The election campaign has hardly begun and already the Laurentian press is growing antsy.Last week Sean Speer, an editor-at-large at the immodestly named e-journal, The Hub, provided an analysis of the danger to Canada posed by the election. He was worried that the campaign would exacerbate “regional tensions” and threaten “national unity.” Indeed, he invited us to conceive of the election as a zero-sum contest between Alberta and Saskatchewan on the one side and the “Via Rail Corridor” bounded by Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, on the other.Historically, when a Laurentian journalist muses about national unity, he or she frets about Quebec separatism or about “Western alienation.” Today, 84% of Quebecers are convinced that independence is unlikely, which leaves only the threat of “Western alienation.” Speer, in fact, used the term four times in his brief editorial..“Alienation,” for those who care, is a technical term lifted from Marxist analyses of capitalism. My suspicion is that an anonymous Laurentian Marxist academic first deployed the term against the West sometime in the 1970s, but I have never been able to discover the original perp.The great advantage of using “Western alienation” as an expression of a vague threat to “national unity” is that you never have to confront or discuss its hidden polemical purpose.Specifically, it conveys the message that there is clearly something wrong with Westerners, whoever gets included in that geographical category. The alienated are wounded, but still viable, poor dears. And, of course, they are “out” West.Speer may be a Laurentian, or an ex-pat Laurentian, but he’s not a Marxist. He is still sufficiently in touch with reality to see the conflict between the Via Rail Corridor and the Prairie West as fundamental. He pointed out that Alberta and Saskatchewan send 48 MPs to Ottawa and the Corridor sends 51. The Prairie West is represented by 44 Conservatives (92%) and the Corridor by 48 Liberals (94%).The implication is obvious enough: the Liberal Corridor can veto anything coming out of the Conservative Prairie West. And here is where the juxtaposition — or dialectic for any residual Marxists — works its magic. No one has ever argued that “national unity” would best be served with an end to eastern alienation, if only the Corridor had the good sense to align itself with the priorities of the Prairie West.On the contrary. Speer himself pointed out that “Western alienation” reflected “an arguably justified perception” that the contributions from the Prairie West, such as transfer payments, along with petroleum, uranium and potash exports, were high, but alas! “Its influence is low.”This “arguably justified perception” is also called a rip-off or exploitation by the Corridor of the Prairie West.Now factor in the possibility of high American tariffs on Canadian manufacturing and lower ones on petroleum, uranium and potash.The owner of these resource commodities, Speer said (along with such Laurentian luminaries as the premier of Ontario,) was called “Canada,” not Alberta or Saskatchewan.Lower U.S. tariffs on prairie resource commodities amount to a “call” (from the Corridor) to apply export taxes to them. And this action “would split the major parties along regional lines.” Accordingly, “the potential harms to national unity seem self-evident.” Indeed, it does seem that way. But what, in reality, would that potential harm mean?In her recent meeting with Mark Carney, Danielle Smith advised him that imposing an export tax on Alberta’s oil and gas was both “absurd and destructive” and was bound to produce “an unprecedented national unity crisis.” That is, it would be quite different than the unserious “crises” posed by Quebec over the years. Never were they going to leave. A transplanted Laurentian, Andrew Leach, who teaches resource economics at the University of Alberta, up north someplace, said that the premier’s position was “effectively a separatist manifesto.” That’s one way of looking at her statement..Here is another.Should the Corridor Liberals form the next government, as currently seems entirely possible, the result might turn into what Speer called a “nightmare scenario” wherein a Parliamentary majority held by the Liberals was contradicted by the larger popular vote for the Conservatives.It’s happened before: over the past 20 years, Canada has gone to the polls six times; the Conservatives won the popular vote in five of them.This pattern reflects the long-term structural disadvantage from which the Conservatives and the Prairie West suffer, and it’s not going to disappear. Supposing, however, that you ditch the rhetoric about “national unity” and “Western alienation,” what then?Then an export tax on petroleum, uranium, and potash becomes just another hostile act by the Corridor against the Prairie West.Given the leadership of Premiers Smith and Moe, however, it’s also an opportunity for us to change the rules of the game that have been in place since before Canada extended its reach to this part of the continent. Then it becomes a “call” to redefine our relationship with the Corridor and perhaps with the Americans as well.In short, there are plenty of exciting opportunities for the Prairie West to take following a Liberal win. As for the Corridor, does anyone besides the grumpy and unimaginative Laurentians still care?
