Fifty-seven per cent of residents in both provinces now say the federal government has become personally irrelevant to them. And for the first time since pollsters have been asking the question – as far back as 1987 – majorities in Alberta and Saskatchewan now agree with the statement, “Western Canada gets so few benefits from being part of Canada that they might as well go it on their own.”

The Canadian government’s recent announcement that it will be providing more than CDN $600 million (USD $455 million) over the next five years to bail out the country’s financially strapped media outlets — as part of the fall fiscal update about the federal budget ahead of the 2019 federal election — is not as innocent as it may seem.