Justin Trudeau’s rise to power has met with anxiety in Canada’s beleaguered oil patch, where the legacy of his father’s wildly unpopular energy policy still incites “riots at cocktail parties”. As many Canadians expressed hope for the future after the Liberals sealed a remarkable election win, oil executives face the end of nearly a decade of oil-friendly Conservative power under Stephen Harper, who had vowed to make Canada an “energy superpower”. The Trudeau name stings in Alberta: three decades after former prime minister Pierre Trudeau left office, memories of his divisive national energy programme still provoke hostility, says Michal Moore, professor at the University of Calgary. In a recent meeting in Calgary, he observed oil executives argued heatedly over the prospect of a Liberal government: “They go: ‘Well his son could get in and when he does he will reinvent the national energy programme . . . the [Liberals] always have their eye on the riches out here’.”