Rex Murphy: His leader, Justin Trudeau, doesn’t go farther out to sea only because there is no ocean wide enough on which to try that experiment. But when Mr. Trudeau talks of politicians “exploiting” Western sentiment on this issue, a not-so-oblique rebuke of the “populist” mood in the West right now, the tactic is so obvious as to be insulting. There is no need to “stir up” or “exploit” the political mood on the energy file. The collapse of oil prices, the imposition of the absurd so-called carbon tax in the middle of an oil-price depression in Alberta, and pandering to B.C. and Quebec while running past Alberta and Manitoba, offers more than enough explanation for that mood.
The populism, if that is indeed the term, out West is not demagoguery. It is the inevitable upsurge of citizen emotion when fairness is blatantly abandoned, common sense is outraged by political leaders, and when representatives of the people are so far out of touch that ordinary workers have to organize massive truck rallies just to catch their attention.
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