Parkin: The limited prospects for a “rebel alliance”

More interesting analysis by Parkin and Environics, written in response to the Globe editorial. Main takeaway, problem appears to be more on the Alberta side in terms of resentment:

The Globe and Mail published a special editorial this Sunday on the alliance between the Quebec and Alberta governments in support of greater respect and autonomy for their provinces. You can read it here. 

I am going to weigh in. What’s the point of having a Substack if you can’t drop everything you had planned for the morning in order to share some charts?

The editorial, on the whole, is not wrong. Quebecers and Albertans share many frustrations. Our survey confirms they are the two provinces where support for more provincial powers is highest. But there are two specific nuances that are worth noting, since they arguably constrain the prospects for any Quebec-Alberta “rebel alliance.”

The first is one of the findings that jumped out early on in the Confederation of Tomorrow survey project. Quebecers who are critical of federalism are more likely than those who are not to support an asymmetrical distribution of powers (the option in the survey is: “the federal government should offer more powers to those provinces that want them, so that the federal system can respond to the different needs that some provinces may have”). But this is not the case in Alberta, where more insist on the equality of provinces: there is no greater openness to asymmetry among disgruntled Albertans. While many Quebecers and Albertans will find common ground in feeling disrespected within Canada, their solutions are not the same: the asymmetry that represents a step forward for autonomist Quebecers actually represents a step backwards for autonomist Albertans….

The second finding comes from a question added to the survey more recently, about the perceived contribution that the people in each of the country’s major regions make to Canada.

Relatively few Quebecers (12% overall) say that western Canadians contribute less than their fair share to Canada, and the proportion that holds this view is only slightly higher (16%) among Quebecers who don’t feel their province is treated with respect. 

Far more Albertans (54%) say that Quebecers contribute less than their fair share to Canada, and this rises to a striking 81 percent among Albertans who don’t feel their province is treated with respect….

In short, whatever it is that annoys some Quebecers about federalism, it’s not their sense of what’s going on in the west. But one of the things that annoys some Albertans about federalism is precisely their sense of what’s going on in Quebec.

Resentment of Quebec (among other things) continues to fuel western alienation. The potential for a meaningful Quebec-Alberta alliance that leads us to a reformed federation, along the lines discussed in The Globe and Mail’s editorial, will be limited until Albertan leaders try to address and even defuse that resentment. 

Source: The limited prospects for a “rebel alliance”