Quebec Separation versus Western Alienation

About a year back before I starting blogging for real I wrote about how Western Alienation was a greater threat to Canada then Quebec Separation. This was before the election and subsequent refusal of the Conservative Party by the majority of Ontario voters yet again and since then Separation noises in Alberta have grown and become more strident.

The issue facing Quebec is quite different than the issues presented by Alberta. The province of Quebec feels isolated in the country because of its unique language and culture majority and wishes to protect that. A bare minimum of "Distinct Society" recognition for most would be sufficient but the core of nationalist feeling exists as well. In order to keep Quebec as part of Canada we have to acknowledge their right to protect their language and culture from an English-dominated continent and show how they benefit from being part of Canada. We've allowed them to succeed in the former (albeit to far at times in my humble opinion) but failed in the latter.

With Alberta however we are faced with a different problem. The "West wants in" syndrome, the feeling that major decisions are made in Ottawa by politicians from Ontario and Quebec. There is plenty of justification for this sentiment and I agree the blame lies with navel-gazing politicians from the "East" due to economic and population factors. This feeling that the West has been left out has lead to the creation of the new Conservative party dominated by a large western contingent that has spooked a significant number of Ontario voters with fears of federal government dismantlement and/or bible-thumping social conservatism.

Unlike Paul Martin, I'm not going to pretend I magically know the answer to Western Alienation but I will say two things. One is that Western Alienation is more a threat to Confederation than Quebec's Nationalist sentiment is and the second is that at some point Ontario voters are going to get sick and tired of the pulling from east and west and think about separation themselves.