The Conservative Party of Canada kicked off a new federalist campaign to sway Albertans to choose option 1 in the referendum coming in October. Pierre Poilievre gave a speech where he laid most of the blame for the unity issue in Alberta at the feet of the Liberal government.

Poilievre said “We do not need a different country in Alberta. We need different government policies in Ottawa.”

Poilievre leads a political party and it's to be expected he will always be pitching the election of his party. But the theme of his speech overlooks the depth and reality of what has caused so many Albertans to give up on the federation. It’s not just the policies of the day. It has been the futile attempts Alberta has made to garner respect and systemic change since the 1980s and that includes periods while the Conservatives held government.

Yes. It’s true that the Liberal government has ceaselessly assailed Alberta’s freedoms while in office. Poilievre pointed out many good examples of that.

It was a Conservative government that enshrined the current equalization formula which robs Alberta though. Jason Kenney and Stephen Harper were the architects of that. Harper’s strong case for Alberta’s sovereignty through the “Firewall letter” he penned in 2000 vanished when he became the prime minister. While Harper’s term in office was less bad than periods when Liberals were in power, he still made no substantive changes to the system in favour of the West.

Westerners expect Liberals to screw them. It infuriates them, but they aren’t surprised. It’s when the Conservatives screw the West that true, lifelong independence supporters are created. When Mulroney shunned a better bid by Manitoba for a CF-18 contract and gave it to an inferior bidder in Quebec, he created almost as much momentum for the independence movement as Trudeau Sr. did.

If Poilievre truly wants to defuse Western alienation, he must present a path to systemic changes. Nothing less than opening the constitution will put the issue to bed. Offering more band aid solutions through proposed policy changes won’t cut it. Albertans have learned through hard experience that simply changing the party brand in the prime minister's office doesn't lead to meaningful changes.

Further, it isn’t in Alberta where Poilievre should be speaking. There have been enough federal politicians telling the province how to think and what to do.

Poilievre should be speaking to the Laurentians in the Ottawa valley and convincing them of the merits of change. Albertans already know what they want.