Bruce Anderson

economic policy to serve the needs of people like those who live in Alberta and to serve the needs of the resource sector.

I don't think he's really advanced that case successfully.

If anything, he's kind of lost ground and Mark Carney has gained ground.

And so I can look at what he decided to do and say he's doing the right thing for the right reasons.

I could also fashion a case that, you know, our polling was showing that

It's becoming a pretty tight race between the federal liberals and the conservatives in Alberta, which is really unheard of.

You have to go back, I think, to Pierre Trudeau's time to think about when that was the case before.

And so if it's also true that, call it two-thirds, but more likely three-quarters of Alberta voters don't want to leave Canada...

And as many voters in Alberta, maybe even more, think Mark Carney is a good leader of the country than think that Pierre Poliev would be.

So you add a referendum on sovereignty for Alberta into that mix.

And if you're a Pierre Pauly, the question is, can you afford to be a bit equivocal about this?

What would happen to your reputation and not just across Canada, but in Alberta, in the heartland, in the base of the Conservative Party, if you look like Alberta?

you continue to say, well, I understand why people are frustrated, because they've had 10 years of rotten government that's really destroyed their economic prospects.

So whether he's doing this for all of the right reasons, or because he's kind of looked at the math of what it would sound like for him to be a kind of squishy middle on a referendum, two Albertans at

Either way, he's come to a better conclusion, I guess, and it will remain to be seen how he manages to square that with being an effective and vocal opposition leader, because that is part of the job that he's got.

He can't just stand up every day and say, well, whatever I said before, Canada is still the best country in the world and everybody should decide to stay in it.

It's not going to be easy, but he did make the right call.

Chantel?

Yeah, I think it's just another salvo.

But it's a salvo happening at a different time, probably with a different sense of urgency and strategy behind it from the American point of view.