Western alienation
Western alienation, in the context of Canadian politics, refers to the notion that the Western provinces—British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba—have been marginalized within Confederation, particularly compared to Central Canada, which consists of Canada's two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec. Expressions of western alienation frequently allege that Eastern Canada is politically over-represented and receives out-sized economic benefits at the expense of western Canadians.
Western alienation has a long history within Canada, dating back to the nineteenth century. It has led to the establishment of many Western regional political parties at both the provincial and federal levels and from both the right and left sides of the political spectrum, although since the 1980s western alienation has been more closely associated with and espoused by conservative politicians. While such movements have tended to express a desire for a larger place for the west within Confederation, western alienation has at times resulted in calls for western separatism and independence. Given this long history, western alienation has had a profound impact on the development of Canadian politics.
According to a 2019 analysis by Global News, Western alienation is considered especially potent in Alberta and Saskatchewan politics. However, alienation sentiments vary over time and place. 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. More recently, a 2019 Ipsos poll found historically high levels of support for secession from Canada in both Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Historical roots
Upon Confederation in 1867, the new Dominion of Canada consisted only of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. However, what was then known as the North-West—much of it officially Rupert's Land and owned by the Hudson's Bay Company—was already a significant factor in Canadian plans. Among the country's founders, George Brown was particularly insistent that the North-West was the key to Canadian prosperity, offering resources, plentiful land for agricultural settlement, and the potential for a captive market for eastern manufacturers. In 1869, HBC gave up its control of Rupert's Land, which became part of Canada in 1870 under the name North-West Territories.The National Policy
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 as part of a Canadian economy. The key planks of the National Policy were the building of a trans-continental railway that would connect the east to British Columbia, help to settle and populate the west, and easily ship goods across the country ; immigration to populate the Prairies with homesteaders; and tariffs to protect Canadian manufacturers. The protectionist tariffs were an immediate issue in the North-West, as it effectively forced western farmers to purchase more expensive equipment from eastern Canadian manufacturers rather than less-expensive farm equipment from manufacturers in the United States, and it impacted prices for farm products—farmers of the North-West Territories therefore favoured free trade between Canada and the U.S. This began a long battle between farmers on the prairies and the federal government and led to the establishment of farmers' organizations to help control grain shipping and marketing, and to agitate politically for free trade and economic protection for farmers as well. Eventually, farmers entered the political sphere directly, forming United Farmers parties and the Progressive Party, both of which helped to lay a foundation for a national democratic-socialist party, Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.Western provinces
The first province established in the North-West was Manitoba, and it entered Confederation under unusual circumstances. 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.British Columbia negotiated its own entry in 1871, but it was better positioned than the rest of the North-West and demanded and got a promise of the construction of a trans-continental railway.
By the turn of the twentieth century, agitation for provincehood for the rest of the North-West increased as the land settlement grew. NWT premier Frederick Haultain proposed the creation of a large province between Manitoba and British Columbia, for which he favoured the name Buffalo. However, some in the federal government, wary of creating too powerful of a province, opposed the creation of such a large province in the west. The result was the 1905 establishment of the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, both of which were not given control of their resources, like Manitoba a generation earlier. To protest this, Haultain led the Provincial Rights Party in Saskatchewan from 1905 until 1912.
While each of these provinces received federal grants as compensation for this lack of resource control, it remained a significant issue until 1930, when the Natural Resources Transfer Acts finally gave those provinces control of their own resources.
The Great Depression
The Prairie provinces were by far the most impacted by the Great Depression. The economic depression was deepened on the Prairies by drought and dust bowl conditions, and all together farmers across the region were impoverished. Getting little in the way of relief from the federal government, 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 business interests in Central Canada. The depression caused the establishment of two parties that would dominate politics in Alberta and Saskatchewan for much of the next half-century- Social Credit and the CCF, both of which drew on the legacy of the United Farmer movements. The two new 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 on the Prairies. This succeeded, filled provincial coffers and buoyed a recovery from the Depression.When John Diefenbaker became prime minister as the leader of a Progressive Conservative government in 1957, this also marked a shift in western relations. Diefenbaker, hailing from Saskatchewan, considered himself an unabashed champion of western interests, and his popularity helped to align conservatism at the federal level with the needs of Prairie farmers.
Resource development
Before the Second World War, western alienation was principally rooted in a sense of being unequal in Confederation and held back in economic development—in a sense, the notion that the west was a colony of eastern Canada. This changed after the war, when the prairie provinces in particular became more prosperous, based largely on newfound resource wealth. 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. In part, this was an outcome of the expansion of the federal state in the postwar period, and in part this was due to the rising economic power of the prairie provinces. It had largely to do with debates over federalism versus decentralization in Canadian politics.The 1970s energy crises led to rapid increases in energy resource prices, which produced windfall profits in the energy-rich western provinces. The 1974 federal budget from Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government terminated the deduction of provincial natural resources royalties from federal tax. According to Roy Romanow—then Saskatchewan's attorney general—this move kicked off the "resource wars", a confrontation between Trudeau's federal government and the prairie provinces over the control of and revenues from natural resource extraction and energy production.
Following an increase in the world price of oil between 1979 and 1980, Trudeau's government introduced the National Energy Program, which was designed to increase Canadian ownership in the oil industry, increase Canada's oil self-sufficiency, and redistribute the wealth generated by oil production with a greater share going to the federal government. 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. 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". The program was ultimately repealed in 1985.
Resource rights were prominent in negotiations of the Patriation of the Canadian Constitution in the early 1980s. Alberta and Saskatchewan premiers Peter Lougheed and Allan Blakeney negotiated to ensure that provincial resource rights were enshrined in Section 92A of the Constitution.