Using KE to hijack Apple Numbers's hijacking of text navigation/selection shortcuts?

[betalogue]

Hi,

I am a KE newbie and it looks like the learning curve for what I'm trying to do is pretty steep, so I need to determine whether what I want to do is actually feasible before diving in. (Mixed metaphors, I know.)

So my situation is the following:

1. I have a Canadian CSA keyboard (not a standard US one).
2. I am a big user of word-by-word navigation/selection shortcuts in all my macOS apps. These are deeply ingrained.
3. Very annoyingly, in Apple's Numbers app, Apple hijacks the shortcuts for word-by-word navigation (option-Left and option-Right) to add a new column to the left or the right of the current column.
4. This hijacking actually extends to the shortcuts for word-by-word selection (option-shift-Left and option-shift-Right) as well.
5. The hijacking can only be avoided by manually ENTERING a table cell first (with a double-click or option-Return), which returns Numbers to behaving like a normal text editor, where the shortcuts work as expected. If, however, you just simple select a table cell (with a simple click or with the cursor keys) and start typing, Apple's hijacking still applies. You therefore have to remember to always enter the cell first before you start typing, which is, in my experience, impossible to do.
6. I am aware of emacs bindings that also work in Numbers, like ctrl-alt-B/ctrl-alt-shift-B for moving backward and ctrl-alt-F/ctrl-alt-shift-F for moving forward.
7. Unfortunately, on a Canadian CSA keyboard like mine, for whatever reason, it looks like only ctrl-alt-shift-B and ctrl-alt-shift-F work as expected.
8. I've used Keyboard Maestro to hijack option-shift-Left so that it triggers ctrl-alt-shift-B and option-shift-Right so that it triggers ctrl-alt-shift-F, but that's all I can do with KM. I cannot use KM to hijack option-Left and option-Right.

So the question is: Can I use KE to hijack all four word-by-word text navigation/selection shortcuts before Numbers hijacks them for adding columns, i.e. can I create app-specific (for Numbers only) complex modifications for forcing option-Left, option-shift-Left, option-Right and option-shift-Right to work as expected in Numbers, regardless of whether I manually entered the cell before I started typing in it?

If you guys tell be with 100% certainty that I can, then I will invest the effort into learning how to create such a complex modification in KE, and I will add that layer of complexity to my already fairly complex macOS setup (so that I would have KE and Keyboard Maestro and Typinator all running at the same time). But if it's not possible, there's no point in my wasting my time.

Of course, if someone is so generous as to actually provide me with the four complex modifications I need, that'll be fantastic, but I don't necessarily expect such generosity. What I really do need is someone who knows to tell me that this is definitely feasible with KE.

Thanks in advance!

Pierre Igot