Bienvenue to Québerta

It can be a challenge sometimes to take seriously the pronouncements of populist politicians. So, when the Smith government in Alberta and the Legault government in Quebec make eyes at each other and talk of forming an “autonomy alliance,” as they did this month, it tests a person’s ability not to laugh inappropriately.

The two could not, on the surface, be a less likely match. Alberta is a Western, evangelical, English, carbon-fuel-producing, low-tax enclave of conservative-leaning individualists, while Quebec is an Eastern, secular, high-tax, progressive province built on a collectivist foundation of preserving the French language and culture, and which in 2022 became the world’s first jurisdiction to ban new oil and gas exploration.

Alberta is a proud “have” province, having only twice received equalization payments from Ottawa – and that was in the 1960s, before the first oil sands boom. Its residents enjoy by far the highest median after-tax family incomes in Canada, and have the lowest median age – 38.2 years, according to Statistics Canada.

And Quebec? It has received equalization payments every year since the program began in 1957; its estimated take in 2024 is $17.1-billion, or 60 per cent of the total, according to Finance Canada. It also has one of the highest median ages in Canada, at 43.2 years. (The Canadian average is 40.9.)

The perennial taxpayer-funded financial assistance that Quebec banks from Ottawa, its powerful influence on the outcomes of federal elections, and its status as a favoured child of Confederation in spite of its latent threat to tear said Confederation apart are things that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and others in the West have often exploited to stir up resentment against Ottawa and its “eastern elites.”

And now they’re forming a rebel alliance? You bet. Welcome to Québerta, the utopian province of the populist mind where premiers always get what they want, and federal laws are affronts to their voters.

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Not so different after all

Despite their obvious differences, Canada’s two rogue provinces have developed a powerful bond: they are both governed by populist political parties deeply invested in grievance, cultural difference and animosity toward the federal government.

All the other provinces grouse, of course. But it is only Quebec and Alberta that have both a committed portion of the population (around one-third in each case) open to the argument that federalism is a malign force and the weight to make themselves heard.

Ms. Smith has made two “official visits” to Quebec this year, in her last one encouraging the province to end its ban on oil and gas exploration and join the carbon club – if for nothing else so it can become less dependent on equalization payments.

It’s a cheeky flirtation, indeed. Quebec is the elder statesmen in this May-December situation-ship. Its role in the evolution of Canada, the long struggle of its French-speaking population to take control of their lives and their society, and the two referendums that came so close to disaster are central to the history of this country.

But history moves on, and now a fast-growing and economically powerful 20th-century addition to Confederation (1905, to be exact) is ascendant and looking for the same breaks Quebec gets. Alberta is the godfather of Western alienation, using the techniques perfected by its new dancing partner to squeeze Ottawa for more autonomy for itself and any like-minded provinces.

The timeless dance of seduction

Ms. Smith is no more of a separatist than François Legault is but she, like him, presents herself as the guardian at the gate of federalism – the one person who can keep Western separatists at bay by acknowledging and then exploiting their grievances.

In 2022, as one of her first moves as premier, her government enacted the semantically trying “Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act.” The law gives the provincial legislature the power to denounce unwanted federal laws as “unconstitutional or harmful” to Alberta, and gives cabinet the power to order departments and municipalities not to enforce them.

It’s not a law that would last a minute in court, were it ever tested there, but going that far was never the point. The law is a symbolic act targeted at voters who want less Ottawa (or none at all) in their lives.

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This year, Ms. Smith’s government has been holding a series of carefully curated public hearings around the province at which Albertans are being led, like cooperative witnesses in court, to support the kinds of arrangements enjoyed by Quebec: a provincial police force, a provincial pension plan, a provincial tax revenue agency and greater control over immigration. These are all things Albertans could have if they wanted; they just have to ask.

Creating a provincial police force, as Quebec and Ontario have done, might be a good thing for Canada. It would likely speed up a much-needed reform of the RCMP, which currently provides Alberta with its rural and small-town police coverage (as it does in other provinces and territories).

Giving up on the Canada Pension Plan and switching to a provincial version, which is what Quebec opted to do when the CPP was created in 1965, doesn’t make much financial sense today. But there is nothing stopping Albertans from asking their government to start negotiating with Ottawa.

Immigration is already a shared jurisdiction, with the provinces having a say over economic immigrants and temporary foreign workers. Quebec has more say than any other province, though. It’s an understandable source of friction but not one that can’t be fixed as a matter of fairness alone.

Ms. Smith also wants Albertans to endorse a proposal to pressure the federal government to amend the Constitution to, among other things, give more powers to the provinces, to undo the primacy of federal law over provincial law in shared jurisdictions, to add judges to the Supreme Court to give the West more of a voice, and to enforce a strict representation by population in the House of Commons, ending a disproportionate seat distribution that favours older (and often smaller) provinces that aren’t growing as quickly as Alberta.

Reopening the Constitution is something the Legault government also favours as part of its endless appetite for more autonomy. But doing so to accommodate a broad range of provincial grievances would put a strain on Alberta’s budding relationship with Quebec. Because, if truth be told, the two provinces would want very different things out of a marriage.

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It’s not you, it’s me

After all, Quebec enjoys its special status in Canada. In 2006, Parliament passed a motion recognizing that “the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.” Quebec would have little interest in seeing Alberta cash in on the claim that its culture and history are as significant as its own.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet snidely dismissed Alberta’s separatist bona fides during the spring election campaign, saying he was “not certain that oil and gas qualifies” as a distinct culture. This is exactly the kind of Eastern snobbery that helped to alienate the West in the first place.

But then why would Quebec welcome more Western judges on a bigger Supreme Court, or give up influence in the House of Commons? It doesn’t want the West to become the centre of the country’s political gravity. It likes the mutually dependent relationship it has with Ottawa just fine and isn’t looking for a new suitor.

We need to talk

That doesn’t mean, though, that there is nothing to the two provinces’ autonomy (d)alliance.

Yes, there is something endlessly annoying about the idea that anything Ottawa does is an attack on the sovereignty of the provinces, as if Canada is not meant to be a complex intertwining of multiple levels of jurisdiction. Québerta, the frictionless utopia in which Ms. Smith and Mr. Legault get to do whatever they want and the federal government just gets to nod in agreement, issue passports and procure submarines, is never going to happen and was never meant to happen.

But Alberta’s cry for freedom, in part fuelled by Ottawa’s envied softness on Quebec, should not be dismissed as a passing fancy. Ms. Smith’s autonomy tour is an expression of the tangible unfairness in the way the federal government has allotted its attention and favours in the past, of how it has failed to adapt politically as the West has grown, and how it has put its faith in north-south trade with the United States at the expense of interprovincial commerce and unity.

Prime Minister Mark Carney could follow a simple formula for finding a better balance within Confederation: start treating Alberta a little more like Quebec, and Quebec a little more like Alberta.

That is to say, listen attentively to Ms. Smith when she makes the very good point, as she did this month, that Quebec and Ontario should rebuild their manufacturing capacities to help support the West’s resource economy needs, which could in turn could fuel an Eastern industrial rebirth. And demonstrate a willingness to ignore Quebec threats masquerading as demands.

All that anyone in any relationship wants is to be heard and feel respected. Alberta’s cries for more autonomy are being fed by the failure to meet that perfectly reasonable expectation. Ms. Smith would have no Western separatist sentiment to exploit if, at any time in the past, Ottawa had made her province feel as needed and welcome as it does Quebec. Relationships can be complicated, but that much has always been straightforward.

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