It certainly didn’t take long for smirking eastern cleverati – the party spinmeisters and the media hosts that give them a platform – to begin the work of diminishing the results of Alberta’s referendum. Before the last votes were even counted, we were confidently assured that 25 percent approval for separation was a clear and final rejection and on constitutional questions, even a 53 or 55 percent majority was ‘hardly overwhelming.’Meanwhile Prime Minister Mark Carney followed up a very strong Albertan signal on immigration with a comment that while he was delighted that Albertans had chosen unity, his government had already “taken back control” of immigration and was moving toward a “more sustainable pace.” No constitutional changes necessary, you see..Carney says Ottawa will ‘not budge’ on sustainable immigration levels.Well, they would all say that, wouldn’t they? Those rubes in Alberta... nothing here that the comfortable folks back east need to take seriously. Mr. Carney has things looked after..No doubt he does, so to speak. But is Mr. Carney serious about remaking the Liberal Party’s relationship with energy and the West – or is the sudden talk of Canada as an energy superpower carefully stage-managed talk that will dissolve once the climate-activist wing pushes back?In the wake of Alberta’s referendum results, that’s the question guest Ted Morton puts on the table. Speaking on Hannaford tonight, Alberta’s famous constitutional scholar, former minister, and firewall-letter signatory says everyone who backed the anti-oil, anti-Alberta policies of the Trudeau years is now opposed to the pipelines Mr. Carney is floating.Notably, oil exports were not mentioned in the prime minister’s communique from Turkey this morning. (A staffer mistake? Probably not.).So which way do the Liberals go? Do they build a broader coalition that leaves the anti-pipeline activists behind – and let the NDP become the climate-change party and split the left instead of the right? How sure can Albertans be that Mr. Carney is serious? Must we wait until September 1 next year, the stated deadline for final approvals to allow actual construction to start on a pipeline to the west coast?Morton is not pro-separation. But, he is pro-change. He notes that major reform movements almost always start small – the abolitionists were a troublemaking minority for sixty years before Lincoln, for example.To the present point, the 25% support for moving to the next stage in separation is already double what it would have been a decade ago. What Alberta needs now, he argues, is not a one-sided plea but a practical coalition with other premiers tired of “Ottawa knows best.” He calls it a Meech Lake-style package of reforms that could actually be accepted outside Alberta..Countries that do not change with changing conditions, eventually become moribund and fail. The trick is to find a way to change without inviting national trauma. Tonight, Ted Morton joins me to discuss whether that kind of change is still possible in Canada – or whether the structural problem of a 19th-century constitution governing a 21st-century economy will simply lead to the country’s eventual dissolution.Hannaford uploads at seven o’clock.
