Perhaps it is the message in the message. When the federal environment minister decided to announce federal plans targeting the oil and gas industry in Canada, he chose to deliver the message in Montreal and it is hard not to read something into that decision.
Conventional communications wisdom would suggest an announcement affecting primarily one region of the country should be to delivered in that region, not half a country away in a place not related to the industry. Or is it? That is the question.
Should the Trudeau government’s well documented assaults on Western Canada’s oil and gas industry do their job and diminish Western Canada’s economic strength, it will leave Quebec – the nation’s largest hydro generator – as Canada’s primary energy exporter. And perhaps that is the real message in the Quebec-based environment minister’s announcement.
The latest census data will add three Parliamentary seats in Alberta while Quebec should lose one although it is protected through a grandfathering clause so it will retain the seat. But without federal intervention, political clout is shifting westward in this country.
