A fair reading is that a significant share of Alberta’s current complaints function as sideshows, but not empty ones. They are distractions with a purpose, and that purpose is political rather than policy-driven.

At the federal level, the Carney government’s real files are structural and unforgiving: restoring long-term productivity, managing a fragile transition to a low-carbon economy without regional collapse, stabilizing housing and infrastructure finance, and navigating a volatile global trade and security environment. None of those problems yield to symbolic confrontation. They require boring competence, capital discipline, and political stamina. Against that backdrop, disputes over judicial appointments, equalization rhetoric, or procedural grievances are comparatively low-impact on Canada’s material trajectory.

From Alberta’s perspective, however, these conflicts are useful theatre. They re-center politics on identity, grievance, and sovereignty rather than on questions where provincial governments have fewer clean answers of their own. A public argument about judges, Ottawa elites, or federal overreach is easier to sustain than a hard conversation about Alberta’s economic diversification, fiscal exposure to commodity cycles, or long-term labour force constraints. These fights allow provincial leaders to frame themselves as defenders rather than managers.

For the Carney government, the danger is not that these complaints derail core policy, but that they consume political oxygen. Every hour spent responding to performative ultimatums is an hour not spent building coalitions around housing finance reform or industrial strategy. The risk is cumulative. A steady drip of constitutional agitation can distort the agenda, forcing Ottawa into a reactive posture that favours short-term messaging over long-term statecraft.

That said, dismissing the disputes entirely would be a mistake. Sideshows still shape public mood. They erode trust in institutions, normalize the idea that core democratic guardrails are negotiable, and create a climate where substantive reform becomes harder to explain and sell. The judicial appointment fight matters less for what it changes immediately than for what it signals: a willingness to challenge institutional norms to score political points.

In the bigger picture, then, Alberta’s complaints are not the main story of Canada’s moment, but they are part of the background noise that can either be managed or allowed to metastasize. The test for the Carney government will be whether it can keep its focus on the genuinely consequential files while refusing to let performative conflict define the national agenda. Governments lose momentum not when they face opposition, but when they mistake noise for substance.