The same guy who spent years farming western alienation for votes is now flying to Alberta to ask everyone to calm down. Pierre Poilievre, who built his brand on “Ottawa doesn’t care about you,” is campaigning for Canadian unity ahead of an October referendum on whether the province should pursue separation. He didn’t see the irony. Or he did and is counting on you not to.
This is what grievance manufacturing produces. You tell people for a decade that the federal government is the enemy, that climate policy is a personal attack, that elites on Bay Street and in Ottawa are stealing their oil money — and then you lose to Carney three times running. The movement you fed wants the thing you kept promising. Now you need them to stay, just not for any of the reasons you said.
What nobody wants to say out loud: the oil doesn’t stay in Alberta. It goes to shareholders, to executives, to royalty rates negotiated down to nothing by oil companies over twenty years. The workers in Fort McMurray get a paycheque. The wealth goes south and offshore. The anger is justified. The target was always wrong — and the politicians who kept pointing at Ottawa instead of the boardrooms knew exactly what they were doing. Poilievre helped build this. He can campaign in it.