EDMONTON — Albertans want Ralph Klein's government to take stronger action to assert the province's role in Confederation, says a provincial government report released Wednesday.

The $200,000 report calls on Alberta to create a legal fund to challenge the federal government's interventions into provincial jurisdiction and to open a provincial office in Ottawa. "If we as provinces don't protect our constitutional interests, who will?" asked former Reform MP Ian McClelland, who chaired the nine-member committee of provincial Tory backbenchers that issued the report.

McClelland conceded the province hasn't been very successful in its challenges of Ottawa's "intrusions" to date.

"Does that mean you stop? Does that mean you give away the field? Of course, it doesn't."

The report reaffirmed many of Alberta's long-held positions against the long gun registry, the Canadian Wheat Board and the Kyoto climate change accord, but it didn't support calls for the province to collect its own taxes or run its own pension plan.

It did endorse Alberta's contentious plan to introduce cost-cutting health-care reforms and urged the province to press Ottawa to scrap transfer payments. The payments are collected from richer provinces and given to poorer provinces.

Instead, McClelland said Ottawa should give the provinces the tax room to raise the money for provincial programs themselves rather than sending money with strings attached.

"We're saying ... we'll deliver the services. Let's not filter the money through Ottawa, where money goes to die."

He said that didn't mean Alberta wants to stop sending the $9 billion it contributes annually to Confederation through the equalization program.

"Nothing in this report should be interpreted as saying that we want to remove ourselves from the Canadian family or in any way to say we're not prepared to support other provinces, other Canadians," McClelland said.

The report was delivered to the minister of intergovernmental affairs in June, but the government parked it for two months to vet it through the Conservative caucus.

It was borne out of a Tory policy convention in which some party members called on the Klein government to build "firewalls" around the province and consider separation as an option if Ottawa keeps intruding into provincial affairs.

The federal government's position on the Kyoto accord and the long gun registry along with its refusal to appoint Alberta's elected senators-in-waiting to the Senate rekindled the separatist sentiments of the 1980s.

Klein said Wednesday that he didn't know if the report would appease the separatist element, but he considers the idea of leaving Canada to be scary.

"They might not be satisfied, but that's democracy," he said. "I really do think it reflects the views of the majority."

Klein said all Albertans want is to be recognized as contributing members of Canada.

"We contribute a tremendous amount to Confederation," he said. "We need to be recognized. We need our voices heard."

The head of the Alberta Residents League, an advocacy group that sent representatives to the committee's 13 public forums, called the report "window-dressing."

"It showed the Klein government, if they did have iron in their blood, it has now turned to lead in their rear ends," said Pat Beauchamp. "In other words, they continued with the status quo."

Beauchamp said that if the committee had recommended that Alberta create its own pension plan, it would have grabbed Ottawa's attention.

His grassroots anti-Ottawa movement has a billboard on Highway 2, south of Calgary, that reads Less Ottawa, More Alberta. The group plans to turn up the heat on the Alberta Tories during the upcoming provincial election.

"We won't quit," he said. "This will just make us take a harder stance."

Klein said the report's 26 recommendations will be put out for public consumption and his government will take another look at them and the responses of Albertans in September.

"I can't comment on what we may or may not do at this time."

Interim New Democrat leader Brian Mason said the Progressive Conservatives should pick up the $200,000 cost of the report because it was written to mollify the party's extreme element and to ensure more moderate Tory supporters that the party wasn't going that route.

"I think the report basically amounts to a $200,000 bone thrown at the right wing of the Conservative party," he said.

Liberal Leader Kevin Taft said most Albertans aren't deeply concerned about building a firewall around the province to keep Ottawa from intruding.