Western alienation
For instance, a 2010 study published by the Canada West Foundation found that such sentiments had decreased across the region in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Among the country's founders, George Brown was particularly insistent that the Northwest was the key to Canadian prosperity, offering resources, plentiful land for agricultural settlement, and the potential for a captive market for eastern manufacturers.
The first Canadian Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, designed the National Policy to integrate the North-West Territories into Canada and to develop it economically.
Negotiations were instigated at the behest of the Métis at Red River, who were wary of losing their land and rights as Canada encroached upon the territory.
After the quelling of the Red River Resistance, Manitoba entered Confederation as a small province—it was jokingly derided as the "postage stamp province"—with limited rights, including a lack of control over its natural resources.
[6] British Columbia negotiated its own entry in 1871, but it was better positioned than the rest of the Northwest and demanded and got a promise of the construction of a trans-continental railway.
Territorial premier Frederick Haultain proposed the creation of a large province between Manitoba and British Columbia, for which he favoured the name Buffalo.
Moreover, the region was the slowest to recover from the Depression, which only passed with the arrival of the Second World War and the consequent revival in manufacturing primarily benefiting eastern provinces.
Getting little in the way of relief from the federal government, the depression period saw the establishment of two parties that would dominate politics in Alberta and Saskatchewan for much of the next half-century in Social Credit and the CCF, both of which drew on the legacy of the United Farmer movements.
Both parties sought to transform economic and social conditions on the Prairies, albeit from different ideological positions, and their successes contributed to a tempering of western alienation for much of the middle of the twentieth century.
A related factor was an increased focus on resource development across the Prairies, which filled provincial coffers and buoyed a recovery from the Depression.
Diefenbaker, hailing from Saskatchewan, considered himself an unabashed champion of western interests, and his popularity helped to align the Prairies more closely with conservatism at the federal level.
Feelings of alienation returned in the 1970s, but by then were based principally on a sense of unjustified intrusion by the federal government into western economic interests.
[12] While the program was meant to mitigate the effect of higher gas prices in eastern Canada, it was extremely unpopular in the west due to the perception that the federal government was implementing unfair revenue sharing.
[13] In response, a quote from future Alberta Premier Ralph Klein—then the mayor of Calgary—featured prominently on bumper stickers in that province: "Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark".
Alberta and Saskatchewan premiers Peter Lougheed and Allan Blakeney negotiated to ensure that provincial resource rights were enshrined in Section 92A of the Constitution.
In particular, federal environmental policy and efforts at addressing climate change, such as the Pan-Canadian Framework, have been at the core of contemporary western alienation, stoking fears of a forced economic downturn for key resource industries.
[21] Governments in both Alberta and Saskatchewan have characterized federal environmental policy as an attack on their respective resource industries, and therefore as a threat to their provinces' economic stability.
At the same time, polling has consistently suggested that Alberta and Saskatchewan residents perceive the federal government as harmful to their province's interests.
In his call for "A New Deal with Canada", Moe has signaled a desire for more control over taxation and immigration, and Saskatchewan has introduced plans to create a provincial police force.
[32] Since 2019, a number of popular protests have organized convoys to Ottawa to take demands directly to the federal government, something that has a long tradition in western Canada dating back to the early twentieth century, including the attempted On-to-Ottawa Trek during the Great Depression.
[36][37][38] Particularly since the 1970s, when the resource-based economies of Alberta and Saskatchewan began to see rapid growth, the idea of separatism and independence for western provinces—on their own or in some combination together—has at times gained political traction and led to the creation of new movements and parties working towards that end.
[21] A play on the British "Brexit" movement, Wexit established federal and provincial branches to advocate for western secession, and adopted a reversed version of Preston Manning's slogan: "The West Wants Out".
Then-interim leader Jay Hill acknowledged after the election that focusing on separatism created "a certain degree of discomfort with most westerners who aren’t prepared at this point to go that far.
[54] It was revealed in 2014 that Roy Romanow's New Democratic Party government in Saskatchewan held secret meetings to discuss contingencies for the event of a successful secession vote in the 1995 Quebec referendum, including the possibility of following suit and potentially courting annexation by the United States.
[39] For his part, given the lack of Liberal representation in the west—his party won only two seats west of Ontario, both of them in Manitoba—Trudeau took the uncommon step of appointing western senators to his cabinet.
"[62] First Nations leaders have been similarly vocal in their opposition to the 2022 Alberta Sovereignty and Saskatchewan First Acts, arguing that they infringe on treaty rights and circumvent their relationship with the Crown.
