My column for today.

Justin Trudeau may be the closest thing Canadian politics has to a celebrity, so when he says something, people notice. Normally for a politician, this is a good thing, but when you have the habit of firmly shoving your foot in your mouth as Trudeau often does, it can be a tad inconvenient.

This week, Trudeau caused fervor by professing that if Canada went in a direction he didn’t like, he would consider supporting Quebec independence. With that separatist statement, you can almost hear the tires of his future Liberal party leadership bus screeching to a halt.

Trudeau’s plummeting leadership potential and impaired political judgment aside, the Dauphin’s comments (as some media have aptly dubbed him) are actually quite fascinating.

The old Liberal line, which Trudeau’s father famously stood for, used to be ‘my Canada includes Quebec.’ The young Trudeau goes one step further — he implies that Quebec is the true bastion of Canadian values, and if the rest of the country (i.e. the West) keeps supporting those nasty, mean Conservatives who try to change those values, he would think about making Quebec a country.

Trudeau has his wires crossed. Quebec separatism, his father’s greatest political battle, was about differences in language, culture and law. But for the young Trudeau, it’s about values — liberal values that Trudeau, it seems, believes the rest of Canada doesn’t hold as closely as Quebec. Values that he claims Harper, who Canadians elected with a majority government, is eroding.

Here’s a question for the Dauphin: if Quebecers hold these so-called Canadian liberal values so tightly, why haven’t they voted Liberal in almost 30 years?

Trudeau’s petulant, childish comments reveal a lot about his political maturity, but more importantly, they show the Liberals have learned nothing since Canadians slapped them with an eviction notice last election.

The Liberal party is still crippled by the same arrogance as they were when governing, only now they are a caved-in third party with gaffe-prone Trudeau at their helm.

It’s time they learned that you can be a good Canadian without being a Liberal.

Harper won a majority — even picking up seats in liberal Toronto — because Canadians are beginning to identify more with conservative values. A recent poll by Angus Reid found that a third of Canadians perceive the country is moving to the right.

Until the Liberals figure out that they don’t have a patent on what Canadian values are, they’ll never be in power again.

Critics of Canada’s ethically produced oil often try and make it seem like the oilsands benefit only Alberta while the rest of the country is shut out. They smear an entire province along with painting the industry with a negative brush. Mike Hudema, a Greenpeace campaigner called Alberta “a rogue province that is setting all the other provinces back.”

The real picture is that the oilsands are a key industry and vibrant job creator that employs Canadians from coast to coast,  and pumps billions of dollars into our economy annually—which pays for social programs like health care and helps builds schools and hospitals.

Oilsands driven job opportunities are booming, and many of these jobs are being created outside of Alberta. In Ontario, where the crippled manufacturing industry has left thousands of people out of work and struggling, new opportunities for manufacturing oilsands equipment are sprouting.

A Reuters article published over the weekend detailed some of the incredible ways that Ontario’s struggling manufacturing sector is reinventing itself—thanks to demand created by the booming Western energy sector. Companies that once built cars and auto parts are now building equipment for oil sands work. There are 255 companies in Ontario that are now supplying the industry with gear and services.

A recent study showed that oilsands demand for products, technology, and manufacturing from Ontario companies and suppliers will amount to $55 billion over the next 25 years. That’s a lot of jobs.

Ontario isn’t alone in benefiting from the energy boom, thousands of Newfoundlanders have found good paying jobs in the oilsands and producing ethical oil on the east coast. That’s great news for a province that’s seen some some very hard times over the years.

Canada’s ethical oil doesn’t just advance the values of social justice and fairness; the oilsands also drive key economic growth and jobs coast to coast that benefits all Canadians.

My column for today:

The 2011 census is causing heads to turn because it reveals something fascinating: for the first time, Canada’s West has more than 10 million people.

The ‘Rising West’ phenomenon has been talked about for years. Now, the West has definitely arrived.

Since 1867, Canada has been defined by the interaction between Ontario and Quebec. Politics, economics and culture focused on the corridor between Toronto and Quebec City. The West was often relegated as an afterthought to the Eastern establishment.

Now, the picture looks different.

There are more people in British Columbia and Alberta than there are in Quebec. Perogies, smoked salmon and Alberta beef are quickly surpassing poutine as quintessentially Canadian dishes.

With Ontario’s economy in a downward spiral, more and more young Canadians are flocking west in search of opportunities.

I grew up in Ontario and came to Vancouver in 2008 after graduating from university. I was struck by the real sense of optimism in the West, and the entrepreneurial spirit of the people who, like me, made the shift westward. I’ve heard many people comment on the refreshing, unapologetic ambition folks have out here. With so many people from somewhere else, you get a unique blend of perspective and innovation.

Jobs aren’t the only draw; young people are migrating west for education, too. Ontario has benefited from being home to many highly ranked universities that attract young and bright students. But with western universities increasing in rank and profile, and new schools like Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, more young people will be lured west for their degrees.

The West doesn’t just have demographics on its side, it has politics too. It’s no surprise that at this time and with a majority government, we have an Albertan prime minister.

This shift in political power is only going to increase. Many rising stars in the Conservative caucus are from the West and in the next parliament, the West will get 104 seats in parliament — the first time we’ve had more than 100 seats.

Canada is changing. It is no longer about Quebec and Ontario; the West is starting to matter more. A lot more. This will have an impact on our national priorities. Natural resources, especially oil and gas, will increase in their importance to Canada politically and economically. Asia-Pacific relations will also become more essential — something we’re already seeing.

The West is growing, and we’re changing Canada.

My latest column. With the Shafia trial over and the verdict in, we’re left with a hard, undeniable reality: in Canada, some girls are being oppressed, abused and killed for trying to experience the same freedoms and equality as their peers.

Freedom and equality are values that make Canada the best place in the world to live — and the best place to be a woman. It’s the reason why people choose to live here.

We must do everything we can do to make sure that every woman and girl is free and equal in Canada, regardless of where they are from, or what the accepted practices are in their culture.

We haven’t been doing enough.

Back in December, I wrote about how our system is failing girls who are at risk and under attack for simply wanting to be regular teenagers.

Our system protects minors from abuse at home, but it failed the Shafia girls who had reportedly reached out for help to law enforcement and social workers. The system, it appears, is not designed to deal with abuse that stems from a cultural background, and young women are falling through the cracks, ending in tragedy.

We need to face reality and invest in programs to protect women at risk of this sort of brutal violence.

It’s good to see the government doing just that. Rona Ambrose, Minister for Status of Women, has announced her department’s support for a program to educate police officers and social workers about so-called ‘honour-related’ violence. Her department is also supporting groups in ethnic communities in their work to educate young immigrant women and girls about culturally motivated violence.

Programs targeted at addressing ‘honour’ violence are a step in the right direction.

While cultural violence and domestic violence are not one and the same; they both need to be addressed head on. The movement to end ‘honour’ violence is similar to the movement to end domestic violence, an issue really brought out in the open during the 1970s and 80s. At first, it was not something society wanted to talk about. It was typically considered a private, behind-the-doors matter. Now it is out in the open and women have many avenues for help.

We can’t hide from cultural violence. Its presence in Canada is disturbing, and it’s time to get it out in the open and address it head on.

You can tell that ForestEthics has a foreign point of view: the things they say sound so utterly foreign to reasonable Canadians.

Take Tzeporah Berman, a founding member of ForestEthics, the radical environmental group behind publicly bullying fortune 500 companies into swearing off Canadian ethically produced oil . She recently accused the federal government of trying to “silence dissent” in the debate over the Northern Gateway pipeline project proposal.

Right. That’s why the government’s regulatory hearings are scheduled to hear testimony from more than 4,500 interveners and testifiers — a huge contingent of which are from environmental groups opposed to the pipeline, many of them funded by foreign dollars. One foreign-backed group, The Dogwood Initiative, claims that as many as 40% of those speakers are people they signed up. The government has invited powerful, moneyed foreign interests to dispatch their lobbyists to sabotage our energy policy decisions, and that’s “silencing dissent”?

ForestEthics is, by the way, one of those foreign-funded groups. It’s not only being allowed to meddle in Canada’s regulatory decisions, it’s actually being funded by Ottawa to do it.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) has set aside $2.8 million to fund 50 groups looking to testify at the pipeline hearings. Forest Ethics has bellied right up to the trough and helped itself to $60,000 of taxpayer dollars, even though the group is collecting a fortune — more than $1 million — from its rich American backers to campaign here in Canada.

You read that right: Ottawa is using taxpayers’ money to subsidize the very same groups — the lobbyists of rich American billionaires — so they can sabotage our energy projects.

It’s not only outrageous, it’s lunacy. This federal government has talked a very good game, standing up for the importance of a Gateway pipeline, and criticizing the foreign radical groups trying to hijack our energy decisions. But if Stephen Harper and Joe Oliver and the rest of the Conservatives really want to stop this attack by foreign-funded radicals, a place to start would be to cut off their federal funding.