So, Wanalta, eh?

What happened in the recent Canadian election is that liberal leader Mark Carney ran against Trump rather than for anything - and the media, which are largely controlled by the liberals, applauded everything he did or said while denigrating the conservatives.

Prior to Carney's ascension to the liberal leadership a week before the election was called, the conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, had a 30 point lead in the polls - which he'd gained by attacking the then current liberal leader: Justin Trudeau, rather than by being for anything.

When the liberals replaced Trudeau with an unknown, Poilievre lost his target and his focus - and didn't have the guts to do the obvious: embrace Trumpism, blame the country's problems on the liberals, and promise a freer, more prosperous, Canada. Instead he weaseled: said some of the right things, meant none of them; went full "me too" on hating Trump; became very liberal in promising tax cut and spending increases to all comers; and, guaranteed that, in power, he would produce magical solutions to all problems - honest, no oxen to be gored.

So Carney won, but his government will have essentially no representation among people who work for a living anywhere west of Sudbury Ontario (those seats they did win come from civil service, native, and/or University dominated ridings where almost all income comes from taxpayers); no policy differences from his predecessors; and the traditional liberal party allegiance to the half dozen or so super rich families who own most of Canada's commercial infrastructure.

So what's he going to do? First, he's going to renegotiate a purely bilateral trade deal with the United States giving the Trump administration nearly everything it wants - but with the usual liberal commitment to the long term slow walking and sabotage of terms relating to defence, crime reduction, and cultural affairs including marketing boards like the CRTC (the Canadian radio and television Commission which keeps companies like Verizon out of Canada's ridiculously over-priced telecoms market). And, after that, he's going to double down on policy ideas like the consumer carbon tax, the EV mandates, and taxpayer support for both immigration and the green boondogle, while pretending to work with the provinces on a cross Canada energy corridor, nuclear generation, and multiple large scale resource extraction projects that magically never get built.

The result will be the gradual destruction of Canada as both Alberta and Saskatchewan push provincial political and economic self-determination to the point of making central Canada's politics, and federal actions, nearly as irrelevant here as they are in Quebec.

So what can be done?

If you favor the Wanalta as 51st state idea: nothing - it will happen by itself and we may, or may not, find that trading Ottawa for Washington works for us: having enforceable rights would be pretty great, of course, but personally I don't see being outvoted by California and new York as much better than being outvoted by Toronto.

If you'd prefer keeping Canada together and maybe fixing it up a little - well, there are things we could do. For example:

1. the conservative Members of Parliament from Manitoba west to Vancouver could secede from the conservative party to form a bloc formally committed to western Canadian independence. That works for Quebec, and would work for us - because central Canada without a hinterland would have no national economic role and insufficient manufacturing or agriculture to survive without deep cuts in the standard of living in its middle classes and enormous social costs to the super rich who own the liberals. Do this, and Ottawa will fall all over itself to serve western interests - just as it does now to serve Quebec's.

    

2. Right now votes in the federal parliament are counted as one member, one vote - very traditional but not necessary. The parliamentary rules committee could change this to having each member cast a vote for each person who voted to put that member into office. So the member for Leduc-Wetaskiwin votes just over 48,000 "shares", while the guy from Nunavut votes for under 3,000. Do that, and the conservative leader becomes prime minister, the power balance across the country instantly reflects the actual vote, and western Canada finally gets a real seat at confederation's table.