No More ‘Cat’s Paw’ for Alberta

Commentary

Permission to invoke an Aesopian fable to draw a parallel in Canadian politics? … Thank you.

In the fable “The Monkey and the Cat,” Bertrand the monkey persuades Raton the cat to retrieve chestnuts roasting in fireplace embers, promising him a share. Raton plucks them from the fire, one by one, but repeatedly burns his paw, as Bertrand gobbles up all the chestnuts. Raton gets nothing for his pains.

It’s from this fable that the French get their phrase tirer les marrons du feu, meaning to benefit from the work of others. It’s also the source of the English idiom “a cat’s paw,’’ i.e., one who’s been suckered.

We don’t learn whether Raton, with his burned paws, later realizes that he’s been duped. But the fable-counterpart in Canadian politics—I’m referring, of course, to Alberta—is all too aware that it’s been played for a schmuck since its inception in 1905.

At the time, Liberal PM Wilfrid Laurier shrewdly split the proposed “Province of Buffalo,” now Alberta and Saskatchewan, right down the 110th meridian. This vitiated a powerful Western entity with enormous political and energy potential. Unlike the Confederation’s original provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan weren’t given control over their own natural resources until 1930, and were never properly compensated for 25 years of lost royalties.

Little wonder that many Albertans have correctly viewed their historic relationship with Ottawa as marginalized and exploitive, designed to fuel the economic growth of Central Canada while restricting their own wealth and political economy.

‘My Canada Includes Alberta’?

When Albertans point out such injustices, and attempt to redress them, they’re scorned and scoffed at. “Unpatriotic!” the pundits cry. “Victims of Russian–U.S. exploitation!” Quebec, on the other hand, has always been indulged. In the ’90s, car decals across the country proclaimed “My Canada includes Quebec.” I haven’t seen any equivalent “My Canada includes Alberta” decals. Have you?

In fact, such is the depth of Central Canada’s disdain for Alberta that one repeatedly wonders: Why do you care if Albertans are spearheading a secession movement? What difference does it make to you? You flog your love of Canada—but as for the West, that mile-wide love is only an inch deep.

Critics have mocked Alberta’s claims about one-way equalization payments as “old canards” and “tired falsehoods, arguing that Albertans are taxed at the same rate as people in other provinces. What they omit, of course, is that Alberta has received .002 percent of all equalization payments since the program began in 1957. Some, too, dismiss those with legitimate grievances as little more than an angry mob.

Try telling Quebecers, who have never been hesitant about asserting provincial autonomy, that their separatist-sovereignist aspirations are pointless or “illegal”—or that communicating with other countries about separation, as Quebec separatists long did with the Basques and the Scots, is “treasonous,” as Premier David Eby recently called separatist Albertans.

Frustrated Federalists

As for why Albertans might be “frustrated federalists,” where to begin?! The National Energy Program? Thwarted “Triple-E” Senate reform? The last “lost decade,” which saw the introduction of one piece of economically devastating federal legislation after another?

Under Bill C-69, for example, the Baie du Nord oil drilling project off Newfoundland was approved, but Western projects and pipelines were stymied. Bill C-48 banned Asia-bound tankers from gaining a 36-hour trade time advantage from deepwater ports such as Prince Rupert, but Canada continued to import oil from rogue nations like Venezuela. And then there’s Energy East, which would have ensured a made-in-Canada oil and gas supply/refining chain—but was killed off by a weaponized National Energy Board.

More recently, as a quid pro quo for supposed new pipelines, Alberta has been hoodwinked by the feds into a $130 (from $95) per tonne minimum price on industrial carbon emissions and an obscenely expensive oilsands carbon capture plan.

If the Keystone XL, Energy East, and Northern Gateway projects had gone ahead, Premier Danielle Smith recently posted, “they would be generating 2.5 million barrels of oil per day and about $55 billion in GDP for the country. That’s billions of additional dollars that could have been used to address health care, education, and more.”

We are slowly waking up to the fact that Canadian “major projects” are being squelched by a self-created Frankenstein web of politicized courts, a command economy, and indigenous and climate litigation. Ironically, what’s really going to unlock Canada’s oil will be the U.S.-bound “Bridger” pipeline, presidentially approved by Donald Trump.

Key Grievance

In this cat-and-monkey game, the key grievance that smoulders in the minds of Albertans wanting redress is equalization—and the phony distinctions that categorize Ontario and Quebec as “have not” provinces. Over the last half-century, “some $600 billion has been taken out of Alberta so it can be spent mostly in Quebec and in other places that vote Liberal,” Premier Smith says. While western oil and gas revenues are included in the equalization formula, Hydro-Québec subsidizes electricity costs rather than charging market rates. Thus, Quebec’s hydro wealth is not fully accounted for and—you guessed it—the province receives equalization payments.

Of the record $26.2 billion earmarked for equalization payments for 2025–26, Canada’s three westernmost provinces won’t see a cent of it. Once again, they will be relinquishing billions, especially to Quebec, which will take in $13.6 billion, up a quarter billion from 2024–25.

Critics of Alberta separatists are fond of pointing out that they would have to deal with the Clarity Act. Passed in 2000, this legislation stipulates that the federal government will negotiate a province’s secession only if a provincial referendum asks a “clear question” on independence and receives a “clear majority.” (Parti Québecois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon promptly made clear that a future PQ government would follow Quebec, not federal, legal interpretation of “clear majority’). One wonders what would happen if Albertans responded with a “Sucks to your Clarity Act. We’re seceding!” Call it Alberta’s own version of extinguishment or corporate nullification.

Premier Smith’s comments on the topic are decidedly more temperate: she supports a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.” A sovereign Alberta within a united Canada. Hmm. That’s a succinct definition of home rule—a form of de-centralized self-rule that has precedent in Ireland, Switzerland, Greenland, India, and elsewhere.

That’s a topic for another day. But it sounds like a hell of a plan—not only for our patriotic friends in Central Canada, but Alberta itself. Think about it: self-rule, albeit limited, within the country at large. And no more playing the patsy cat’s paw!

Bronwyn Eyre is Saskatchewan’s former minister of Energy and of Justice and Attorney General.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.