1 week Ago By Jamie Sarkonak
Article content It’s easy to support the idea of an imaginary utopian breakaway province, full of sunshine, rainbows and new pipelines, in the same way it’s easy to support the idea of buying a real-life unicorn farm. A nice fantasy maybe, but anyone trying to sell them to you shouldn’t be taken seriously. And that’s why Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is completely correct in not entertaining the whims of Alberta separatists.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith should be right behind him. Secessionist sentiments are hitting the news because the thought of another federal Liberal government is irksome in Alberta and Saskatchewan. And they’re somewhat backed by data: polling by Mainstreet Research found last month that 37 per cent of Albertans would be open to the idea of independence in some form (including a form that would include all of Western Canada).
Twenty per cent would be open to becoming an American state. Accordingly, a bid for independence is being soft-launched by its proponents. One, Alberta lawyer Jeffrey Rath, has been organizing to bring about a new “Commonwealth of Alberta” and has now created an unofficial “delegation” to the United States to discuss independence or American statehood; his message has largely been contained to independent media and online circles.
Another, former Reform leader Preston Manning, had an op-ed published in the Globe and Mail on Wednesday that called for formalizing an independence movement. Both make such poor cases for their cause that it’s impossible to see them taking off anytime soon. Rath’s vision for an independent or Americanized Alberta naively focuses on the imagined positives: “no federal income tax, no carbon tax, no GST, no equalization payments, no more interference in our industries, and full control over our borders, our immigration, and our natural resources.
” To that, I’d add: no ports, and no control over pipelines outside our borders, probably no military capacity to defend our borders from the U.S. and Canada, and therefore no “full” control over our natural resources — points he somehow forgets to include.
His mission to the U.S. was backed by a group called the Alberta Prosperity Project, which sets out further visions for an independent Albertastan, complete with an American-style government structure, a military, a ban on “gender grooming” and a reinforced set of Indigenous rights far stronger than what’s already enshrined in the Canadian Constitution, with provisions to expand reserve lands and to recognize Indigenous ownership of minerals, among other rights.
Thought the existing duty to consult has gone too far? Well, these guys make it even worse, with an anti-woke veneer. I should add that the personalities alone have credibility concerns: Rath is currently undergoing three separate law society disciplinary proceedings, while one of the men who drafted the Alberta Prosperity Project’s outline for independence, John Carpay, was banned from practicing law in Manitoba for three years for surveilling a judge. Manning, on the other hand, suggests that B.
C. and Manitoba might join a secession campaign if managed properly. I suppose anything is possible, but any hope for B.
C. joining up with Alberta, knowing the political differences, should be kept to a minimum. He urges Western political leaders (and here, I’m sure he’s talking about Smith) “to provide a mechanism for recognizing and addressing the growing support for Western secession in an orderly and democratic manner.
” Not necessarily a political party, he says, but “a democratic forum to first consider various alternative courses of action,” to keep the movement from being taken over by “extremists or eccentrics.” In a way, that’s already happening: Smith is planning a post-election panel to “see how people are feeling and see if there are any other referendum issues they want us to put on the table” — and independence could make it onto the list. As to whether that will give the independence movement respectability, that’s doubtful.
Perhaps Manning, like former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, has identified Rath as a “treasonous kook” and is aware of the impossibility of mainstream appeal at present. If the premier took to steering that discussion, it would still depend on the crazies, because a whole lot of delusion is required to see Alberta ending up better off alone. Imaginary Independent Alberta is landlocked, completely unable to get its products to port.
It’s suffered brain drain and depopulation due to the mass immigration of loyalists. It struggles to raise capital because it’s a volatile state, with a Looney Tunes constitution, and low likelihood it’ll even make it into the next decade. It’s forced to pay high transit fees to get any oil through the U.
S. or Canada. Because it’s physically cut off from the global shipping network, it’s forced to sell its goods, including oil, to the U.
S. and Canada at criminally below-market prices. Imaginary American Alberta probably never receives statehood and is instead relegated to territory status, with some Crownlands being taken as federal lands — without the benefit of having local representation in the federal government.
In the off-chance it does become a state, things might be better, with theoretically more stability and agency, but that’s nothing to count on. Both scenarios also assume the province manages to make it through the constitutional quagmire of exiting the Canadian federation, which is a big assumption. A lot of Alberta’s existing problems are ones that can be solved right now, if its political leaders wanted to.
A sharper pruning of the civil service and removal of spiritually New Democrat senior bureaucrats is possible today. A revision to the leadership and structure of the province’s universities, currently committed to federal social policy goals, is possible today. Federal matters are out of our hands, but, if Alberta was wise, it would treat its civil service as a training ground for future federal bureaucrats under a Conservative government in Ottawa.
That’s far more realistic than independence — and if the province can’t even accomplish that, well, frankly, it probably doesn’t have the depth of competence to accomplish independence anyway. National Post.
