My work as a Toronto-based pollster and writer brings me into contact with Canadians from all walks of life. A few years ago, at a meeting in Banff with business leaders in Canada’s oil and gas industry, one of them leaned across the table and said, “You folks back east have no idea how angry people out here are.” She was not shouting. Her voice was calm, resigned. Around her sat engineers, executives and builders. They were not plotting rebellion. They were Canadians who felt abandoned by their own country. That moment has stayed with me. It showed me how those who are instrumental to Canada’s economy regard their place in the nation.

It’s not just oil executives saying this. Walking through the streets of Calgary, Edmonton or Medicine Hat, you hear similar comments from everyday people. It’s not just casual talk. We also saw it on election night when the Liberals, while nearly winning a majority, returned two seats in Alberta and just one in Saskatchewan. This reflects the quiet fury of a country coming apart.

For more than a century, the Laurentian elite, Canada’s eastern political, cultural and business leaders, have shaped the Canadian story. The same institutions, networks and circles that have ruled since Confederation still believe they know best. Decisions made in the corridor connecting Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal were presumed to serve everyone else. For a long time, the Laurentian consensus, balancing French and English, east and west, urban and rural, worked reasonably well.

It doesn’t work anymore. Power and people have moved west. Energy exports from the West far surpass vehicle exports and auto parts from Ontario. Yet Ottawa still acts as if the country begins in Windsor and ends at Quebec City. The same decisions are made by the same people in the same rooms. The result is a government trapped by its own reflection, convinced it represents a Canada it can’t even see.

Western Canadians feel it most. They pay the bills but are treated as a problem to manage rather........

© Macleans