A new regional political party in Western Canada would be popular with voters, poll finds

This poll finds a hypothetical “Western Canada Party” leading or tied for the lead in vote intention in each of the four western provinces,’ the report says

The West Wants In!’ Reform Party Leader Preston Manning, right, and Stephen Harper in 1988.Postmedia/File

Tyler Dawson
February 5, 2019
3:00 AM EST

Last Updated
February 5, 2019
3:00 AM EST
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EDMONTON — While Alberta is unlikely to separate anytime soon, frustration in western Canada suggests there’s the potential for the rise of a regionally specific political party to represent the West in Ottawa.

New polling from the Angus Reid Institute shows that 68 per cent of Canadians countrywide think Alberta separating “would never happen,” so the federation is unlikely to break up any time soon. But the same polling, part of a series on western identity, concludes that should a regional party spring into existence, it would upend the political power balance in the four western provinces.

“This poll finds a hypothetical ‘Western Canada Party’ leading or tied for the lead in vote intention in each of the four western provinces,” the report says.

That is wholly theoretical. Nobody has yet stepped forward to create an explicitly western political party. But this theoretical party could grow out of a region that’s dissatisfied with Ottawa’s treatment of it. Seventy-three per cent of those polled in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia believe resentment against the federal government is growing.

“That even the idea or concept of such a party captures the imagination of more than one-in-three Western Canadians is highly significant,” says Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute. “It shows the ‘national’ parties are not succeeding in reflecting or representing the West as well as they might hope to be.”