The possibility of an independent Alberta and Saskatchewan — and other parts of the West — is now before us. Like the recent fires in Pacific Palisades, the tinder has been building for decades.
That is, the explosive shrubbery in the hills north of Los Angeles was growing and ignored, just as legitimate Western grievances have been dismissed as “whining.”
Yes, it’s absurd that a minority of malcontents in the richest province in the most blessed country on Earth could be so marinated in self-pity as to persuade themselves that an adverse election result is sufficient cause to pitch the province and the country into the madness of secession.
Yes, it’s odious that the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, should now be attempting to use that same minority of malcontents as a weapon to extract concessions from the rest of Canada – even as she pretends to disavow their cause.
Coyne Alert!
Threats of Alberta separation go back decades, and have reached new heights since the April election of Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The separatist Alberta Prosperity Project is gunning for 600,000 signatures on a petition that would force a provincial referendum on the issue, while the Republican Party of Alberta — led by longtime conservative operative Cameron Davies — is ramping up its separation push.
“What we’re looking at is the broken and dysfunctional system that has been in place since Alberta joined Confederation,” Davies, who recently resigned from membership in the governing United Conservative Party, told CBC News.
CBC: Them hicks is stupid!
An Alberta separatist group released on Monday a referendum question on independence from Canada that it will petition to get in front of provincial voters — but only once it has garnered support from 600,000 Albertans.
That’s more than triple the number of signatures the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) would need under a new United Conservative Party government bill that makes it much easier to force a referendum on the ballot.
The group also said it would push Premier Danielle Smith to allow a separation referendum later in 2025, instead of next year as she’s suggested. They said a critical mass of separatist UCP members can persuade the premier to fast-track the referendum.
Newly minted Prime Minister Mark Carney emerged relatively unscathed from his first meeting with President Donald Trump. Now, he must deal with a budding national unity crisis as separatist support in Western Canada has blossomed. If Carney had been hoping for a post-electoral grace period in office, those hopes have been dashed.
“Albertans feel an existential threat from Ottawa,” says Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. “I think the rest of the country may feel an existential threat from Donald Trump. Alberta feels the same thing — but the existential threat, it’s from Ottawa.”
Nanos Research polls published one week after the federal election indicate nearly 30 per cent of Alberta residents support separation from Canada.
In his first days as an elected Prime Minister, Mark Carney faces threats both from without and within.
The threat from without poses the most imminent danger. This country is under assault from its greatest friend. Its economic health and its very existence are at stake.
The province of Alberta has a legitimate grievance with the ROC (Rest of Canada).
According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, since the inception of Canada’s equalization program in 1957, which sees the wealthier provinces subsidizing their less fortunate counterparts, Alberta has made a net contribution of $67 billion, $2.9 billion alone in 2021 — which in turn represents only a portion of the province’s immense financial contribution to federal coffers and the governments and residents of other provinces.
Various Indigenous leaders have complained vocally about Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s roundabout way of engaging with the province’s separatist movement by making it easier for organized citizens to arrange for referendums.
But the moment they have me nodding along in understanding, they pull their own sovereigntist card: arguing that the numbered treaties situated in Alberta are a higher, purer form of authority; that secession talk violates treaty rights; and that treaty land is literally their property and thus untransferable.
The stakes for Western alienation were raised this week when Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she would allow a question on separation to go to a referendum if it meets the requirements. While Smith made it clear she doesn’t support separation herself, she said Albertans holding such views should not be called “traitors.”
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe also hasn’t ruled out allowing a vote on separation if residents triggered legislation for a plebiscite, though he said he still hopes Saskatchewan can continue to be part of Canada.
Here in the west, many don’t want a trade war with the United States. They want in.
I was born in Saskatchewan and have no intention of returning. It’s the Siberia of Canada, an area bigger than France – where I now live – with the population of Buffalo, New York. It’s sucked dry by Ottawa. Elon Musk was here, and left. And it has winter temperatures of -40 degrees.
Alberta has slightly more going for it: skiing, bears. But Albertans aren’t gruntled, either. The last time I was in Calgary I had lunch at the elite Ranchmen’s Club and the chatter was seditious. The talk was of Wexit – the separation of western Canada from the bloodsucking east.
My brother, his son and wife have set in motion a plan to relocate to Alberta.
EDMONTON—Katheryn Speck said she used to be a Canadian nationalist, travelled the world with a maple leaf on her backpack and once lived in Quebec so she could become fluently bilingual.
But on Saturday she was among hundreds of people who rallied at the Alberta legislature to support separation from Canada, with many in the crowd waving Alberta flags and a few even displaying the U.S. Stars and Stripes.
I suspect — and I do so with the weary confidence of one who has seen this show before — that many Albertans, like myself, spent Monday night and much of Tuesday morning not so much watching but enduring the latest federal election returns. As the results trickled in, and then poured in like an unwelcome flood, a rather vivid cinematic analogy presented itself to my mind.
Daniel Fotheringham watched election coverage from his travel trailer on an oil-and-gas job site Monday night with a mixture of resignation, determination and fury.
“I was yelling at the TV,” he said.
“Personally, at this point I‘m now behind the separation of Alberta.”
