The East a ‘force to be reckoned with’: Couillard
Ontario, Quebec still produce 60 per cent of GDP, he tells legislature
The last time a Quebec premier addressed the Ontario legislature, in 1964, Western Canada could still be seen as an easily ignored hinterland.
But now, as he faced a West that has stolen their corporate headquarters, outflanked them in population growth and taken over Parliament Hill, Premier Philippe Couillard roused his brethren Monday by warning that Central Canada remains “a force to be reckoned with.”
“We are natural allies,” said Couillard in a speech to Queen’s Park that leaned heavily on the historic ties between the two main founding provinces of Canada.
“Central Canada is an economic force. It is a political force. And it is a force to be reckoned with for ensuring national prosperity.”
When Couillard’s predecessor, Jean Lesage, last made a visit to Queen’s Park in the midst of the Quiet Revolution, the West represented barely a quarter of the Canadian population, and its industries and corporations largely took their orders from Montreal and Toronto.
But as Couillard crossed the Ottawa River this week to patch up decades of Ontario/Quebec squabbling, the lands west of Thunder Bay were a surging powerhouse increasingly at the forefront of the Canadian economic and political sphere.
Since 2011, Western Canada has been snapping up a disproportionate share of population growth. In all but Winnipeg and Victoria, the West’s metropolitan areas were growing faster than the national average, according to the National Household Survey. Edmonton and Calgary ranked as Canada’s top two fastest-growing cities. And for the first time, Ontario had more people to its west than to its east.
In February, Statistics Canada confirmed the trend was continuing unabated, with Western Canada leading the country in economic growth, and consequently soaking up a lopsided share of newcomers from both the east and around the world. As of January, the West claimed 30 per cent of the Canadian population, compared with 24 per cent in 1971.
Alberta alone has three times as many company headquarters per capita than Ontario, including non-oil-and-gas firms such as Shaw Communications Inc., WestJet Airlines Ltd. and the agricultural giant Agrium Inc.
And a Calgary MP currently occupies the Prime Minister’s Office. Stephen Harper is not only the longest-serving prime minister to hail from the West, but the first since John Diefenbaker to hold onto the job for longer than 12 months.
His cabinet also holds the largest share of westerners in generations, occupying 40 per cent of positions, compared to 17 per cent under Jean Chrétien.
On Monday, Couillard repeatedly reminded his Ontario crowd that “Central Canada” remains the dominant partner in Confederation.
He noted that their two provinces still had 60 per cent of Canada’s population, 60 per cent of the GDP, and that the “Quebec-Ontario economic zone is the fourthlargest in North America, after California, Texas and New York.”
Said Couillard, “when Quebec and Ontario work together to forge a strong economy … then everything becomes possible.”
Couillard is a noted federalist and said he “firmly believes that Quebec progresses when it seeks to unite rather than divide.”
As he told Ontario MLAs, it has long been his goal to “pursue and even deepen our historic relationship with Ontario.”