Western Visions, Western Futures: Perspectives on the West in Canada. 2nd ed.

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

The authors, leaders of the Canada West Foundation, omit key points in
this book that would weaken their argument.

Providing graphs and charts, they show that Canada’s four western
provinces have more people than Quebec and the Maritimes combined. The
four western provinces are more cosmopolitan than the rest of Canada
(ROC), but receive little respect. In 1879, the ROC imposed the National
Policy, which favoured industry in Ontario and forced Western Canadians
to pay higher prices for manufactured goods than U.S. suppliers would
have charged. The ROC siphons money from Western Canada, and imposes
such policies as Trudeau’s National Energy Program and the Kyoto
Accord. In 1980, the ROC elected a majority Liberal government before
the polls closed in Alberta, and the ROC remains unsympathetic to a
U.S.-style Senate where each province would have equal representation.

What the authors ignore are the following points. In 1911, when Western
Canadians could have voted against the National Policy, some chose to
support it. Residents of Winnipeg feared that with reciprocity, rail
traffic would move through Chicago. During the Depression, Central
Canada sent food and money to the destitute prairies, which did not yet
produce oil. Helping the needy was a Canadian responsibility. John
Diefenbaker arranged for Western Canada to supply the Ontario market
with oil. Residents of Ontario paid higher prices for Alberta oil than
they would have for Venezuelan, but they did so in order to help the
Canadian economy. If Western Canada had voted like Ontario in 1988,
Canada could have ousted Mulroney then; instead, western voters imposed
the Free Trade Agreement over Ontario’s objections. As for respect,
Alberta Premier Ralph Klein does not hesitate to trumpet his
disagreements with Ottawa on the Kyoto Accord and the Iraq War in
Washington, of all places! The U.S. Senate is a plutocratic institution
rather than a model for democracy. Only the rich can afford to run
statewide races.

The book is one-sided.