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.”
