Former premier Jason Kenney says Alberta's independence movement grew out of the backlash to COVID-19 mandates.

At an Edmonton Chamber of Commerce forum with Rachel Notley on Tuesday, where the two co-chairs of the Stronger Together group campaigned against Option 2, CBC reports Kenney said he believes people who became politically mobilized over vaccine mandates and public health measures eventually shifted their focus to Alberta independence.

That is a remarkable argument from the man who wrote to his own panel about Alberta's grievances before the pandemic began.

On November 9, 2019, then-premier Kenney sent a letter to the members of his Fair Deal Panel. It said: "Albertans have an unprecedented level of frustration with their place in the federation."

It added that policies interfering in provincial jurisdiction "are seen by many Albertans as fundamentally unfair."

Among the panel's 25 recommendations: a referendum on equalization, an Alberta Police Service to replace the RCMP, and a plan toward an Alberta Pension Plan.

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Kenney held the equalization vote on October 18, 2021, a non-binding question on the municipal ballot. About 61.7 per cent of those who voted said yes.

"This is a powerful statement today," the premier said at the time. None of that is about mandates, and the list goes back further than any pandemic.

The National Energy Program ran from 1980 to 1985, and the Canadian Encyclopedia ties the opposition it provoked in Western Canada to later Western alienation.

Some people who got involved over COVID rules may well have stayed involved, and Kenney's point is about who joined the movement, not whether the grievances are real.

And if one concedes Kenney's argument, then he is the one who has paternalism in the independence movement. The illegal mandates were his. 

But to be clear, the grievances came first. The Albertans who voted on equalization in 2021 were answering a question Kenney's own government put on the ballot, about a complaint his own letter called unprecedented.

Kenney is entitled to oppose independence. He is not entitled to rewrite who asked for the debate.

Alberta's grievances didn't come from the pandemic. Jason Kenney put them in writing before it began.