Right in the centre - Canada's future is in doubt

Details

Published on Thursday, April 24, 2025

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner & Press

The Canadian election on Monday, Apr. 28 is being billed as ranging from very important to the most crucial election in Canadian history. After mostly Liberal governments forever, the current attitude in Western Canada is one of exceeding frustration. Oil and minerals are in high demand and are an integral part of Western Canada. You can hardly tell by looking at federal policies. Oil is produced in all four prairie provinces, as are minerals. Two western provinces have seaports albeit the Hudson Bay port is only used minimally. Western Canada needs another pipeline and a Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) pipeline. It also needs more robust railroads.

The Liberals still believe electric cars are the only way to go as evidenced by $50 billion invested in battery factories. EVs may have a strong future, but currently EVs are at best, inconvenient for long hauls and at worst, dangerous in the winter. Like everyone wants to sit on the side of the road at 20 below zero so your EV can get towed to a charging station.

Historically, Western Canada is an after thought in Canadian politics. It always has been. In the 1860s, when the Maritimes strayed away somewhat from their traditional trade dependency on the Eastern US and pitched their lot in with Quebec and Ontario, they became eternally joined at the hip with Canada. B.C. was lured into Canada with a promise of a trans-continental railway that took 18 years to be built (1867-1885) and well, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta were simply added into the Canadian colouring book version of map making. The attitudes are deeply seated and the bitterness is swelling. Manitoba (or a least a small part of it) joined Canada in 1870. Canada's botching of the Manitoba addition to Confederation has been well documented. The Hudson Bay Company sold what became the early part of Manitoba to Canada. The feds just forgot to tell the locals. Big surprise. The ensuing fiasco created the Red River Rebellion and any student of history has to feel a goodly amount of sympathy for the Metis and the handful of relatively new settlers who had begun to call Manitoba home in the 1800s. By 1905, when the Assiniboia territory was to become a province, the cruel and calculating leaders of Ontario made sure Assiniboia was divided into two straight line bordered chunks of land to guarantee that no other area would ever challenge Ontario for land mass dominance in Canada.

If it had not been for the discovery of oil in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the “Prairies” would have remained even more subservient to Ottawa. 

I know this sounds bitter, but billions of dollars get thrust into Ontario and Quebec while the three prairie provinces are left with poor roads deficient railway system, a tiny seaport in Manitoba and a general disregard for the fact that a large amount of food is grown on the prairies to feed the rest of Canada. A former mayor once said that Toronto is the economic engine of Canada. Nobody seemed to mention to him where that engine got its fuel.

So as Canada goes to the polls on Apr. 28, will anything change? If we have a Liberal government for another five years, things will have to change a lot or the next federal election could lead to an exit vote.

It’s not ideal, but if Canada is to reach its huge potential, big changes need to occur. What has to be taken out of the budget to achieve the growth. Here’s a few suggestions. Government waste needs to be reduced. Our medical system has to be fixed. Our politically correct snowflake attitude needs to go. A long list of changes need to happen or this may be one of the last elections that Canada, as we know it, will ever have.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the newspaper staff