There’s an uncomfortable quiet over much of the prairies.  In Alberta it’s the type of quiet you can actually feel.

It’s not the typical disappointed silence you expect after another election defeat. It’s more like the kind of quiet that snaps an entire room to attention after someone has been slapped in the face. Bystanders in the immediate area watch to see what happens next. Those a step further back watch to see where the bystanders will weigh in.

At first all eyes are on the red cheeked person taking offense. This is the time before anyone in the room moves. The split second when all the bystanders process the situation to decide whether the slap was deserved, or a provocation, or something else. Over the next few hours and the next few days those who feel slapped are first to respond.

First reactions are typically instinctual and may be effective, but are just as likely to lead in precisely the wrong direction.  Those furious citizens and angry columnists with stinging cheeks are already lashing out. Jeffrey Rath has already written “A Requiem for Canada”. Rath is convinced Albertan’s will vote to leave Canada in the fall of 2025.  I’m not saying he’s wrong.  But if there was a vote at this moment Rath would not get the clear majority he’s looking for.

Rath is right in saying the fire for separation is started. But even the election of yet another Liberal minority government did not result in a four alarm fire. Not yet anyway.  Some of the bystanders will join them in rage-filled response. For a few days it might even look like fisticuffs are about to break out. This time, one senses the initial response will not be the real response.

So what now?

This initial anger will die down, but that’s not the same as saying the fire will go out.  There are more than enough people who feel burnt by these continual election defeats to keep the fire going.

Mark Carney will decide how much kindling is added.  If the newly elected Prime Minister charges into his stated agenda of climate alarmism and energy denialism this fire will certainly flare up. Each anti oil and gas decision will add kindling to the fire.

It’s safe to say that Carney, most of his voters, even those Progressives right here in Alberta do not understand the frustration of the prairie conservative voter.  Many of those voters are not recovered from the rejection of the annoying Freedom Convoy.  Can it possibly be true a majority of Canadians are perfectly happy the two people most responsible for ensuring not a single window was broken and not a single person was assaulted (truly an incredible feat and probably miraculous) are facing prison terms?  It is true.  Lich and Barber sentenced to prison time. More kindling.

Now it is time to move on.  But what does that mean?

The Liberal government and millions of voters who supported Carney are expecting that Canadians, and Canada’s premiers will fall in line and do their best to support the Prime Minister’s agenda as long as this minority government holds power.

That is not going to happen.

Premier Danielle Smith clearly shared Alberta’s position before the election.  The election changed nothing. Hours after the results were clear Premier Smith was out of the gates with an invitation to ‘reset’ the federal relationship with Alberta.  The Prime Minister is free to ignore her. He probably will.  That won’t work out well for Canada. More kindling.

If you’re looking for the bumpkins from the farms and the oil patch to lash out in meaningless memes and curse filled comment sections, get your fill.  I don’t think this vitriol will be the force leading the charge this time.

The results of the 2025 election might look incredibly similar to the results in 2019 and 2021, but the reaction in Alberta feels different. It’s more ominous. This time it feels like the bystanders have learned something from being slapped before. This time it feels like Albertans are taking a deep breath before responding to that slapping noise.

Regarding Canada, President Trump has said two things during this election campaign.

First, Trump said he wants Canada to become the 51st state.  He’s not joking.  He’s said it repeatedly.

Second, President Trump said he prefers to negotiate with Carney. He’s never taken that back either.

These two statements are connected.  All Trump has to do is wait.  He’s older and fortunately for him, he won’t have to wait long.

A Carney government will continue to block oil and gas development.  When Carney speaks of national energy projects he’s referring to his renewable energy pipedream. Canadians will watch helplessly as the Carney government spends untold billions in a fruitless attempt to kill the oil and gas industries and force a net zero energy transition.

Even Russia and China in their wildest national adventures never tried to forcibly transition its entire energy system. It took the Soviet Union about 80 years to collapse as an economic structure. But the Soviets never attempted anything this ridiculous.

Somehow we’ve attempted to detach accessible and affordable energy from economic viability. If we think affordability is an issue now (and it is our top issue), just wait.  The election hasn’t even happened and jobs backed by billions of our tax dollars are already disappearing.

The US economy with it’s affordable energy will look like Shangri-La compared to Canada.  If you think this is hyperbolic please take a quick look at the Prime Ministers own Privy Council report which he has understandably neglected to speak about during the campaign. This is a report from the PM’s own planners which states “social stagnation and downward mobility are plausible elements of the future” and goes as far to suggest that desperate “people may start to hunt, fish and forage on public lands and waterways without reference to regulations.”

For those who believe Carney’s approach can be successful please note the collapse of GFANZ.  Carney was chairman of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero.  Those who committed to GFANZ agreed to kill investment in non renewable energy, funding only renewable replacements. Members of GFANZ hoped to compress a transition that naturally takes somewhere between one hundred and one thousand years into a decade or two.

By declaring a National Energy Emergency on his first day in office, Trump killed GFANZ in the US. In short order major investment firms and all the major US banks left the alliance. While Carney and other pretenders try to keep the GFANZ dream alive, their economies will compete with China’s cheap labour and USA’s cheap and abundant energy. GFANZ will survive in the short term only by the sacrifice of the citizen taxpayers of participating nations.

The reality is a Carney victory only strengthens Trump’s position. Trump wants Canada’s resources and a Carney government sets the table for that to happen.  Not in a negotiation over trade disputes in the fall of 2025, but after Canada’s utter economic collapse a few years later.

There are people in Canada, definitely in Alberta who actually like the idea of becoming an American state.  One of them told me he will vote for  Carney to accelerate the conditions that make it more feasible.  The real irony is that the Elbows Up crowd are the most adamantly opposed to future US statehood. Ironic because they’re doing the work Trump wants them to by putting Carney in charge of our economy.  Canada seems poised to put the wrong general in charge at the most critical time.

This is not so much a battle against left and right, liberal and conservative as it is a last stand by the shrinking number of Canadians who still trust corporate media. While corporate media stir up the anti Trump narrative, Canadians who’ve moved on to the new independent medias concern themselves with other issues. One of these groups don’t answer polling questions.  Maybe it will turn out Poilievre’s rallies are the real measuring stick. If you love Canada you better hope so.

If there’s one thing we know about the unpredictable US President, it’s that he will predictably say whatever he wants to. Why has President Trump not said he’d prefer to work with another conservative?  Because he doesn’t care about his fellow conservative thinkers in Canada as much as he cares about a future North American-wide USA. Giving Trump a Carney victory?  God help Canada. We’re going to need it.