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Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe proceeded to make provincial resistance to a federal carbon levy a defining feature of his administration.Liam Richards/The Canadian Press

Bill Waiser is a historian and the author of A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905, which won the 2016 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

There may have not been a formal declaration, but make no mistake: Saskatchewan is at war with Ottawa.

It all started in 2016, with the plan by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to introduce a price for carbon to address climate change. Saskatchewan’s then-premier Brad Wall immediately denounced the “carbon tax” as an attack on the province’s resource-based economy, in particular the oil and gas sector. Scott Moe, who became the Saskatchewan Party’s leader and Premier in 2018 after Mr. Wall stepped down, proceeded to make provincial resistance to a federal carbon levy a defining feature of his administration.

But Mr. Moe didn’t stop there. In November, 2020, he tapped Saskatchewan Party veteran Lyle Stewart to serve as Legislative Secretary to the Premier for Provincial Autonomy. Mr. Moe made his point all the more firmly in November, 2021, when he borrowed the language of Quebec’s autonomy-seekers by suggesting that Saskatchewan sought to become “a nation within a nation,” specifically around provincial policy control on immigration and child care.

What exactly the Moe government has in mind is being worked out this summer in a series of “Consultations on the Future of Canada’s Economic Sovereignty.” Those 10 “in-house meetings” are being spearheaded by Mr. Stewart and Allan Kerpan, a former Saskatchewan Party MLA and Reform MP, and are aiming to gather advice from members of select Saskatchewan Party constituencies on how best to address, in the words of provincial Justice Minister Bronwyn Eyre, “federal government intrusion into our jurisdiction.”

This so-called autonomy tour will file its report this fall, probably just in time for the fall sitting of the legislature, though its findings are a foregone conclusion – especially given the way in which the consultation process has been framed.

But even though the idea of Saskatchewan economic sovereignty may be unrealistic – if not downright reckless – the meetings have historical resonance. They are the latest expression of long-standing Western Canadian sensitivities over the control and exploitation of natural resources. Indeed, it’s this sense of grievance, trending toward alienation, that is neither well-appreciated nor understood outside the region – but should be, to keep this federation united.


When the Dominion of Canada acquired the vast land of Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory in 1870 from the Hudson’s Bay Company, it treated the transfer of some seven million square kilometres as little more than a real estate transaction. After all, federal control was considered a national necessity if the southern Prairies were to be quickly settled and developed. There was no allowance for local or democratic initiatives, and no recognition that Indigenous peoples might foresee a different future.

But for the people who actually lived in the Northwest, many of whom were Métis, it was much more than a simple change in ownership. To ensure Métis interests were heard in Ottawa, they launched the Red River Resistance of 1869-70, demanding that the Canadian government negotiate the region’s entry into Confederation. Manitoba thus became Canada’s fifth province, but it was kept deliberately small. It also did not exercise control over its public lands and resources, a provincial right enshrined in the 1867 British North America Act and enjoyed by all other provinces at the time.

The remainder of the region, named the North-West Territories, was massive, and included present-day Saskatchewan – but with a sparse population and infrastructure, it was little more than a colony. Ottawa did establish a North-West Territories government, but it was based outside the region until 1875, and consisted of a handful of appointed members. It was not until 1880 that the first territorial electoral constituency was created – the Prince Albert district – and another eight years before a fully elected assembly was in place in Regina.

At best, these were seen as half-measures by those who lived there. There was to be no governing executive drawn from the assembly, and no assembly control of the annual federal grant. In other words, Ottawa exercised viselike control of the territory through the Queen’s representative, the lieutenant-governor.

Westerners protested this undemocratic treatment. One resident wrote at the time that he was “not prepared to accept dictation from Ottawa.” The granting of responsible government in 1897 failed to dampen the demand for further constitutional change.

Frederick Haultain, the North-West Territories’ first and only premier, learned that control over government spending did not mean much when any revenue from these vast lands and resources went to the federal treasury. With thousands of immigrants pouring into the Prairie district in the late 1890s, the territorial government could not meet the ever-growing service and infrastructure demands: “We are confronted with impossible conditions,” Haultain lamented to Ottawa.

In May, 1900, the territorial assembly unanimously called on prime minister Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal government to grant provincehood to the region. But Ottawa turned down the request as premature – not once, but three times.

One of the stumbling blocks was Haultain’s demand for one large Western province, to be called “Buffalo,” between Manitoba and British Columbia. He equated size with influence, and wanted to avoid the creation of smaller provinces with little clout.

Haultain also weakened his bargaining position by campaigning on behalf of the federal Conservative Party in the 1904 general election. Disillusioned with Liberal intransigence, he had abandoned his non-partisan approach to territorial politics to try to force the issue – but the Laurier Liberals went on to win an even bigger majority.

Still, by February, 1905, Laurier found himself unable to avoid the question of Western provincehood any longer. The prime minister personally introduced two autonomy bills in the House of Commons, carving out two roughly equal provinces from the North-West Territories: Saskatchewan and Alberta. The legislation also gave the federal government continued control over public lands and resources. Like Manitoba in 1870, Saskatchewan and Alberta were treated differently – which is to say, unequally.

Ottawa attempted to make up for the loss of land and resource revenue by awarding Saskatchewan a generous subsidy based on population. Haultain wanted no part of any compensation package, and demanded the same right as other Canadian provinces. He would be gamely supported by the Calgary Herald newspaper, which at one point decried the federal plan as “Autonomy that Insults the West.”

Once the autonomy bills became law, the Liberal Party turned its attention to securing power in Saskatchewan and displacing Haultain. Despite the territorial premier’s defining role in defending the interests of Western Canada, his opposition to the legislation made him a liability, and he was passed over to be Saskatchewan’s premier or lieutenant-governor. Haultain was not even invited to speak at Saskatchewan’s inauguration ceremonies in Regina.

But Western Canada’s father of Confederation did not go away quietly. Haultain formed a Provincial Rights Party, and promised to challenge the constitutionality of the Saskatchewan Act, especially federal control of the province’s public lands and natural resources. He never got the chance, however, because the Liberals’ reign in the province lasted nearly a quarter-century – ironically, the same amount of time it took Saskatchewan to secure control of its public lands and resources.

At first, Saskatchewan’s government was happy to pocket the federal subsidy it received in lieu of provincial lands and resources. But when Ottawa extended the northern boundaries of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec to Hudson Bay and James Bay in 1912 – making the central provinces much bigger than even Haultain’s envisioned “Buffalo” province – the provincial government began demanding control of its lands and resources.

Attempts to hammer out an agreement foundered over issues around compensation. In 1927, for example, Saskatchewan’s Liberal premier Jimmy Gardiner claimed that his province should be compensated starting as far back as 1870, when Canada first secured the title to the western interior. He also proposed that the province’s northern boundary be pushed to the Arctic Ocean in order to give Saskatchewan its own ocean port. These obstinate demands delayed settlement of the matter until 1930.


That spirit of sensitivity over provincial resources endured for much longer. In June, 1975, NDP premier Allan Blakeney asked for an election mandate to make it “crystal clear to Ottawa that we are serious in our determination to defend our provincial rights and to get a fair deal for Saskatchewan and the West.” His government and Ottawa had been wrestling over resource taxation at the time.

It would appear, then, that Mr. Moe and his Saskatchewan Party government are only the latest standard-bearers in this tradition of resentment. This is not to suggest that Saskatchewan does not have legitimate concerns over a host of federal-provincial issues; indeed, the need for consultation and dialogue between the two levels of government has rarely been more urgent.

But Mr. Moe is now doing more than defending Saskatchewan interests: His government has gone on the offensive. The Trudeau Liberals have become Public Enemy No. 1 in the province; they are criticized and blamed at every opportunity, even if they’re not necessarily at fault.

Mr. Moe disagreed with the Prime Minister’s assessment that Canada had entered the second wave of the pandemic in September, 2020; he described the most recent federal election “the most pointless election in Canada’s history”; he’s criticized the federal Liberals’ confidence-and-supply deal with the NDP, as well as the government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act during the trucker-convoy crisis; he called for an end to federal COVID-19 mandates and “a return to normal for all Canadians”; he has slammed the federal cap on greenhouse-gas emissions; more recently, he claimed that the federal Liberal government’s plan to reduce fertilizer usage would be “putting global food security at risk.” (Mr. Trudeau has also criticized Mr. Moe for Saskatchewan’s lack of vaccine policy.)

In the highly popular TV sitcom Corner Gas, which is set in the province, the residents of the fictional town of Dog River can’t mention the name of its rival Wullerton without spitting on the ground; Mr. Trudeau (spit) has effectively become the Saskatchewan Party’s Wullerton (spit).

But this anti-Liberal strategy is a curious one for a party that’s dominated the province’s politics since 2007. Formed as a bipartisan venture 25 years ago by four Liberal and four Conservative members of the legislature, the Saskatchewan Party had one simple goal: replace the governing NDP. Maybe the Saskatchewan Party just needed a new foil after sidelining the social democrats. Why not the Trudeau Liberals?

But these attacks on Ottawa’s jurisdiction, wrapped in the Saskatchewan flag, come with dangerous and potentially ruinous consequences. Despite assurances about the purpose of this summer’s economic-sovereignty consultations, it’s difficult to talk about greater provincial autonomy without drifting into thinking about potential independence – something Mr. Moe surely knew would happen when he made his “nation within a nation” comment.

Indeed, his Immigration Minister, Jeremy Harrison, recently announced the Saskatchewan Immigration Accord, which aimed to grant the province “sole authority to nominate newcomers” moving there while mandating additional federal resources for settlement services and a guaranteed allocation of annual nominees that “would be proportionate to the population of Saskatchewan within Canada.” (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not commit to this plan.) This is the language of potential separation.

However, if Mr. Moe can’t deliver the province to that promised land he suggested, despite his frequent and vocal criticisms of the Trudeau Liberals, he risks spurring Saskatchewanians to deeper resentment and to a potentially more aggressive approach to getting there.

Whatever the outcome, it is a shocking journey from a time, not so long ago, that Saskatchewan just wanted to be a full and equal member of the provincial club.

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