Kenney’s panel will look at these and other issues, including
deep disgruntlement with the equalization program that treats
Alberta as a “have” province while sending $13 billion — 65
per cent of the national total — to “have not” Quebec. Quebec’s
payment rose sharply this year, even as it announced a $4
billion surplus. Alberta, in contrast, expects a shortfall of
$8.7 billion for the same period.
The combative address Jason Kenney delivered in Red Deer on Saturday didn’t come out of the blue. This is a storm cloud that’s been hovering around Alberta for a very long time. Eventually it was going to erupt.
There have been plenty of precursors. From Pierre Trudeau’s first lunge at Alberta’s oil wealth almost 40 years ago via the National Energy Program, Albertans have kept a wary eye on Ottawa and its grabby revenue fingers.
The distrust was there in Preston Manning’s creation of the Reform Party; again in the 2001 “firewall” letter signed by Stephen Harper and others; in “the West wants in” movement and in Rachel Notley’s discovery that electing a New Democrat premier wasn’t enough to break the fixed views and biases of “progressive” activists outside its borders, or to gain their assistance in achieving pragmatic goals.
Eventually a premier like Kenney was going to say enough is enough, and channel the frustration into a direct challenge to the ambivalence that leaves Albertans so often feeling they’re on their own within the federation.
“We’ve had it with Ottawa’s indifference to this adversity. Albertans have been working for Ottawa for too long, it’s time for Ottawa to start working for us,” Kenney said at the gathering, organized by the Manning Centre.