Taking the anger and dissatisfaction in Quebec and Alberta at face value is the easiest way to misunderstand both provinces. Both are restless and chronically at odds with the federal government. They produce a wide array of autonomists, nationalists and outright separatists with a talent for twisting Ottawa's arm.
However, Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, described the impulses of his fellow Albertans very well: 'They do not hate Canada. They do not hate her proud history and achievements. They hate what Canada has become and where Canada is going. And they do not want to go down with the ship.'
Despite what many people may say, neither Alberta nor Quebec's anti-Ottawa tendencies are inherently anti-Canadian. Rather, they are rebellions in defence of two unmistakable but scorned traits of the Canadian character.
Quebec's Cultural Roots
Quebec's desire for French-Canadians to survive as a distinct people and culture was one of the founding principles of Confederation. The creation of Canada served as a compact between the English and French to safeguard the Canadian francophone minority.
George-Étienne Cartier, one of the Fathers of Confederation, expressed this well at a speech in Montreal in 1866: 'I am a Catholic. I love my religion, and think it the best. But even as I profess myself to be very Catholic … I am also French-Canadian, as are a great many of those I see around me. I love my race. I most assuredly have a natural predilection for it. But as a politician and citizen, I love the others, as well.'
Alberta's Economic Grievances
Alberta is far younger than Quebec, but no less Canadian. It has a long list of justified grievances, including unbalanced equalization payments, impediments to pipelines, bans on oil tankers, hostile carbon policies and the tendency of Liberal governments to enforce their authority on Alberta while turning the other way when it comes to Quebec.
Underneath it all is a desire to expand and profit from the same natural-resource economy that Canada has always enjoyed, rather than gambling on new renewable technologies or industries.
Canada's economy was developed around the sale and export of natural resources, and Alberta remains the country's most proficient practitioner of that tradition, namely in the production of the most valuable Canadian resource: energy.
Both the presence of Quebec nationalism and the exporting of natural resources are deeply Canadian, even if both are officially treated as suspect in modern Canada.
