Appreciate the response and respectful tone, but almost none of this conversation makes sense to me because it's based on a strange assumption that Albertans should and must identify their own interests directly with the interests of the oil industry.
I do see that people often do that. I also think it's kind of a messed up perspective.
It's a destructive industry doing just as much harm (actually more, see forest fires, etc) to Albertans as it is doing to the rest of the world. Also as an Albertan who grew up watching his father cycle in and out of brutal unemployment on the cadence of erratic oil prices -- it's kind of a shitty patron to have, frankly.
There are other industries in Alberta. And new ones developing. But I just watched Smith's government sabotage renewables, so...
You're also seemingly making the giant assumption that people in Ontario somehow do the same around car manufacturers or something, or that people in "eastern Canada" have this monolithic view generally about either the west or whatever.
Ontario is actually often a giant sea of blue seats with red and orange in urban centres. It's actually a strong core of conservative support, historically.
But when conservatives take out of mainstream positions on cultural issues -- such as, I dunno, blockading the streets of the capital city, or effectively denying climate change -- they suffer at the ballot boxes even from people who often vote conservative.
I hated Harper, but he was smart enough to avoid this whenever possible. Can't say the same about the latest batch.
Anyways, I'm out there often. And my kid is going to do her BFA at the U of A (knock on wood, acceptances are this month), so I'll likely end up buying a house there long term and our family often talks about moving back there...
(BTW when Harper was in power we had the same blatant regionalism happening. I'd go out to visit family and find huge "stimulus" projects being built all over the province [e.g. Henday north construction, etc] while projects in Ontario failed to get funding ... unless the riding was a conservative one [see Vaughan subway extension, blatant vote buying]. The Canadian dollar sky rocketed to above the USD which severely harmed central Canadian manufacturing in ways it still hasn't recovered from. Should we have talked about central-Canada-alienation at that point?)