Yet More Anti-Western Bigotry from the Globe and Mail

There they go again. Yet another smug Ontarian smirking from the pages of the Globe and Mail at the rubes from the West, the foreign interlopers who don’t belong in the real Canada.

Lawrence Martin made his journalistic reputation as the admiring biographer of the little thug from Shawinigan. In his June 2 column, Martin crows about how Canada – the real Canada – is not like the West. The real people of Canada are moderate and nice, not like those rude foreigners from the western provinces.

And Canada will remain a good, moderate country as long as the East rules over the West.

That’s exactly how he puts it:

To get a sense of why moderation runs as deep as it does in our political culture, one need only look at the power that Quebec has enjoyed in Ottawa — four consecutive decades of Quebec prime ministers — over Alberta and its like-minded western provinces.

Catch that? It’s “our political culture” versus “Alberta and its like-minded western provinces.” By “our political culture,” Martin means the real Canada – Ontario and the East. To the Ontarians like the Hamilton-raised Martin, the real culture of Canada explicitly excludes the West.

You’ve read it here before: Ontarians will always look down on the West because they will always see it as little more than a foreign colony. For Ontarians, the real Canada is old Canada – so Westerners will never be real Canadians.

As Martin explains, you just can’t trust those foreigners from the West. If they ever got in, they’d sell us out to the evil Americans:

It is probably a truism in Canadian politics that, until the West gets in, the U.S. won’t really get in.

So it’s a good thing, Martin thinks, that Canadians – the real ones, from the East – will never ever vote for a party led by the colonists from out West.

To Ontarians, Westerners will never be full Canadians. Martin says it explicitly:

In Ottawa, Alberta and the West will continue to have the status of hinterland. In the struggle for our future, Canada will remain as close to the European model as the American one, which is the way, it seems, the people prefer it.

There it is again: “the people” of Canada explicitly excludes those western rubes who will always have the second-class “status of hinterland.” Westerners should have no say in “the struggle for our future.”

For Ontarians like Martin, Westerners just don’t belong at the center of power. They’ll always be inferiors, mere foreigners from the colonial hinterlands. They’ll never be more than second-class Canadians.

What should Westerners do about it? What could we co to wipe away the contemptuous smirk of anti-Western bigotry from Ontarians like Martin?

The easiest way, and the best way, is openly to support Quebec separation when the next referendum comes. Quebec separation would lead the radical restructuring of the remainder of the country, or alternatively it will lead to independence for the West. Either way, it will permanently break up the centralist cabal, the old colonialist business deal, called Canada.

And with it will go the smirk from smug Ontarians.