“Western Alienation Separation”

Inside a hotel event hall in the centre of the province, 12 Alberta flags hung around the large room. But nowhere to be found was the red and white maple leaf.

Around 400 people had gathered at the Red Deer Resort and Casino Conference Centre for a town hall hosted by the newly re-named Republican Party of Alberta to promote the province’s growing independence movement.

OTTAWA — A new poll suggests more than half of Canadians say they understand why Alberta might want to split from Canada — even if almost two-thirds say they don’t want that to happen.

The Leger survey, which polled 1,537 Canadians between May 16 and 18, suggests that 55 per cent of Canadians understand Albertans’ desire for independence.

After the Conservatives’ federal election loss, some Albertans frustrated with Liberal government policies are rallying for separation from Canada. Recently, hundreds of separatists held a rally at the Alberta legislature, angered at the province’s place within confederation.

It’s not the first time Albertans have pushed for sovereignty. There were upswings in separatist sentiment during the National Energy Program in the 1980s. More recently, separatist agitators gained steam in the dying years of the 2010s, angered over Liberal legislation that targeted the energy sector and a general downturn in the petro-province’s economic fortunes. This culminated with the now-defunct Wexit movement.

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.