan potash and uranium. Perhaps even British Columbian LNG. But Trudeau was a dead man walking, and what he said mattered little with one colourful sock out the door. But at a campaign stop, his replacement Mark Carney put a federal embargo against Alberta and Saskatchewan exports right back on the table. .Curiously, nobody has mentioned a federal export tax against, say, Ontario autos or Quebec airplanes. Of course they haven't. Those are the industries most at threat from US tariffs. And they also happen to be in the places with the votes that will decide if Canada has a Liberal or Conservative government on April 29.Carney is leaning into a tried and true Liberal strategy: Screw the West. We'll take the rest.It's been used many times before, but never so successfully and divisively as in 1980 when Trudeau the First ran on a platform of controlling Alberta's oil for the benefit of Eastern industrial and consumer interests. It culminated in the National Energy Program, which sent Alberta into an economic depression..Ever since, Albertans — and Westerners more broadly — have sought to aggressively elbow our way into better democratic representation (the Reform Party) and to firewall off predatory federal intrusions (the Alberta Sovereignty Act.)Carney is hinting strongly that he will use the West's economic drivers (natural resource extraction) to prop up those in the East. It's the ugliest manifestation of "Team Canada." And it could work, as it has before.Pierre Poilievre would be put in the uncomfortable position of defending the freedom of the West to export its products while sounding less militant than Carney in protecting the interests of the East. Whatever the cost to Westerners, Carney would be able to position himself as the defender of Canada, at least as the more valuable voting blocs in the East might see it..If our Eastern neighbours were to endorse such a plan, it would be a democratic mandate to wage open war against the West's primary industries.And Westerners should treat it as such.Westerners should not accept it, no matter how Easterners vote. They are free to vote for whatever confiscatory, economically suicidal plan they wish. But we are under no obligation to accept it.The oil, gas, potash and uranium in Western Canada do not belong to the federal government. It belongs to Westerners. And we should accept no further federal overreach to control them..Further compromise and appeasement of Ottawa is pointless. We compromised with Pierre Trudeau to protect our resources in the 1982 constitutional amendment. We compromised to appease Quebec nationalism and special status in the 1980s and 1990s. We compromised our Reform-era demands for equal Senate representation in the name of building a pan-Canadian conservative coalition. We accepted — however unwillingly — the carbon tax, west coast tanker ban, emissions/production cap, and no-more-pipelines legislation of the last decade. And we did it all while paying far more into Canada than we ever got out.Westerners have compromised without end for national unity and prosperity. Somewhere along the way, our interests should count for something. The prosperity and freedom of Westerners should not be mere collateral to the interests of others.An export tax on Western products amounts to a federal embargo of Western exports. That is something that only a hostile foreign power does, like the British blockade of Boston Harbour after that city's tea party.If Ottawa imposed any export embargo on Western products to the United States, we must respond with an immediate export embargo against Ottawa.And if Ottawa persists in waging an economic war against the West, we will have to consider more drastic measures, won't we?

FILDEBRANDT: Carney prepares for economic warfare, against the West

Related Stories