Manitoba Free Press, 1883.
"Is it to be believed, then, that this portion of the Dominion will long submit to the grasping spirit that has dictated and apparently is to dictate the policy of the Eastern Provinces towards us? It certainly is not; and as we have already intimated, if wisdom be not learned in time in the East, the Northwest must break off from the Dominion at the bidding of the laws of self-preservation. We have repeatedly said, and say again, that the Northwest is loyal to Canada, and willing to do it's share, and more than it's share, if need be towards making it the country it should become; but we are not willing, nor will be permit ourselves to be made hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Eastern Provinces. Political loyalty we owe and will gladly acknowledge until such as the conduct of the Eastern members of the Federation forces a different course upon us; but commercial subserviency we will not submit to, nor shall even our present weakness on which so much is prescribed, prevent us from showing that when united in defence of their natural rights and liberties, no people, however apparently insignificant, are to be despised."
When Canada acquired the Northwest, they quickly cut off long-established trade routes to the United States and disallowed the construction of a railway line from Manitoba to the United States, all in the name of protecting the economic interests of Canada, but these interests only served the interests of Ontario and Quebec while harming those of the people of the Northwest. This was, of course, to form a trend for the next 142 years. Laurentian Canada (the Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa powerclass) see the West as a colony by which the hard work of Westerners is meant to enrich the East. They seek to retain control of us and have long resented our tendency to push back against the scheme which they have so zealously imposed upon the country. They try to stop anything which assists us in our economic and political independence, the oil and gas industry being chief amongst what they resent, because it has created the means by which they cannot control us. One day, the West must finally take its leave from Canada to become an independent nation, free of the bounds which the Canadian confederation has always held on us.