You find them on farms and ranches and in corporate offices. They are tradesmen, students, housewives and professors. You can find them in redneck bars, old folks’ homes and homeschool conferences. They’re everywhere. They are starting to loathe our country.

But how did the spirit of so many Albertans get so sour?

Is it the long hangover of Trudeau’s destructive National Energy Program of 1982? Yes, partly. And to that you can add Kyoto, which everyone knows is just more of the same.

Is it the cumulative effect of federal elections in which eastern majorities decided they would rather be run by thieves than westerners? Yes again. (As Joe Clark put it, “Better the devil you know.”)

Is it the accumulated weight of nonstop federal foolishness -- gun registration, Charter mania, medicare interference, officially subsidized sloth in a hundred forms, the wheat board monopoly, the Shawinigate cover-up, the HRDC scandal, Adscam, anti-American foreign policy, our sagging economic productivity, MPs who steal jewelry and nothing happens, taxes that never go down and a standard of living that never goes up? Oh yes, all of those.

This poisonous cloud -- this fog of pessimism -- has settled over our province, robbing us of breath.

It is this long-term mood of hopelessness, not Ottawa, that is Alberta’s biggest problem.

It is this which we must deal with first -- the frustration that we tried to change Canada and failed, and the assumption that nothing we do now will work.

We have to keep trying.

The truth is that twenty years ago, Alberta came roaring to life against the National Energy Program. That led to the Triple E Senate movement, and then the Reform Party. In these we had incredibly high hopes.

But the Senate movement stalled and the Reform Party got stopped at the Ontario border. So nothing really improved, and many things got worse.

We must not quit. That is not a valid option for the future of our province.

If separatism really were a viable option, perhaps it would be the way to go. But it isn’t. It’s wrong to break up a country out of mere frustration, and most Albertans know it.

At the same time, we must stop listening to those who say there is no real problem.

Canada is in serious trouble, and we with it. It is in a slow, deepening crisis brought about by decades of misdirection, reckless borrowing and spending, and bad government. And the bad government will get worse -- especially in its demands upon Alberta -- if we don’t start fighting back more effectively.

How do we “fight back more effectively”?

First, let’s forget the old Reform Party idea that we can reform Ottawa from within by electing a new federal party. It was worth trying once, but it won’t work. We don’t have the political strength.

Instead let’s take a page from the Quebec federalists. Let’s look to our provincial governments for answers, something we have never done.

They have strengths they have never used. This is especially true in social policy, the area that Ottawa covets most of all, yet lacks any constitutional mandate to enter without permission.

Here at home, the Alberta government should begin openly re-examining all forms of federal co-operation, one by one. Policing. Tax collection. Public pensions. Health care. Environment. Wheat marketing.

These jurisdictions are shared or are exclusively the responsibility of the provinces.

We must start taking them back and running them ourselves.

Examination of these responsibilities should take place openly, and involve public evidence by qualified experts. The best evidence to date is that we would get better service at less cost if we did these things for ourselves.

The mere sight of Alberta seriously pursuing this course would send shock waves through Confederation.

“Good heavens,” easterners would say, “what’s going on in Alberta? Are they preparing to separate?”

To which we would reply, “It is not separatist to invoke the constitution. These are provincial responsibilities, and we are fulfilling them. We think the federal government is doing a lousy job.”

Everyone, especially in the federal government, seems to have forgotten is that the 1867 constitution limited Ottawa’s constitutional role mainly to issues of national sovereignty -- defence, foreign affairs, treaties, trade deals and currency. Social and economic development remain the constitutional preserve of the provinces.

Alberta should start pointing this out, not just with words but by actions.

But that is only the first step. There is a second.

On the national front, Alberta must -- simply must -- get over its guilt complex about not wanting to “share” its “surplus” wealth from its depleting oil and gas reserves.

This resource wealth does not belong to Ottawa, nor to other Canadians. Under the Constitution, the resources belong to Albertans.

Our responsibility is to pass any “surplus” earnings on to future generations of Albertans, not to Ottawa. They are not Ottawa’s to take. Neither are they ours to give away.

Besides, the way Ottawa distributes them in other provinces does more harm than good.

According to economic experts at places like the Fraser Institute, Canada does more of this inter-regional “sharing” than any other federation in the world, and the long-term results are bad. It makes the receiving regions politically captive to Ottawa and economically sluggish.

These programs amount to Ottawa taking tens of billions of dollars out of Alberta and Ontario every year, and paying businesses to create new jobs in Quebec, the eastern prairies and the Atlantic, while at the same time it pays workers not to do them.

It is self-defeating. Unemployment remains high while jobs go unfilled. This has been well documented by critics in the receiving regions themselves.

In the meantime, Canada slides steadily downward on international scales of productivity and standard of living, especially in comparison to our nearest neighbor, the United States.

In the 1990s, we were surpassed in productivity by six European nations, including Iceland. By what miracle of incompetence are Canadians unable to out-produce Icelanders?

It is worth remembering that if federal and provincial governments had not borrowed so recklessly to expand national social programs in the 1970s and ’80s, racking up a trillion dollars in public debts that have not been repaid, we would not have nearly so much trouble today paying for health care.

I believe the responsibility falls on Albertans to initiate a national discussion on this point, a discussion that Ottawa has been avoiding for the past generation.

The government of Alberta should convene a series of national, high-profile conferences to address the failure of federal policies over the last forty years. It should provide a platform for recognized experts from all parts of Canada to explain why federal regional development expenditures have failed -- why employment insurance is killing the Atlantic region -- why aboriginal self-government can succeed only when there is aboriginal self-financing -- why provinces should be free to run medicare without federal interference.

Parliament has ceased to be an effective forum for such discussions. It falls to Albertans, therefore, to point out this new direction for the whole country.

And that’s why I’m running in this Senate election.

We have suffered from lack of vision, lack of direction, for too long, at both the provincial and federal level. Both levels of government have been content to perpetuate a very deficient and defective state of affairs that serves nobody.

If elected as a Senate nominee for Alberta, I commit to this agenda, whether I am appointed or not.

First, to press for Alberta to exercise the full range of its constitutional rights and responsibilities.

Second, to press for a national discussion in Alberta aimed at setting set sounder, stronger and worthier goals for Canada.

Some may object that this is outside the scope of Senate reform. To them I say there can be no Senate reform until Albertans start standing up for their rights, and until Canadians understand that on its present assumptions the country is doomed to fail.

Senate reform is locked up in this much larger discussion. Only when we start to re-examine the way our country is governed can we hope to make sense of the Senate.

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Albertans need a strong and clear voice to defend the interests of their province!

On election day, vote Link Byfield for Senator-elect!