Shoes and feet

A Newfoundland firm gets a big contract for a natural gas project in New Brunswick. Another Newfoundland firm, which, gasp, owns a fish plant in Quebec, closes it.

Speculate here: If a New Brunswick firm had obtained a big contract for a natural gas project in Newfoundland, or a Quebec firm had, gasp, owned a fish plant in Newfoundland, and closed it, what kind of existentialist, nationalist, pink-white-and-green, we-should-never-have-joined-Confederation handwringing would have been provoked everwhere from the soft white underbelly of the open line shows to the eighth floor of Confederation Building?

And why doesn't it happen in reverse?