Premier David Eby speaks to reporters from his office following the throne speech at the legislature in Victoria, on Feb. 18.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
B.C. Premier David Eby has spent months bashing the federal government for shortchanging his province, but he says he doesn’t want to stoke sentiments of alienation in the West.
He called on Canada’s next prime minister to focus on equity in federal spending across the country, saying that will smother the “awful” rhetoric that is feeding talk of Western separatism at a time when the U.S. President is looking for weak links in Canadian unity.
“There are special programs for Ontario and Quebec that are not delivered to other provinces. And when that happens, it gives these opportunists the chance to get on Facebook and say, ‘Yeah, let’s separate from the rest of Canada.’ It’s nonsense, but it feeds that fire,” Mr. Eby told reporters Thursday in Victoria.
“So my advice to the incoming Prime Minister, whoever it may be, would be to do the basic fairness things.” That means, he said, each province should have a share of federal programs based on their share of the population.
In a recent column in The Globe and Mail, former Reform Party leader Preston Manning wrote that voters, particularly those in Central and Atlantic Canada, “need to recognize that a vote for the [Mark] Carney Liberals is a vote for Western secession – a vote for the breakup of Canada as we know it.”
Mr. Eby, despite his repeated complaints about inequity, said there is no such threat to Canadian unity.
“People like Preston Manning are seeking clicks and playing to a political base that is completely disavowed by the vast majority of Canadians, whether in Western Canada, Eastern Canada, central Canada. It is a tired trope. It is a waste of time, and it is an attack on the unity that we have right now as a country standing up to the Trump administration for political, partisan gains. I hate it. I think it’s awful.”
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While Mr. Eby distanced himself from Mr. Manning, he has repeatedly made the case that Western Canada – and B.C. in particular – has not been treated fairly by the federal Liberal government.
Mr. Eby has shared litany of grievances since last year, ending a long-standing strategy by his New Democratic Party government that avoided open criticism of Ottawa. The shift began last June when Mr. Eby complained that Ottawa favoured Quebec with substantial immigration-related funding while B.C. struggled with similar challenges of rapid immigration growth. Mr. Eby said the $750-million Ottawa provided to Quebec to help pay for a surge in temporary residents was “at the expense, in my opinion, of the West.”
The B.C. Premier later said his province is being shorted on infrastructure dollars, in particular for “a fair share” of the cost of the multibillion-dollar replacement of the aging Massey tunnel that presents a choke point on Highway 99. On another day, he pointed to the Strategic Investment Fund allocations to the provinces, saying that on a per-capita basis, Ontario and Quebec receive twice as much cash as B.C.
The federal Liberal government has disputed some of B.C.’s complaints. Prior to the election campaign, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said the Premier was “confused” about the purpose of Quebec’s immigration funds. Immigration officials later said B.C. only got $6-million in funding from an immigrant housing program, compared with Quebec’s $441-million, based on requests from each province for reimbursement for costs incurred.
And the Liberal MP for Delta, Carla Qualtrough, told the Delta Optimist that her government was prepared to provide hundreds of millions of dollars for the Massey crossing project in her riding, but the province rejected the offer.
That was all before U.S. President Donald Trump began threatening Canada with punishing tariffs, and promoting the idea that Canada should become the 51st state. Since then, Mr. Eby has emphasized a “Team Canada” approach to responding to the U.S. threats, but he has not abandoned his theme about inequality.
“We don’t have an auto parts industry here. We have different industries in British Columbia, so just making sure that those programs are responsive to the unique needs of each province and we have equal access to similar levels of funding, is critically important,” he said Thursday.
Loleen Berdahl, a professor of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan, said the concept of Western alienation predates Confederation, although the depth of discontent waxes and wanes. “It’s a bit of a constant in Canadian politics,” she said in an interview.
That sentiment is fed by a government that has been shaped and dominated, from the start, by interests in Ontario and Quebec, she said in an interview, adding that there are some remedies within the federal government’s powers: Review the equalization program that is meant to address fiscal disparities among provinces and look at a wider distribution of federal jobs.
Prof. Berdahl said that Ottawa should not dismiss the issue, particularly now, with the risk that Mr. Trump’s stated desire to absorb Canada into the U.S. may embolden Western separatists – or those who would seek leverage from such a movement. “At what point, if ever, is the issue of regionalism and alienation going to be addressed in some way that’s positive for national unity?”