With these underlying influences firmly in place, all it took was a spark to ignite Western antipathy and lead to a heated standoff. Such stimulus came in 1980 in the form of the National Energy Program (NEP), a policy of the federal Liberals that sought to increase national control of the oil industry at the expense of provincial governments, in a way validating existential fears of the West in addition to creating economic anxiety and distress. Presented in the budget of October 1980, the NEP aimed to partially nationalize the oil industry, bringing the market share controlled by the federal government from 25% in 1980 to 50% by 1990. Moreover, Petro-Canada, then a crown corporation, was allowed to engage in foreign takeovers and acquire…show more content… By January 1981, commentators observed that the dispute was clearly between two competing visions of Canada, “one centred on Ottawa, the other on the provincial governments” (Simpson and Sallot, pars. 2). [222! cartoon?]. The root of this conflict ultimately revolved around the longstanding political narrative in the West and how the NEP issue seemed to be a particularly severe microcosm of the broader conflict that the region had become used to over the decades. The NEP contained undertones of the West’s quasi-colonial past. It reminded westerners of their collective impotence. It asked them once again to sacrifice their livelihoods for a “national policy” that would be for the “greater good” of the country. Perhaps most significant, however, was the appearance of ignorance and arrogance on the part of the East regarding the expected impact of the policy and the actual economic reality in the West. Western Canadians had long felt that easterners saw their concerns as “regional” issues rather than “national” ones (Berdahl,
