In his latest Hill Times column, Michael Harris opens with a family metaphor: Alberta is the difficult child demanding attention while everyone else behaves themselves.

"When the bad kid gets all the attention, how long before the good kid revisits their options?"

The premise appears to be that Prime Minister Mark Carney is giving Alberta too much attention, particularly regarding energy development and pipeline discussions, while provinces like British Columbia are becoming irritated by Alberta's demands.

First, notice what disappears from the conversation immediately: why Alberta is upset.

Instead of asking whether Alberta has legitimate grievances over equalization, energy policy, federal regulatory barriers, or decades of political frustration, the debate gets reframed into a behavioural issue.

Not: What is Alberta saying?

But: Why is Alberta acting like this?

Harris writes that Carney appears to be treating Alberta with "special attention," specifically mentioning Alberta's desire for another pipeline.

But pipelines are not some special favour Ottawa is handing Alberta out of generosity.

Oil and gas remain among Canada's largest export sectors and one of the country's largest sources of investment, jobs and tax revenue. Alberta's energy sector has long had national economic significance.

More notably, Harris appears to frame discussions about pipelines as if Alberta is asking for extra dessert after dinner.

For many Albertans, the complaint has been exactly the opposite: that projects with national economic significance have repeatedly faced political, regulatory and legal obstacles for years while other provinces' priorities are treated as untouchable.

Then comes the polling.

Harris notes roughly 27 percent of Albertans support separation "for now," presenting it as a warning sign.

Fair enough.

But that's also an unusually large number of people to dismiss as simply the political equivalent of a misbehaving child.

That's hundreds of thousands of people expressing dissatisfaction with the current arrangement. You can oppose Alberta independence completely and still recognize that.

The irony here is hard to miss.

Columns like this often intend to explain why separation sentiment is irrational.

Instead, they sometimes explain why it exists.

If millions of Albertans feel like their concerns are repeatedly reduced to tantrums, emotional instability or bad behaviour, eventually some of them stop asking to be heard and start asking a different question:

"What are our options?"