Canoe Financial Chairman Brett Wilson is blasting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s comments on phasing out the oil sands, characterizing the comments as further evidence Central Canada doesn’t understand the needs of the West. In an interview on BNN, Wilson said that even if the comments were unintentional, they underscore a feeling of western alienation dating back to Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program.

“There’s an abject gap in their brains regarding what Alberta is really about,” Wilson said on Monday. “It’s an eastern-centric perspective that says, ‘The east needs the west for oil, but not much else.’”

Wilson said the recent approval of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement have helped mollify Albertans, but cannot undo the feeling of neglect felt in the province.

“There’s always a sense of alienation,” he said. “We have so much of that NIMBYism – not in my backyard – going on, and sometimes I think in Alberta we’re starting to feel there isn’t a full sense of what we can accomplish together versus this ‘inward-outward’ perspective of regionalism.”

Wilson said Canada needs to address its domestic energy policy before worrying about the actions of newly-minted U.S. President Donald Trump.

“We’ve got to get our own ship in order. We are so dysfunctional in terms of infrastructure and the things we need to get built,” he said. “We’ve got governing people in B.C. saying they’ll go to jail before they allow [pipelines]. We’ve got some sheer stupidity to deal with in Canada before we worry about the global side.”

However, Wilson said there are encouraging signs for the Canadian energy industry due to cost reductions taken in the face of the collapse in oil and natural gas prices.

“We have hammered our costs down: that’s one of the most important things that people may have overlooked,” he said. “We are competitive on a global basis in terms of our marginal cost of production.”

Wilson said he fails to understand why Canada continues to import Saudi Arabian oil to the east coast, instead of building pipeline capacity to supply refineries with Western Canadian oil.

“We have one of the great resources on a global basis, in terms of being in a safe country that respects the rule of law, respects the dignity of women, understands the environment,” he said. “And yet, Canada is importing from Saudi [Arabia], which has no respect for the above. We need to get our own ship in order.”