Mark Twain said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."
The pieces on the 2025 Canadian chessboard are starting to look like 1980 when Pierre Trudeau ran against the West (and Alberta in particular) to secure enough seats in the East to cling to office.
Trudeau the First lost power in 1979 to Joe Clark, and he was set to retire. The country was done with him, but the PC interlopers' minority government was defeated in a confidence vote, allowing Pierre to come out of retirement. With an energy crisis driving up the price of gas, he ran on a plan to seize the West's oil wealth to subsidize the East's hurting manufacturing sectors.
Liberal Party organizer Keith Davey summed up the Liberal plan: "Screw the West, we'll take the rest."
Ontario PC Premier Bill Davis stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Trudeau, demanding the West be plundered to bail out the East. And it worked. Eastern Canada gave the elder Trudeau a majority government without a single seat west of Winnipeg. He didn't need them. The West was just outnumbered. Even Ontario "Conservatives" like Bill Davis were willing to side with the Laurentian looters over conservatism and federal fairness.
A similar board is set before us in 2025. The Liberals are about to lose power in historic fashion. Almost every single seat west of Mississauga is a write-off for them now. If the Liberals are to hang onto even a minority government, they need to rack up the score in the East, and the cynical opportunity for them to do that is staring them in the face.
Trump's threat of a 25% tariff on Canadian imports into the United States is a major threat to the entire Canadian economy. But the vacuum of leadership at the federal level has left the premiers to stand in for them. Most notably, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith playing good cop, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford playing bad cop.
Smith has taken a diplomatic and friendly tone, and even met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Winter Palace. Without a legitimate federal government to speak for Canada, she has put her efforts into getting a carve-out for Canadian (mostly Alberta and Saskatchewan) oil and gas. Time will tell if this approach works, but there is a real chance that she will succeed in sparing the Prairies from the worst of Trump's economic damage.
But that isn't squaring with the strategy of Doug Ford. He wants to avoid a tariff war, but has been clear that he wants a nuclear-level exchange of trade missiles if one breaks out. The problem for Doug is, that Ontario (and Quebec) do not have the warheads. Alberta does.
The biggest export product to the United States is — by far — Alberta oil. Americans would be crazy to impose a tariff on Alberta, which is why there is a not bad chance of Smith succeeding in her quest for a carve-out.
Whatever Trump claims, the actual "trade deficit" between the two countries is the heavily discounted Alberta crude shipped south for upgrading in American refineries.
The Yanks profit tremendously from this, which is why any pan-Canadian strategy to hit the Americans where it hurts would necessitate an energy embargo. Tthat is, an export tax on Alberta and Saskatchewan oil.
Doug Ford knows this, which is why he has been diplomatically pushing for the inclusion of oil in Canada's retaliatory measures. And that might help exert some pressure for the benefit of Ontario and Quebec. But it would be devastating to Alberta and Saskatchewan. It would make economic human shields of the petroleum-producing regions for the protection of the government-subsidized manufactoring centres in Central and Eastern Canada.
Will Doug Ford play the Bill David to Danielle Smith's Peter Lougheed? More importantly, will Justin Trudeau don the full mantle of Pierre Trudeau?
The Liberals are almost certainly doomed, and their best-case scenario at this point is likely to save the furniture and remain the official opposition with enough of a caucus to launch a rebuild. But hope springs eternal in politics, and the Liberals looking down the business end of a Conservative gun might be tempted to do something crazy, even if it risked further splitting an already divided and vulnerable country.
Trudeau has only announced he "intends to resign" as prime minister and Liberal leader. As of writing, he is still very much the prime minister and Liberal leader. He could well use the genuine (post) national crisis facing Canada as his casus belli to call an election right now. The feckless Liberal caucus would be powerless to stop him, and it would abort the still nascent leadership race. He would still likely lose the election, but it would give him at least a prayer of a chance of fighting on.
Trudeau could (at least try) to fashion himself in the anti-American cloak worn by his father, promising to protect Canada from Trump and paint Pierre Polievre as a fifth column that would sell Canada out as the 51st state.
And Justin's "Screw the West, we'll take the rest" strategy would be at its foundation: putting an export tax on Alberta and Saskatchewan oil in a trade war to protect Eastern manufacturing (that is, votes).
This would rightly trigger an unprecedented national unity crisis. Peter Lougheed and his PCs may have been staunch defenders of Alberta's resources and constitutional space, but he's a choir boy compared with Danielle Smith and the UCP of 2025. She keeps a spigot on the major sovereigntist movement flowing through that party right now. Yet, another Trudeau looting Alberta for raw political gain this cynically would likely see it blow.
It worked for Pierre Trudeau but salted the earth for Liberals in these parts for two generations.
I'm less convinced that it would work for Justin Trudeau, but like a cornered beast, he could do something this reckless.