BRAH BRAH:
Rachel Notley should cut off Equalization payments, Alberta first.
Alberta can't control equalization. It's a federal program, defined by a federal formula. It's entirely possible that we might end up getting equalization later-and
Francois Legault is openly talking about turning Quebec into a have province, with all the polls showing him in the lead for the Quebec election later this year.
Notley is talking about turning off the fuel taps to BC, similar to what Peter Lougheed did in our fight with the feds over the NEP.
Individualist Individualist:
I think for many of those who do, it’s an extension of their anti-Americanism. Alberta is commonly considered the most American of our provinces, just as Quebec is considered the most European (with downtown Toronto trying hard to compete in that category). If you’re a Canadian who hates all things American (IOW, a Canadian nationalist), you’re going to have a distaste for Alberta and it’s dominant culture. These same people also tend to be anti-Israel, because Israel is a US ally.
I’d say there’s an inverse correlation among Canadians between disliking Alberta and disliking Quebec.
Such a correlation overlooks the common tendency across Canada to end up drifting towards the centre. Quebec under René Levèsque was cutting funding and pissing off unions a good 10-12 years before Mike Harris and Ralph Klein made it trendy in Anglo-majority Canada, and when they did Lucien Bouchard was right there with the rest of us in balancing Quebec's budget.
Meanwhile, in Alberta we're the only part of Canada with a government-owned bank (Alberta Treasury Branch), incentives and subsidies to the oilsands with royalty rebates and other support, Preston Manning saying Albertans need a "wake up call" on the environment and his father Ernest saying that everyone deserved a decent standard of living from the oilsands, and Peter Lougheed trying to diversify the Alberta economy.
But the real problem is the one I laid out at the start of this thread. Albertans like Thanos and myself are pissed off because we see the pipeline as critical to our province's economy and livelihoods. Meanwhile, many BCers see the pipeline as a threat to their own well-being, particularly with the feeling that they'll take all the risk while Alberta reaps all the benefits (a situation not unlike the NEP back when I was in diapers).
I wonder if Trudeau could do better by pointing out Horgan's own actions such as his approval of Site C (which really pissed off a lot of Indigenous people in Lotusland) his continuing of Christy Clark's LNG terminal support, Vancouver's dumping sewage into the ocean (much like Montreal dumping sewage into the St. Lawrence) and the fact that so few environmentalists seem to have a problem with Venezuela financing its social revolution with oil. With all the spending many leftists are calling for, where do they expect the money to come from when such a significant part of our tax base is disrupted?
These are the kinds of questions Trudeau ought to be asking. Force the BC government and the environmentalists to answer these questions, and maybe even (which I admit is probably wishful thinking on my part) to reexamine their issues with O&G development.
Otherwise, though, I hate myself in thinking about this issue. I see the very real concerns and frustrations on both sides, and I can't figure out how to address them. IOW, I'm failing Alberta, B.C. and Canada all at once.