If the polls are correct, Mark Carney and the Liberals will win yet another mandate. Many Westerners are mystified as to why Eastern Canada would want to rehire the same Liberals who have spent the last decade making us poorer and defenceless, but that’s exactly what they appear to be about to do.
How a next Liberal term would play out is not clear, but considering the fact that Carney is at least as committed to “net zero” anti-fossil fuel and anti-pipeline policies as his predecessor, it seems very likely that a Carney win will bring major problems for Alberta and Saskatchewan. As the old mariner said “Thar be dragons ahead.”
Western discontent will only grow stronger.
Although polls now suggest that a minority of Albertans and Saskatchewanians are in favour of separation, and/or joining the United States, that could change as fast as the polls changed from Conservative to Liberals, when Trump entered and Trudeau exited.
An eminent Canadian has recently written about the very real risk of Canada fracturing after this next election. Preston Manning worked hard to prevent that from happening a generation ago. When Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s National Energy Policy savaged Alberta’s economy, and brought western alienation sentiments to a full boil it was Manning’s “The West Wants In” campaign, and launch of his Reform Party that largely kept the lid on Western anger, and determination to seek independence.
No other Canadian did more to keep the country together at that time than Preston Manning.
But I wonder if he regrets doing so now. His recent Globe and Mail op-ed makes it clear that Manning completely understands how precarious Canadian unity is at this unusual point in history. He almost begs the Eastern Canadian elite to pay attention to what is happening in the West. There is no evidence that they are listening. Simply put, the East and the West are on completely different paths.
Without a doubt the most glaring difference between the two sides is their attitude to fossil fuels.
In a nutshell, one side (the West) wants to use them, and the other side (the East) wants Big Government to keep them in the ground. The East largely adheres to the almost religious belief that “climate change” demands that Canada achieve “net zero” at virtually any cost. The fact that China, India and other nations producing the emissions are still burning mountains of coal does not dissuade them from that fervent belief. Many seem quite prepared to de-industrialize and accept the lower standard of living that comes with it to achieve their net zero utopia.
The West does not agree, and believes that fossil fuels will be needed for many years to come.
The West wants market forces, and not Big Government, to find the most efficient kinds of energy for the future. The West believes that fossil fuels will be needed as part of the energy mix for many years.
There is no question which side Mark Carney is on, in this epic struggle. Big Government and net zero is what he stands for. He is a dedicated follower of climate activist Greta Thunberg. In fact, he says: “I am part of her movement”
The problem for the Carneyites — as Frontier Centre’s Marco Navarro-Genie writes — is that net zero is currently unraveling around the Western world. (It never was a thing anywhere else).
The fact is that the pursuit of net zero has come at a staggering cost, with little to show for it except rising prices, prohibitively expensive energy costs, and broad social unrest.
Even true believers, like the Germans and Brits, have started to realize to their horror that net zero means de-industrialization and lower standards of living.
Polls in Western Canada show that Western Canadians get it. While there is strong support for reasonable environmental legislation and pollution control, most westerners want nothing to do with net zero and enthusiastically support responsible fossil fuel development, and pipelines to carry oil and gas in all four directions.
But this is not the case in Laurentian Canada. Support for net zero is strongest in Quebec, but still far stronger in Ontario and the Maritimes than in Western Canada.
This poses a huge problem for the future of Canada as a unified nation.
If, as expected, the Carney Liberals prevail in the upcoming election there will be starkly different views about how to remove the country’s finances and economy from the deep hole both are in. In blunt terms, Westerners want to do it in large part by extracting and selling more fossil fuels, while eastern Canada, under Carney’s direction, will be committed to phasing out fossil fuels as quickly and aggressively as possible, while blocking pipeline construction. That’s what “net zero” means.
This is a major problem, and has the potential to fracture the nation. As Preston Manning, and other wise people have written, when one half of the country sees things in fundamentally different ways than does the other half that nation no longer works as one nation.
Czechoslovakia is one country where exactly this occurred. The two parts of the country simply saw things differently. They decided to “divorce”, in 1992, and managed to do so amicably. The Czech Republic and Slovakia now live peacefully side by side.
But divorces don’t always end peacefully. When Yugoslavia split apart in 1990 the results were gruesome.
If a Carney win does in fact exacerbate Western alienation, and Alberta eventually splits off from eastern Canada (probably taking parts of Saskatchewan, and possibly Manitoba and British Columbia with it) we have no way of knowing what this would look like. Many people, including this writer, have speculated on the possibility.
A future more likely than a sudden split would be an agonizing decade of uncertainty and angst, with both sides growing more and more frustrated. Think of the dreadful lockdown years, when Ottawa pushed for ever more control, while most Westerners deeply resented the loss of their freedoms. Those were wasted years.
Similarly, years of fighting over separation would be a tragedy. The deep social division, as well as the financial stagnation and wasted opportunities this would entail, would likely resemble the lost Trudeau decade we have just endured.
Although it is impossible to predict how such a fracturing would occur, it is obvious that something’s got to give. Either Western Canada gets on board Carney’s net zero train, and accepts the rest of his globalist baggage, or Carney must ease up on his progressivism and net zero utopia, and not stand in the way of increased drilling, and energy corridors — valuable corridors that carry oil and gas, as well as electricity. Despite what he says now when he needs votes, the truth is that Carney is so committed to his net zero that he has no intention of changing.
Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge, and a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.