For a guy who says one of his fondest memories as a Canadian was watching the Quebec separatist movement fail at the ballot box in 1995, Brett Wilson sure talks a lot about his own province seceding.
Wilson — an occasional panelist on “Dragon’s Den” — isn’t alone in that thinking. It’s become a major undertone in Alberta’s provincial election this week and could determine the future of Canada’s energy industry. And how Canada deals with western alienation has national and global repercussions. The energy sector accounts for 10 per cent of Canada’s economy and 20 per cent of its exports. Alberta’s 3.7 million barrels of daily production are more than most OPEC members. And that’s just what it pumps now. The province’s proven reserves of 165.4 billion barrels of oil trail only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and are enough to supply every drop of used around the world for four and a half years.
“In that era, the anger was really focused on one person in the then-prime minister,” Hall Findlay said in an interview. “The frustration that I see now is much broader, and I find it arguably more depressing. ” Despite the recent rough patch, Alberta remains Canada’s richest province, or among the richest, by any measure. That reality is often difficult to square with protests radiating from the region.