Impact of Economic Decline on Canadian Regional Discontent

Abstract

The discussions of regionalism in Canada often fail to derive constant patterns. The different variables of culture, language, history and long-term disparities all confound what causes regional discontent. To address these problems the Atlantic region and the province of Alberta are compared on a series of factors that examines the role of economic disparity in regional discontent. To determine the strength of the correlation between regional discontent and economic disparity this is contextualized in the large content of other federalist states. The paper determines that regional disparity has a strong correlation to economic factors not just in Canada but globally and that creating economic interdependence on the core can reduce the expression of regional discontent.