Angry in the Great White North

Paul Martin is going on a trip:

The federal Liberals will be trying to crack the always-tough nut of western alienation this week as Prime Minister Paul Martin gallops across the Prairies in a trip also timed to bring another province aboard Ottawa's $5-billion gas-tax sharing program.

On Monday, Martin will meet in Edmonton with the Canada West Foundation, an Alberta-based think tank that released a poll in 2003 that suggested most western Canadians believe the federal government doesn't care about them.

On Tuesday, he and Saskatchewan government officials will announce a $147.7-million infrastructure deal - part of the plan in last spring's budget to share gas taxes with municipalities.

For some reason, Paul Martin thinks Western alienation can be fixed with bags of cash. That might work in Quebec, because people in Quebec realize that the bags of money they're getting is stuffed with dollar bills from Ontario and Alberta.

Become independent, and they lose the ability to tap into those funds.

But Alberta kicks much more into federal coffers than it gets out. This is not about getting enough money:

“There is a deep and troubling realization that all of the effort of the Reform Party--‘the West wants in,’ democratic reform, fiscal and social responsibility--all of that effort of the last 20 years appears to have achieved virtually nothing,” says Ted Morton, MLA for Calgary Foothills–Rockyview, on leave from his position as a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. “On fiscal responsibility they [the federal Liberals] just spent $28 billion in 28 days after the budget. On social responsibility they just enacted homosexual marriage against demonstrable opposition from the Canadian people. On democratic reform they just appointed three nobodies to the Senate despite the fact that we [Albertans] just elected three new senators,” Morton notes. Add to that the prospect that despite the revelations of corruption from Gomery and the kickbacks and lies, Morton says that voters in Ontario are prepared to re-elect them, and it’s no wonder people are asking, “What’s the point of sticking around?”

It's about being listened to. It's about feeling like society, in some way, reflects their ideals. It's about being counted in, not merely counted on. It's not about how big the money bag is.

But if Paul Martin insists on handing over a big cheque, he should prepare himself for an angry question yelled from the back, "Fine, but where's the rest of our money?!"