There’s a lineup of imperfect candidates who could make the case for Canada ahead of Alberta’s referendum-to-have-a-referendum on sovereignty in the fall.
There’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, of course, the most prominent federalist in the country and one who happened to spend the majority of his childhood and adolescence in Alberta. But Mr. Carney is Albertan in the same way that I am royalty; just because I spent some years putting on princess dresses doesn’t mean Queen Camilla sees me as a peer. Mr. Carney spent much of his pre-political life talking up net-zero and indirectly talking down Alberta industry. He simply cannot speak to Albertans with the same air of provincial kinship as prime ministers Pierre Trudeau or Jean Chrétien could with Quebeckers.
