CALGARY — A former British Columbia premier has praised Premier Danielle Smith for confronting Alberta’s grievances, while accusing Canadian premiers of allowing internal trade barriers to persist for decades.Speaking at former Reform Party leader Preston Manning’s Alberta and the West virtual assembly on Saturday, Gordon Campbell said his province shares Alberta and Saskatchewan’s concerns about a lack of representation in Ottawa.“I actually take my hat off to Premier Smith for saying, ‘Here are the issues we have to deal with to do better for Alberta,’” Campbell said.“If every province said, ‘How do we do best for every province?’ I can tell you the country would do way better.”Campbell, who served as BC premier from 2001 to 2011, described one of Canada’s greatest obstacles as the “tyranny of the status quo,” arguing that governments repeatedly offer reforms without taking concrete action to see them through.In particular, he took shots at premiers who have pledged to remove interprovincial trade barriers but have failed to deliver..'DOES THIS COUNTRY ACTUALLY WANT US?': Smith fights back tears as she makes the case for Alberta to remain in Canada.“I am so tired of premiers saying that they want to deal with interprovincial trade barriers. Deal with them then. It is not a problem to take down interprovincial trade barriers except for politics,” Campbell stated.“It is clearly best for the economy. It's best for the country. It's best for our businesses, large and small. It's best for our resources.”He added that Canadians have debated removing these barriers and improving national productivity and prosperity “for a generation,” but governments — both federal and provincial — continue to rely on what he called “wishful thinking.”“How many years do we wait till we decide we can't? I think it's a willful blindness. We've got some real significant challenges [to deal with],” he said.When Manning asked him whether he thought British Columbians shared the Western alienation felt in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Campbell said he didn’t “like” the word “alienation” and framed the issue as one of making Confederation function more effectively. He argued that provincial control over natural resources was critical to the original structure of Canada’s founding.“Allowing provinces to make their own choices went back to the initial ideas of Confederation, and under those initial ideas, natural resources were to be in the provinces' hands, period,” he said.“We have to let people maximize their benefits in their provinces. I think that's what Alberta is trying to do, and there are different ways to do it. The point I would make is this: We can talk about it forever. If we don't know specifically what we're going to do, what actions we are going to take to achieve our goals and how we're going to measure those actions, we're going to have a lot more conferences like this where we talk about it.”
