There was a time a few decades ago when if we talked about western alienation we could safely assume it was a fairly common sentiment among people in all four Western provinces. This is no longer the case.
During Canada’s recent climate change policy and pipeline approval conflicts it was apparent dissatisfaction with Ottawa was not shared equally by residents of all four western provinces.
Alberta and Saskatchewan stood out in the west as the two provinces which most vigorously and consistently opposed the Trudeau Liberal’s assault on oil, natural gas, and pipelines.
Image licensed to Brian Zinchuk via Storyblocks
In Manitoba the controversy went largely unnoticed and in B.C. a large section of the population took Ottawa’s side when it came to environmental approval legislation and blocking pipelines.
The more evenly-shared western dissatisfaction with confederation of the 1970s, ‘80s and 90’ is gone. Today, people in Alberta and Saskatchewan are considerably more disturbed by the national status quo than their counterparts in B.C. and Manitoba.
There are two streams of data, opinion surveys and federal election results, which identify the changing levels of dissatisfaction with Ottawa among the four provinces and indicate when those changes occurred.
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The polling data
There was a series of eight polls conducted in western Canada between 1987 and 1993 which assessed respondents’ satisfaction with their province’s relative status in confederation. Respondents were asked whether or not they agreed with various statements. One of the statements common to all of the polls was:
Western Canada gets so few benefits out of confederation that it may as well go it on its own [outside of Canada].
Table 1 provided below shows levels of alienation were relatively similar during the 1987-1993 period. In B.C., the province with the highest level of alienation, respondents were only 12 percentage points more alienated than they were in Saskatchewan, where survey respondents were the least alienated of the four (that seems weird to me too).
By 2019 significant differences had emerged. Levels of dissatisfaction had increased in Alberta and Saskatchewan but had remained relatively unchanged in B.C and Manitoba. When the organization Confederation of Tomorrow, a group formed by several think tanks, presented the same statement to western respondents in a poll it conducted in 2019, the percentage point difference between the most and the least alienated province had risen to 21. It was apparent that western alienation was now considerably higher in Alberta and Saskatchewan compared with dissatisfaction levels in Manitoba and B.C.
Table 1 shows the percentages of survey respondents who agreed with the statement for the 1987-1993 polls and for the 2019 survey. (Note the “agreed” designation includes people who agreed somewhat, or strongly agreed with the statement.)
Table 1: Averaged percentage of respondents who agreed with the statement Western Canada gets so few benefits out of confederation it would be better off going on in it alone in a series of eight polls conducted between 1987 and 1993 compared with the results from the Confederation of Tomorrow’s 2019 survey.
| Province | 1987-1993
Surveys |
2019 Survey |
| Alberta | 40% | 56% |
| Saskatchewan | 30% | 53% |
| Manitoba | 36% | 35% |
| B.C. | 42% | 44% |
Source: Derived from Confederation of Tomorrow 2019 Survey of Canadians p. 27
Calculations for the 1987-1993 averages are the author’s
The change in attitudes about confederation captured by the 2019 survey roughly coincided with the midpoint of a seven year slump in world oil prices and the election of the Justin Trudeau Liberals. From the perspective of many people in the oil producing provinces, the Liberals added insult to injury when they denounced growth in the oil and gas sector and blocked construction of new export pipelines. It was widely assumed the cancelled pipelines would have relieved some the economic pressure on western Canada’s two largest oil producing provinces–Alberta and to a lesser extent Saskatchewan.
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Bargain with Ottawa like Quebec does
Quebec Premier, Francois Legault once quipped that if a province like Alberta was at odds with Ottawa it should emulate his province by holding the threat of separation over the head of the federal government. Plenty of people on the prairies have considered that approach. It was frequently discussed back in the days of the NEP and became topical again in response to Bill C-48, the tanker ban and Bill C-69, aka the No More Pipelines Bill.
Today, however, alienated westerners, supporters of the oil and gas sector in particular, will find it more difficult to credibly threaten separation. This is because confederation is viewed much more favourably in Manitoba and B.C, than it is in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
It is fanciful to imagine citizens of the two provinces where only a minority of people think leaving Canada is a good idea would sign up for separation. And those two provinces happen to be the only jurisdictions in the west with access to tidewater.
Ottawa will assume you’re bluffing if you threaten to separate because the government has been blocking pipeline access to tidewater. Why would you want to separate if your newly independent jurisdictions will be landlocked? (It is no surprise some alienated prairie residents are spit-balling strategies that might enable a hypothetical quasi-independent region to overcome barriers to tidewater pipelines.)
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The electoral imbalance
The 2019 survey also identified frustration with Canada’s electoral imbalance, whereby political power is heavily concentrated in Central Canada and lacking in the West. Voters in Ontario and Quebec frequently determine which party forms Canada’s federal government. The western sense of grievance is heighted when the governing party is seen to favour Central Canadian interests while at the same time adopting policies inimical to the interests of the western provinces.
In general the federal Liberals have been viewed as the party which favours Central Canada–frequently at the expense of the west. The only significant exception to this during the 1974-2008 period appeared in the 1993 federal election results. Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative (PC) government had become less popular in some parts of the west by the end of its second term. The imposition of the GST and Mulroney’s sponsorship of two divisive efforts to amend the constitution were largely to blame.
The Confederation of Tomorrow survey drilled into the electoral imbalance issue by asking if respondents agreed or disagreed with the following statement:
The West usually gets ignored in national politics because the political parties depend upon Quebec and Ontario for most of their votes.
Table 2 below shows the levels of agreement and disagreement with the statement in each of the four western provinces. The data indicates strong agreement with the statement is far higher in Alberta and Saskatchewan than it is in Manitoba and B.C.
Table 2: The west gets ignored in national politics: percentage levels of agreement 2019
| Province | Strongly
agree |
Agree
somewhat |
Somewhat
disagree |
Strongly
disagree |
Can’t
say |
Col.2 plus
Col. 3 |
| Alberta | 56% | 25% | 10% | 2% | 7% | 81% |
| Saskatchewan | 50% | 36% | 7% | 2% | 6% | 86% |
| Manitoba | 34% | 38% | 11% | 4% | 12% | 72% |
| B.C. | 32% | 38% | 12% | 4% | 8% | 76% |
| Averages | 43% | 34% | 10% | 3% | 8% | 79% |
Source: Confederation of Tomorrow 2019 Survey of Canadians p. 26
In the five decades between 1974 and 2025 Canada has held 15 federal elections. In the four western provinces a total of 1,327 seats in the House of Commons were contested in those 15 elections. The Liberals won just 16% of the available seats. Conservatives (under four different party names) and the NDP consistently out polled the Liberals.
The problem for the west, and national cohesion, is that Liberals have been the governing party for 30 the past 51 years. They were 50% more likely to be the governing party than conservatives who were in office for a little over 20 years.
Electoral imbalance can look like this: during the 30 years when the Liberals governed there were only 16 instances when Albertans sat as members of the federal Liberal caucus and only 10 occasions when MPs from Saskatchewan sat as Liberals.
The Liberals’ success rate in the four western provinces would looks even worse when we excluded the elections held after 2008 from the calculation. This is because after 2008 Liberal fortunes improved in B.C. and Manitoba. From 1974 until 2008 there was relatively little difference in the proportion of seats won by Liberals in the western provinces. In B.C. the rate was 8% of the available seats, 6% of seats in Alberta, 10% in Saskatchewan and 19% for Manitoba.* That changed significantly in the 2011 federal election and the three elections that followed. (The election data used to calculate and tabulate these results are available from the author by request.)
The share of seats won by Liberals in each western province in the 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2021 elections indicates that voting behaviours among the four provinces had diverged in concert with the changing levels of alienation identified by the polling. The Liberal seat share in B.C. had risen to 39%; it was relatively steady at 5% for Alberta; had fallen to 4% in Saskatchewan, and in Manitoba it was up to 29%.
The Liberal seat share in B.C. and Manitoba has increased in concert with the polling results showing a decrease in voter dissatisfaction with their province’s place in confederation. The continued low support for Liberals in Alberta and Saskatchewan is consistent with both the survey results and growing opposition to the Liberals’ assault on the fortunes of the oil and gas sector, including the barriers to construction of new pipelines.
What needs to happen
It is reasonable to assume that having a large proportion of the populations in two prairie provinces who are virulently opposed to Ottawa’s resource and environmental policies is not conducive national harmony and unity. The country isn’t any easier to run when separation is being actively considered by large minorities in three provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec).
The long-term solutions to wide-spread dissatisfaction in Alberta and Saskatchewan with the current state of confederation will require addressing both conditions—increased dissatisfaction with federal policy measures and the electoral imbalance.
What to do about them isn’t a secret. Most anyone who has thought seriously about national disharmony has a general idea of what the solutions would look like.
The landlocked oil and gas producing provinces need virtually air-tight constitutionally underwritten guarantees they will have the right of reasonably unfettered access to tidewater ports on all of Canada’s coasts for the resources they export. This will entail rescinding Bills-C69 and C-48 and coming up with practical alternatives that allow for more efficient approval of industrial developments.
Dealing with the electoral imbalance will require a restructuring of the system for choosing representatives in Parliament and/or the federal cabinet. Possible solutions might include echoes of Preston Manning’s call for a triple E Senate (equal, effective and elected). Regardless of the types of changes and tweaks adopted the ultimate result has to be that the autonomy of resource exporting province like Saskatchewan and Alberta needs to be significantly increased and the Parliamentary power Central Canada correspondingly reduced.
Failing to address these issues promptly following the current federal election will reduce the chances we will see any new tidewater pipelines built. If lack of progress on the export file is combined with a Conservative or Liberal minority government or a Liberal majority, alienation will increase in intensity.
It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to realize that in the absence of major reforms, there are other more radical and politically disruptive alternatives that will appear increasingly attractive to many people on the prairies.
Of course just because the trend since 2008 has been toward a more divided west when it comes to alienation does not mean the trend won’t ever be reversed. There are signs of a conservative revival in B.C. and Manitoban’s may even decide they have had enough of the federal Liberals.
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