ALIENATING CANADA'S WEST

It was not at all helpful that the less-than-affable Montreal mayor, Denis Coderre, declared it a “victory for Canada” when TransCanada withdrew its licence application for Energy East, a pipeline project that actually would have provided market-diversification benefits to the national economy. It would be no different than if the mayor of, say, Winnipeg — home to a Boeing plant — declared it a Canadian victory after the U.S. Commerce Department slapped on two import duties on Quebec’s heavily subsidized Bombardier planes.
Coderre’s insensitive comment reminds many Western Canadians of their own past grievances. It was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father who, with the 1980 National Energy Program, imposed a breathtakingly unfair wealth transfer from Western provinces to Central Canada.