~465,000 legally verified signatories to the federalist petition to declare Alberta permanently part of Canada
~360,000 status First Nations persons within Alberta
~330,000 legally unverified signatories to the separatist petition to hold a referendum to separate from Canada
First Nations have successfully argued in court that as consultations with them are required by the Canadian Constitution, no such consultations had even been suggested by separatists.
Apart from the fact that the Alberta population is ~4 million, it is difficult to see how separatists can figure they'd win a referendum to separate.
We've unfortunately been putting up with these leaders doing this sort of thing too long and let the rural part of this province dictate far too much.
FWIW, I even bought myself a membership to try and do at least a small part to prevent this a decade ago, but that was impossible. People have truely lost their minds here and it's bizarre to talk to people that were once rational.
It was the ok I’ll ask you to stop the discussion once and for all.
It’s a plan that Cameron completely bungled, ruining his personal reputation, his party’s, and his country’s. I dread the consequences for the average Albertan if this goes south.
> First Nations have successfully argued in court that as consultations with them are required by the Canadian Constitution, no such consultations had even been suggested by separatists.
IMHO as an outside observer, if the current question is 'should we commence the legal process to have a binding referrendum', having consultations now is inappropriate. They would be part of the process to have a binding referrendum and so they must either be done or not after the results of this referrendum.
Isn't the important number not the total population, but the number of people who show up to vote?
I'm very open to tribal sovereignty in deciding what whether to remain in in Canada, but that should apply to tribal territory, not holding the majority of the population of the territory hostage.
They are part of Canada.
Treaties 6, 7, and 8 clearly ceded indigenous lands to the Crown, and the Indian Act spells out the relationship between First Nations and Canada. Further, the Constitution Act, 1982, contains Section 25 of the Charter Of Rights And Freedoms articulating ''Aboriginal And Treaty Rights''
https://unifixion.substack.com/p/political-boundaries-are-no...
One of the "separatist" leaders is hiding from the law in Texas. He can stay there.
If there was any legitimacy in this process, the petition that got 150% of the votes in less time would have been addressed first rather than this sham, likely fake one, run by bad actors provably funded by foreign entities.
"Alberta to hold fall referendum on whether to have binding referendum on separating from Canada" https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-separation-r...
The result is that the details of how complex those problems are get ignored or their impact is represented in a diminished way.
In this case currency, debt, indigenous rights/claims and existing legislation are some examples of what is being glossed over and ignored.
For currency, The Maldives, with a relatively small population and tiny GDP has their own currency. What is the difficulty in currency? Ignoring the fact that AB would probably just use the greenback.
All of these of these issues are surmountable.
The eastern part of BC would want to join AB in leaving but that topic is totaly squashed in BC public discourse and media. Privately is a different story.
It's like the eastern part of Oregon and their relationship to Portland as a good US comparable.
I wonder if the same thing might apply here.
PS. The interviewer was Tyler Cowen, and [the transcript](https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/margaret-atwood/) says:
ATWOOD: I think things will stay kind of the way they are. But think about this very carefully, as people did when it was a distinct possibility. You have Quebec there. The people to the north of Quebec are not French-speaking Quebecers. They’re indigenous people. And they said — and that’s where the hydroelectric power comes from, by the way — they said, “If you separate from Canada, we’re going to separate from you on the same grounds. Different language, older culture, etc.”
And Quebec said, “Oh, no, you’re not.” And they said, “Oh, yes, we are. And by the way, we happen to have a treaty with Canada that says that if any foreign power invades us, they have to defend us.” So if Quebec separates, north of Quebec separates from Quebec, Quebec invades them, Canada invades. You see what I mean?
51st state with the USD absorbing the excess productivity however? It comes down to the negotiations. Right now, huge Albertan budget surpluses get sent to Ottawa to be spent outside of Alberta (largely as a carrot to inhibit other independence movements), which is what motivates the Albertan independence movement. Any Albertans would hope the US to be more egalitarian.
However, the US might put them over a barrel and make similar revenue flows a condition of joining, which would be the smart play for Washington (possibly with some tariff and travel restrictions sticks if they don't). If the 47 admin is bankrolling the content farms producing this independence movement (as Orban was the Daily Wire) then the US has all upsides.
Canada fractured and easier to loot and Alberta entirely undefended from looting. Somehow, I expect that the only Canadians recognising this attack surface are a few bureaucrats too low down in Ottawa to get their voices out and that the parties will just try to fight the anti-independence tactics in the culture war moralising style of the now-departed Freeland, which is a decade out of date and powerless to sway the Albertans.
.
Generalising away from just Canada, one of the great weaknesses of liberal parties worldwide is electoralism. They cannot look at the electorate they have over their desire for the electorate they'd prefer they had. To paraphrase PG, if you don't ditch people who prefer being right to winning you'll deserve the outcome they produce for you.
TLDW: There are some Dutch guys hiring Americans to pretend to be Canadians to put out YouTube slop videos to make money via AdSense on the political-idiot-doomer niche on YouTube (and at least 1 is selling a "make quick money" guide to the scheme). Whether they're just a grifting pyramid or if there are other sources of income driving it is not made clear. Though they insist its entertainment and not paid-for political motivated content (note had they admitted that they'd be in breach of various laws and ToS')
> Smith acknowledged some of those concerns on Thursday, arguing that the federal government has tried to "move towards a more centralised American-style system" and is infringing on provincial jurisdiction.
Ah interesting. I always thought US is rather decentralized with each state with its own government and laws and such. But I guess that's when compared with individual European countries, not Canada.
Then, I wonder if they would like to still have a king https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Canada as a new country, or would they drop that as well? If they want to drop that, that faction could lean into the current US current protest movement and put up "No Kings" signs and hold rallies and such. It would be good enough for a chuckle at least.
Nobody thought there was any realistic chance of the UK leaving the EU either...
Likewise, you could say that NYC and LA should singularly secede from America by that same logic.
It doesn't track. There is no legal precedent. Alberta as an entity did not exist beyond Canada.
This is being driven by a vocal conspiracy-minded maple-MAGA base that got our current premiere her job.
A majority of Albertans are against any talk of separation.
No chance of succeeding, or st least incredibly slim, and the past success (Brexit), proves the country will slowly rip itself to pieces, weakening unity, engaging in tribalism and resentment.
Cui Bono?
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2026/05/20/investigations/a...
This is clear foriegn political interfierence. It's like mini-brexit. We have a weak, incompitent leader in Alberta who is giving in to her right-wing base so she can stay in power. It's David Cameron all over again.
This feels familiar.
I guess this makes sense, since the traitor/seditionist and freedom-fighter/revolutionary labels are entirely dependant on your affiliation with the associated country. But a lot of Americans have strong negative reactions to this idea, or the idea of Brexit, but almost certainly support their own founding fathers who were likewise traitors to the British Empire.
- Singapore (Malaysia) 1965
- Montenegro (Serbia) 2006
- Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia) 1993
- Iceland (Denmark) 1944
However, these are rare as most secession events are violent. Establishing a new country typically requires a revolution, and there is more support for that broadly in Canada for various reasons than any single province. The Alberta referendum is a polite signal and a test.
The boomer generation and it's broadly left politics is dying off, meaning that the LPC and NDP need to replenish their electoral support to stay in power. It is uncontroversial that they have been doing this using radical immigration policies and throwing money away, particularly via the abuse of definitions of "temporary," and "asylum." Political interference by both India (exporting their independence problem) and China (creating a resource vassal) is undeniable at this point. Canadians with a stake in the country are quite reasonably concerned that their society is being demolished and replaced.
Will they revolt, and could it succeed? It depends on whether they get US sponsorship or not. The more interesting question than the Alberta theater is whether Canada revolts and establishes a republic, or whether it gets annexed by the US or the EU. Alberta is just a canary for these other scenarios, imo.
the separatists are the people that heard trump say that, and said YES PLEASE
Trace it back a bit, and you'll find that there's nothing to this that isn't driven by the Department of State.
Whether it's a good idea is a different question. I doubt most Albertans want to be independent. I also think being a landlocked country with a resource economy means that you will always be subject to outside control, whether that be parliament in Ottawa or corporate offices in Dallas. It remains unclear if being independent will solve the issue of Alberta being land-locked.
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The requirement to do so is in our constitution, the Charter. It's not optional and not absurd to anyone with proper historical understanding of Canadian history.
If anyone remembers middle school history, the American civil war was ignited by the North refusing to accept Southern secession. Should've made it more obvious, I guess.
This month, one judge ruled that you also can't have a referrendum to start the process to have a referrendum on seccession. It seems there is time for appeals before the election in October.
Assuming the full bench affirms this ruling, I guess the next step for the petitioner would be to have a referrendum to start the process to have a referrendum to start the process to have a final referrendum?
If the government is unwilling to start the process itself; it seems that there's no way for citizen referrendum to force the issue? Seperately, I agree it seems unlikely for the referrendum to pass if the government is unwilling to start the process by itself, but politics isn't always clear.
What would happen if a landlocked town within Alberta wants to rejoin Canada- how would you handle that?
Sure, but as one who has done it, moving country is surprisingly hard.
All the Oil Sands land is treaty land, so First Nations get it if we leave.
So then you say, ok let's do it by county (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is) instead. Same problem. Even within a county-sized area, you're going to have dissenters who are at risk in the new country. Even within a single town. You can't draw geographic borders around and write laws for swiss-cheese-shaped clumpings of individual people.
I live in a pretty "red" area in a "blue" US state. If Team Red decided that half of my state (including my home) was going to secede into their own Red Utopia, my family would legitimately be in fear for our lives. I don't think secession is ever going to be a viable option in the real, polarized world where political beliefs are peanut butter spread across the geography.
Well, thats politics? The people proposing this are supposed to be considering that. And the people in that position are supposed to be considering that.
Every day there are votes with outcomes people dont want to go along with the ride for. But they do, or they resist, or otherwise.
Let's not let politics' meaning become so diffuse it's just free speech by another name. Herein "politics" seems to be too inconsequential for a far more consequential result than cycling out party A for B for a few years would have.
I've half joked before that brexit was the only solution Cameron et al saw left because they didnt have a way to hold Brussel's paper pushers to account. Taking your ball and going home is not bold leadership: it's an admission one's argument and solution is weak.
All of Scotland voted against leaving the EU. Every single county has voted no. And yet it still got dragged out.
So I guess the answer is - people get told to shut up and deal with it.
I’m 100% with the political philosopher Bertrand Russel on this topic: borders are arbitrary, and a benevolent world government/federation of cultures would not restrict your movement or sense of belonging.
But! But how many people must vote yes? What percentage of abstention? If 60% vote to leave, but half the people didn’t vote, only 30% of the yes is valid.
I don’t think this should be taken lightly by populist movements. To me, Brexit has shown us exactly what the dangers are of a non- or weirdly-qualified majority.
Claimed identity isn't a suicide pact and consent of the governed isn't equally geographically distributed.
AB sees, correctly, an inordinate amount of tax per capita go out for the privilege of policies intended to kneecap that region's development. The justifications for those policies (whether you agree with them or not) matter less than the fact they're being imposed from a condition of moral hazard.
Hence, the people of AB might vote to ban the people of ON/QC from imposing their laws; that's what separation is and why it happens.
Not only that, but the Feds typically use their outsized tax revenue from Alberta to “invest” in Quebec to buy votes via propping up unviable businesses, subsidies, outsized proportion of public sector jobs, and federal spending in general.
You can find many examples of specific programs where Québec gets the federal government’s money in incredible amounts. But you add all these programs together and you still come up short per person compared to Ontario. Why?
The Southern Ontario car sector.
Unless you get everyone with a stake on board, which is hard, and accept it will take a long while to unwind, it's irresponsible. And if you aren't willing to do that work, just pack your bags and leave.
It's kind of obvious that borders are not a physical phenomenon but a social construct.
I’d love to see stats on countries merging vs splitting, may sumptuous is 1 to 50 at least.
Seems like a hard to prove statement.
Not so fast. They are in a union with other provinces ergo they have a say.
If nonetheless in some asinine way they secede, will they take their portion of Canada's debt, and other liabilities?
Won't all other provinces require them to negotiate a border, security, and trade policy? Surely they can't expect to be separate yet equal to BC or even the NWT?
I find it sort of fascinating because people really do have a fanaticism about this that they don't have for other political artifacts. Nationalism is a powerful force. And people will special-plead themselves silly arguing why one group should be given self-determinism and others shouldn't, including invoking federal laws, untestable predictions about future events, etc. But when it comes to other politics, they revert back to a globalist position.
On the flip side, separatists are often driven by nationalistic interests as well - look at Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries as fantastic examples of this.
That's exactly what Putin thinks, right? "I'm one of the people; I wanna change borders!" :)
Nice NED propaganda.
/sarcasm
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To be fair, the failure is on the UK governance itself, not on Brexit. Other major EU economies like France and Germany have seen similar economic trajectories since 2020 as the post-Brexit UK, despite them still being in the EU. The post-2020 Covid and Ukraine crisis are difficult to isolate from Brexit to know if it's just Brexit alone or the world economic situation fucking everyone regardless since then.
Sure, Brexit probably didn't help, but looking at where Germany is now, I feel like UK handled the cold-turkey exit from the union far better than anyone expected.
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This is complicated by the fact that First Nations themselves are highly stratified. They receive billions in dollars from the federal government with zero oversight so corruption is rampant.
So what happens if a majority of First Nations people want to separate but the chiefs in charge of a particular band don't?
It's like the pipeline issue in British Columbia... Bands and their elected officials voted to allow pipelines, then some "hereditary chiefs" associated with environmentalist groups convinced courts that their opinion carries the same weight as elected chiefs and the court blocked pipeline projects.
In Canada there's layers of un-elected government officials and activist judges who seem more concerned with getting federal funding (aka. kickbacks aka. bribes) than any sort of democratic notions.
Does "activist judge" mean the same thing in Canada that it does in the United States: "Any judge who rules against my position?"
Also:
dismalaf
Name checks out.
Citation needed. Good luck
It seems you're implying something here that is comically ridiculous. Like some sort of crocodile-tear for natives who are unheard, but thankfully you've got their back.
Natives overwhelmingly reject both Quebec and Alberta separatism. Quebec is old news so I'll ignore that, so instead lets stick to Alberta.
The Alberta separatism movement (~30%, which is about the same as the MAGA base in the US, and they are largely interchangeable and driven by the same racism and stupidity, and the MAGA base is hugely the reason this is all happening, grotesquely interfering in Canada) is overwhelmingly filled with right-wing, racist, backwards hicks. The idea of being dragged along with the goals of those people is utterly orthogonal to the best interest of natives, for blatantly obvious reasons.
>Bands and their elected officials voted to allow pipelines, then some "hereditary chiefs" associated with environmentalist groups convinced courts that their opinion carries the same weight as elected chiefs and the court blocked pipeline projects
You mean the pipeline that is currently fully built and operating at triple capacity? THAT pipeline? Or the many other pipelines that have been built, where resource extraction is higher than it has been in history?
Or maybe you're talking about the coast to coast pipeline that would have been built under the national energy program that Alberta not only rejected, but they use as the basis of their rage to this day (while simultaneously bashing their fists about not having a coast to coast pipeline).
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Have you considered that it may not be an insult but legitimate criticism?
The official government stat is 1.05M FN members. They have been targeted by over 200B$ in federal wealth transfers alone excluding tax incentives, provincial and municipal funding since 2015. That's almost 20K$ per person per year, more than what most Canadians pay in taxes each year and yet many FN communities don't have running water.
I think to ask about potential corruption or at least gross mismanagement is absolutly legitimate.
Which one is that?
One of the separatist leaders was found guilty of misappropriating more than 1.3 million CAD from his elderly aunt and uncle’s bank accounts:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/dennis-modry-misappropriated-...
We've seen some interesting cases of this, in Spain and in the Donbas of the last years.
I think the outcome of people voting against it is a great outcome. You have the freedom. You paid for the vote (its expensive) and "they" did not win. Hurray for unity at the highest level.
"Voting with your feet" is an option available to almost everyone except North Koreans.
I'm not at all sure if voting to splice a country should be a thing you can do, maybe there is more merit in some international right to a proportional vote on something (no FPTP system) so you get better representation of all opinions, but simply saying "you can always go somewhere else" seems a bit too simple
Democracy hasn't been hardened against social media and I'd prefer not to be another failed experiment like Brexit where we allow for foreign money to intentionally damage society.
Yes it feels wrong for the US to be giving money to influencers to influence the vote, but it's not like those voters are being coerced. In their opinion, Alberta would be better as a separate country.
Whether that opinion is enlightened or not has no bearing on it being democratic or not.
Canada owns the natural resources. The Albertan separatists want to take it from them on top of being politically separate.
More seriously: Why?
ETA: There is definitely a significant pro-separatist faction within the UCP, but I don't think the current party leadership is really willing to commit to separating, even if they are buddy-buddy with key figures in the current US regime.
Also note that this referendum does not require that the question be clear (per the Clarity Act), which will allow them to confuse voters and garner apparently higher support, that they can use to coerce the federal government into giving them what they want.
You're too eager to label legit "governance" as bureaucracy imho
https://xcancel.com/DonBraid/status/1187052993788559360
This is about more than just money though.
Politically the west is underrepresented and the cultural difference between the West and the rest of Canada is very significant - unless you ask folks from Ontario who have never been to AB. In my opinion, Canada is too geographically and culturally diverse for a central government to have so much power.
The United States has also had this problem for a long time, imo.
These people are serious. They feel a genuine sense of grievance for how they perceive the rest of Canada has treated them. They have come to believe that there is a legitimate Albertan identity that is unique to the region and people and that is being persecuted 'by Ottawa.' They also feel that the separatist course of action is one with nothing but positives and only minor negatives. Some of them lie about ulterior motives to see Alberta join the US, while others are in denial that this could even be a possible outcome should Albertans decide to separate.
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Huh? 37% of the eligible voters, much less the population, voted yes according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...
You have to vote for what you want or at least against what you don't want. Otherwise you are an enabler.
If you only have 45% of your population votes, regardless of reason, you aren't actually getting the public opinion.
Does not mean "easy". It means they can be overcome.
If they opted to go with the USD, they'd have to trade all their CAD - which will undoubtedly take a huge hit if they separated.
I still think that separatists would say that Alberta doesn't have to deal with a share of the debt and that would be a sticking point.
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Is Alberta taxed at a higher rate than other provinces? Nothing in the top few hits on Google indicates this to be the case.
And I'm not sure how the US would be different - all states pay the same federal income tax rates, whether that's individual or business income.
Under the current equalization system, Alberta last received a single Canadian dollar of direct spending in the 1964/65 fiscal year, whilst four other provinces have received over $1B annually since 2014 (Quebec, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia).
It sounds like I'm selling Albertan independence, but the fact that Ottawa aims for progressive internal redistribution is the exact same thing the US already has, as you point out. Similar figures of only receiving indirect federal returns can be stated for American net contributor states, too. It's the price of being in a large country, where in exchange you have a pooled currency and military that reduce vulnerabilities to external attackers.
In 2023, the federal government spent $24.0 billion including an estimated $3.3 billion from Alberta, which has not received equalization payments since 1964/65. From 2007 to 2022, Albertans’ net contribution to federal finances was $244.6 billion, more than five times the net contribution from British Columbia or Ontario, the only other two net contributors.
Albertans’ also disproportionately contribute to the CPP. From 1981 to 2022, the amount Albertans paid into the program, over and above what retirees in Alberta received in CPP payments, was $53.6 billion, approximately six times greater than the net contribution of B.C., the only other net contributing province.
Legally, leaving required an Act of Parliament. To hold a binding referendum, they would have had to pass an Act that says "here are the exact details of how we'll leave the EU, coming into force if the referendum passes".
But that would have required them to figure out all the exact details of what it means to leave the EU, and they didn't bother - they just held the referendum and assumed they could figure out the details later if Leave won, which they didn't expect would happen.
We all saw how well that worked out.
> there was sufficient political capital to push it through without a follow up vote.
This seriously overstates how smoothly things went between 23/6/2016 and 31/1/2020
The wording of such a famous referendum shouldn't be hard to find if you want to know the wording
Edit: just realised I still had this tab open from checking something for another subthread. It says nothing about a committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2016_EU_Referendum_Ballot...
Edit edit :)
On the same page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...), I found this. Perhaps you're remembering that?
> After internal polls suggested that 85% of the UK population wanted more information about the referendum from the government, a leaflet was sent to every household in the UK. It contained details about why the government believed the UK should remain in the EU. This leaflet was criticised by those wanting to leave as giving the remain side an unfair advantage; it was also described as being inaccurate and a waste of taxpayers' money (it cost £9.3m in total). During the campaign, Nigel Farage suggested that there would be public demand for a second referendum should the result be a remain win closer than 52–48%, because the leaflet meant that the remain side had been permitted to spend more money
EDIT: oh, there is a process. thats the Clarity Act. This seems extremely surprising - I've never heard of this sort of thing before with any other country.
It's a little surprising - even as a Canadian - if you're unfamiliar with Canadian politics/history/civics, but Canada is more loosely held together than most other countries, including the US. And a comparison with the US is instructive, because Canada's founders were unifying the country the wake of the US Civil War and were working very much in response to it: there was a fear that the US would turn imperial in an exercise of national unity and begin trying to snatch up the rest of the continent from the British and a belief that the British wouldn't care to defend them, which was arguably the primary motivation for Confederation: to form a unified front against American expansionism. And the Fathers of Confederation had seen how horrible the Civil War was and wanted to prevent that sort of thing from occurring, so the provinces - like in the US, formerly independent colonies - were given more power than the States, with the separation of powers clearly and rigidly defined.
The Clarity Act itself wasn't part of Confederation, but that's the cultural legacy that informs it: a civilized process allowing provinces to separate without bloodshed is just about as fundamentally Canadian as anything.
So it can be argued that the Clarity Act is a way to legislate friction to defederation.
Of course Quebec (and like Albertan) separatists hold that all this is moot and that they can self-govern as they wish following a referendum. Others look at the "no-deal" Brexit as a template.
(Cue the "AB is nothing", "AB has no culture", folks that don't have a clue what they are talking about).
That's also the prevailing sentiment in much of Alberta.
Does there need to be a legal process? If Albertans are willing to fight a war over it then all they need to do is declare that they don't recognize Ottawa's authority anymore and then go about trying to get other countries to recognize their independence.
And they aren't first pushing becoming a token raped resource of the US, because that is massively unpopular. Instead they're pushing a magical "super Canadians within Canada but also not beholden to those libs and I get to pardon people" middle ground.
This is all so comically transparent and obvious.
Oh and fun fact -- a "Forever Canada" petition gained far more signatures, far quicker (and without people stealing election lists or faking signatures). Smith's UCP stalled and sat on it, but then raced to follow the "democratic will" of the tiny subset of Albertans that are calling for separation.
I understand that Albertan Canadians stick with leaders like UCP because that's their only conservative choice, but this is going to turn out incredibly poorly for you. Even this stupid question is purposefully ambiguous enough that any answer can be construed as "yes, leave".
I googled the Clarity Act and it appears to be recently-passed US (not Canadian) legislation about regulating cryptocurrencies or something. What's its relevance here?
I am not Canadian and know nothing about Canadian politics. Someone please enlighten me.
A second petition by "Stay Free Alberta" asked the government to hold a referendum on separating. However, it was blocked by a judge because a previously ruling basically said that separating would violate treaty rights of Indigenous peoples in Alberta. It's also fraught with controversy as the individuals running the petition were able to (likely illegally) obtain the voter rolls for every Albertan. They used it to build an online tool to track their progress. There is speculation (without evidence since the signatures on the petition is not public) that they simply used it to fill out the petition for people they knew. There are pieces of evidence that point to this being a possibility, for example, a Stay Free Alberta leader claimed that in some communities, nearly 98% of residents signed the petition. These are generally right leaning communities, however, getting 98% of people in a community to do a single thing would be incredibly hard.
Exactly. Albertans are scratching their heads, wondering what on earth Premier Smith is trying to accomplish. Utterly ridiculous ''solution'' to some internal problems within her party, I'm guessing.
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She was openly going around all standard democratic and diplomatic protocols and holding private meetings with the American executive in Florida.
That is not part of democracy, unless you are simply calling it the corrupted part.
It doesn’t need to be. 10% of the population being able to put major policies to a referendum is a bit silly.
The real issue is that these platforms have commoditized rumor in a way that gets around our cultural taboos about the practice.
Maybe before being president was a daily ego boost in taking over the news
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You might think this if the only language you can read is English.
Legal precedent doesn't really matter here. If Alberta wants to leave and they're willing to fight a war over it, then that's up to them. USA already went through this once.
U.S.A. ''life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness''
Canada ''peace, order, and good government''
Those are fundamental to the identity of each nation's people. Are they core beliefs of the majority of their citizens? Probably. Are Canadians ready to fight a civil war over Alberta separatism? Not at this point, even slightly.
In order to draw the statement and comparison you just have, you have to throw out ALL legal and historical fact. And also decide that the rights of the Aboriginal land owners in Alberta mean absolutely nothing.
I don't know what it's like to be American, but I presume that not even they would be on board with wholesale land confiscations on such a massive scale. Sets a bad precedent, doesn't it?
Oil & gas fields, and wells, are distributed over much of Alberta.
https://static.aer.ca/prd/documents/catalog/Map90_Oil_Gas_Fi...
without doubt there is a main concentration around Lloydminister though, and the developed oil sands at least are all in one place
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It did come up. It's referenced in the Supreme Court of Canada case on secession. https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1643/in...
"Consistent with this long tradition of respect for minorities, which is at least as old as Canada itself, the framers of the Constitution Act, 1982 included in s. 35 explicit protection for existing aboriginal and treaty rights, and in s. 25, a non-derogation clause in favour of the rights of aboriginal peoples. The "promise" of s. 35, as it was termed in R. v. Sparrow, [1990] 1 S.C.R. 1075, at p. 1083, recognized not only the ancient occupation of land by aboriginal peoples, but their contribution to the building of Canada, and the special commitments made to them by successive governments. The protection of these rights, so recently and arduously achieved, whether looked at in their own right or as part of the larger concern with minorities, reflects an important underlying constitutional value."
This is not a concern in Quebec, because the overwhelming majority of it is ceded land.
If ducks had two wheels, they'd be bicycles, and if there was anything in common between the two provinces, you might have a point.
The treaties were made in perpetuity, and if you are going to not hold up the crown's end of the promises, the FN's side - giving the crown and Alberta governance over the land - needs to be reverted as well.
Contracts require both sides to adhere to them.
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Russia and its proxies ran an active measures campaign in the UK. If the US government isn’t doing something similar, the toxic soup of the maga-sphere definitely is.
Genuinely debatable. The total economic destruction of Brexit has been far higher than anything Alberta would suffer. And geopolitically, Alberta wouldn’t take itself off the table the way the English have basically rendered the UK irrelevant.
And better than anywhere in Europe for Tech with Deepmind and Ineffable Intelligence there.
It still shares many of the same mistakes as Europe though - e.g. now having to buy Russian oil and gas again instead of using the North Sea oil, not expanding nuclear power, rampant welfare and council housing corruption, etc.
By *near-instantaneous* (this year or this quarter) growth perhaps, but Brexit was a while ago and the 10-year growth was about 36.8% for Germany and about 25.1% for the UK: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=germany+gdp+2025%2Fgerm...
(That said, how each nation handled the pandemic is a massive confounding variable).
Germany is currently ahead by 1.2 trillion per year for nominal GDP, 1.7 trillion by PPP GDP, and also ahead on both nominal per capita and PPP per capita.
I agree there are some shared weaknesses, but oil and gas are now short-term thinking, and energy policy wasn't helped by (nor, fortunately, hurt by) Brexit.
AI, much as I like using it, I'm not at all clear who is going to get left holding the bag, in each of the various scenarios from "it's a bubble" to "and now we're post-scarcity" and everything between.
> The addresses of around 2,000 Albertans
> Lorne Gibson, former Election Commissioner at Elections Alberta: “The data is worth probably millions of dollars. It's probably worth at least $3 million.” “It’s the largest data breach in Canada. I haven’t heard of anything that surpasses that scale,” he added.
Not gonna lie, the Commissioner’s remarks and the general tone wouldn’t be out of place in a South Park episode about Canada, hah.
Buddy, patting yourself on the back this much gives away the game
especially when theres a matching culture in texas, and there's constant travel back and forth between the two, both for the oil-men and the cowboys
This was a good Globe piece a month ago: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-alberta-has-...
Some choice quotes.
> The Wild Rose province isn’t like Scotland, Quebec, or Catalonia. Everyone can more or less agree these are “stateless nations.” Maybe you think those nations should have their own state, maybe you don’t, but they follow a well-worn political pattern. Albertan separatists, on the other hand, are trying to create a state with no nation. That does not follow a well-worn political pattern. Nobody has ever done this.
> The idea that Quebec is a nation is not divisive in Quebec, not an idea that separatists think is super and federalists think is dumb. It is basically a matter of consensus among political actors there. What they disagree on is whether the Quebec nation is better off inside or outside of the Canadian confederation.
> Who sees that in Alberta? When has any elected deputy of Alberta’s legislature, let alone literally every single one of them, loudly and publicly affirmed that on behalf of their constituents they perceive Alberta as a nation? Are there any historical instances whatsoever of outside observers seeing Albertans as a nation that would compare to such seminal documents as the Durham Report?
> Even separatist leaders use the word “nation” sparingly. The Alberta Prosperity Project’s manifesto, The Value of Freedom: A Draft Fully Costed Fiscal Plan for an Independent Alberta, lives up to its title by speaking in exclusively financial terms; even then it can only refer to Alberta as a nation using somewhat sideways language. When it states that “a sovereign Alberta could become one of the lowest taxed and regulated nations in the world, rivalling jurisdictions similar to Dubai and Monaco,” it could just as easily substitute “state” for “nation.”
> It’s clear that Alberta (the place where I have lived longest in my life) is not like Ontario, any more than the Maritimes are (I also lived eight years in Dartmouth). These places are all homes to distinct cultures. But in none of those three places do we find sustained instances of diverse groups of both insiders and outsiders clearly referring to them as repositories of a national identity other than “Canadian.”
It's not a thing.
Hatred or criticism of Toronto and Ontario at large is a thing. But that's a thing everywhere. It's a fundamental part of the Canadian identity.
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It's almost like it's entirely driven by foreign influencers and their puppets.
>now Canadians will get a taste of their own medicine courtesy of the Trump admin.
Ah so no, you're just in the higher end of the sinking canoe laughing at the people who are drowning.
Whether Palestinians have a national identity or not, driving them out of their homes at gunpoint and settling in is a war crime.
Albertans, while obviously the most disadvantaged and persecuted Canadians in recorded history, have not yet had anyone commiting genocide or war crimes against them.
Um what?
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Most Canadians who are upset with the status quo are leaving or have already left. Last year saw a record amount of Canadians move to the US.
The referendum? Or calling for imprisoning people for wrongthink?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/analysis-alberta-sepa...
The U.S., as you very well know, has a long history of influencing foreign separatist movements for its own benefit. It even has overt organizations like the NED, which had a DOGE defunding theater but is still funded and deleted its detailed activities from its website. There are many other ways of funneling influencer money.
When the Soviet Union did similar things to the U.S., that activity was called "treason", as you also very well know.
This makes sense. If she took money from Americans agitating for separatism in Canada to promote separatism in Canada, and that violates Canadian law, I can see a legitimate path for investigating and imprisoning.
The really galling thing here is that as an American you would absolutely never tolerate a country like, say, China, supporting, both monetarily and otherwise, a group agitating for California to leave the union. You'd all call that treason loudly and proudly, but now that your country is doing it to someone else suddenly we have to slow-roll this.
Wrongthink (well, technically, crimethink) is canonically treason. Nutters on Reddit calling everything treason isn’t new.
In this case, I’m failing to see how someone—who, granted, appears to be a nutter—following a lawful process is treason.
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Anyone can claim refugee status. That doesn’t make them refugees.
Being a refugee requires showing persecution that one can’t find relief for within the country’s own system [1]. Given Canada has a functioning court system, the second part of the definition is failed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Sta...
Fair enough, I should have said credible.
On a per capita basis, 50x more Canadians move to the US than the other way round.
It's more than just a thing.
East:
ON: 92,392M
QC: 43,549M
NS: 4,464M
NB: 5,167M
NL: 2,467M
PE: 680M
West:
BC: 33,037M
AB: 29,900M
SK: 5,579M
MB: 5,745M
North:
NT: 273M
NU: 162M
YT: 254M
A) having too much of your economy be tied to oil generally causes dysfunction in the country. See all of the middle east.
B) Solar is getting cheaper. I dont think oil is going away in the next 5 years. But 20 years? Idk
C) independent Alberta would be landlocked. You think getting pipelines is hard now. Just wait until you have left the country and have no leverage.
Obviously it will be higher in the west because incomes are higher, but the rates will be the same, which is the more salient point.
You'll see the same thing if you look at any sub-national division with high salaries - e.g. Toronto and Vancouver have similar incomes as Alberta, so pay a similar amount per person in federal taxes.
Ottawa-Gatineau is notably more of a cash cow in terms of federal taxes than Alberta, by the taxes-paid-per-person measure.
People are very bad at considering stuff like this. Both voters and politicians.
When I left the UK, a former acquaintance was very confused that their support of something they thought was "just politics" led to me having no interest in continuing to talk to them.
I very much doubt that David Cameron or Theresa May expected a newspaper to have a front-page headline calling judges "Enemies of the People"[0], similarly for a half the politicians who have been milkshaked[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemies_of_the_people_(headlin...
When you consider the tiny detail of actually contributing to federal finances, in the past 20 years alone Quebec has received ~360 billion more than it contributed, whereas Ontario has received ~232 billion LESS than it contributed.
Nearly half a trillion difference between the two, and nothing to do with the auto industry whatsoever.
And all the First Nations treaties are with the Crown and predate Alberta.
The cost of implementing customs controls ALONE amounted to more than the sum total of UK contributions to the EU budget from day 1 of the UK joining the common market. The losses to the UK economy have been staggering -- up to 8% of GDP on a recurring basis. And no the UK didn't have a cold-turkey exit from the EU, that would have been a "no deal" exit.
But... but... splutter Brexiters, "look at Germany". Always looking at growth rates and cherrypicking data. Germany has had a massive increase in energy costs, far greater than experienced in the UK.
Go on: tell us Brexit is a mere "flesh wound"
Brexit has been a bone-crushing failure and repeated polls show a majority of the electorate knows it. A toxic minority of older voters, the UK's MAGA cohort, is ready to double down, and all they will achieve if they get anywhere near govt is the breakup of the UK, wihch of course many younger non-English voters support. Either way it's been a quite boon to the EU.
Every single one of those went downhill in all of major EU economies since 2020 too. Considering UK had Brexit on top, the fallout seems pretty well managed.
>Always looking at growth rates and cherrypicking data.
We need to be looking at numbers we can somewhat objectively measure to compare. GDP number is cold and soulless, it doesn't care if you GDP went down because of a flood and your neighbor's because of a hurricane, it's still gonna be GDP vs GDP regardless of who fucked up what.
Regardless, "voting with your feet" is an individual action. Voting at home is a collective one, representing the will of not just you but the people from the place that you come from and were born into. Only one of those reflects the ideals of democracy, if that's really the ideal being strived for
Well sure it is. It isn't easy. There's a difference between available and easy.
When you leave you cut all important ties to the polity, you surrender your ability to participate in democratic processes and you revoke control over yourself and your property. It’s the nearest thing to direct violence you can do without crossing that line
If that's true then isn't it better individuals do this "almost violence" only to themselves, of their own volition? Rather than impose it on everyone living in the territory? Committing "almost violence" against others, for no fault of theirs, doesn't become fair just because it was voted on, right?
This happened in ww2 Germany. many left. Hitler never got 51% of votes. Yet he managed to take over.
I can’t blanket agree that “it’s their opinion after all” because fraud works the same way. The victim willingly triggers their own loss but after being deceived. Brexit shows the works, almost half the supporters feel like they got the bait and switch, being promised one thing and then getting another. But this fraud you’ll never be able to punish and deter because the foreign party is not under your control. So why allow any avenue for it to make a difference?
So wrapping up the process in another layer of "informed individuals" is another form of government that is even easier to manipulate, because there are fewer of them.
There is no self-protection or those who are incidentally manipulated by forgoing their own responsibility. ie Manufactured Consent. This sentiment (albeit articulated differently) is why wealth inequality has become such a hot topic in the US. It's blatant that if it's many or few, it makes little difference within US politics. Billionaires can afford the influence to make the decisions. That's the game.
If you are going to draw that line, foreign vs. domestic is a good place to do it.
We can't know what they want if they don't or can't vote. Putting "they voted yes" in their mouth sounds insulting to me, but I'm an outsider to the UK so maybe it's wrong for me to say that
Yes, of course, they didn’t give a shit. They couldn’t be bothered. Outcome was whatever for them.
You can say a lot of things about the majority of this group but not that it was necessarily irrelevant to the whole group
You could also just say they didn't exist if it makes you feel better. But calculating the percentage from the eligible voters gets you no where. They didn't vote. It just makes the number smaller. Whatever. It doesn't change anything. It's not first to 50% of eligible votes. It's the majority of voters.
But I am angry at everyone who doesn't vote if they can. Especially if they complain that this isn't what they wanted.
More rationally, if some 25% of the country can’t express themselves and another 25% are unsure/uncommitted one should assume their interests are best represented by the most invigorated and unified minority.
I wish I could drop an ‘/s’, but, uh, ‘/no-really-thats-this-timeline’.
You seem to think that voting is a simple choice of "do it or don't" and it really isn't that simple.
You need little restrictions. For example, not every country takes away voting rights from prisoners or folks previously convicted as a felon. Some places are pretty lenient to pregnant folks, sick people, etc. When my mother was pregnant with my sister, due around voting day, they nearly didn't let her vote absentee. She argued and got to vote but how many people were just denied in this situation? It would be a non-issue in some places. It wasn't that she didn't have an opinion - she was just nearing the time for freaking birth.
When I moved to Norway from the US, I no longer had to deal with voter registration. Once I lived here 3 years, I could vote in local elections. They just send me a voting card. Voting is easy, can be done in multiple locations over a period of a few weeks. So long as I had the card, no ID needed. (most folks keep their address updated for multiple reasons, so getting it isn't a big issue for me, anyway).
Any barriers you have to voting - like the registration system in the US, inflexible voting times, or very strict voter id laws - means that some folks won't be able to vote even if they want to. Barriers that make it difficult for groups of folks to vote is just a way for the state to control the election instead of the people voting with their conscience.
21 countries have compulsory voting laws, on the other hand.
And you can't say that a voter's opinion is a strong one, just that they vote. So many folks vote by just voting with the party they chose. That's not a strong opinion. That's just voting, and no one is checking motivations to see.
This indicates Alberta (and Ontario and BC) don't pay higher tax rates. The equalization payments just come out of the general budget.
The US isn't all that much different. Wealthy states pay more per capita because it's an income tax, not a per capita tax. Looks like ~13 states pay more than they get back, with Massachusetts paying relatively more (-$5000/person) and New Mexico recieving relatively more (+$15,000/person).
A lot of people pushed unsuccessfully for a second referendum after the first one but that was never based on any pre-existing legalities or precedent, it was just an attempt to overturn the first result from people who were upset that theyd lost.
If it really came down to it, i think it would be the supreme court that decides.
I vote in Zurich :). Our system has cooling-off features that Alberta does not.
I think it's fantastic, actually. If the US had such a mechanism in place, we'd get term limits passed in a jiffy! In the absence of such a mechanism, the political class can simply refuse to act on popular measures. And while 10% might seem like a small number, the time, effort, and organization required to get 1/10th of the entire population to sign on for such a measure is actually a huge undertaking.
the resources for anti-separatism while trump is around are endless, and you dont need to spend time convincing or anything.
theyve really gotten their opposition more organized, and say, working on more ambitious projects like corb lunds anti-coal petition
kinda red deer ish? west of the queen e?
the actual oil industry and workers are either in the cities, or from out of province, and work seasonally-ish on the oil fields. dunno if its true anymore, but there used to be a joke that it was all newfies, who'd work just long enough to get unemployment, then head back home til it runs out, then around again.
Neither group has any particular incentive to have alberta be independent, nor a US state. The businesses might want to replace the newfies and albertans with more predictable undocumented latino labour, but they dont have experience in how to do that or hide say, injuries, from the government.
that said, a vote still isnt a bad thing - itll shower alberta with federal attention to get things alberta wants, like pipelines east, west, and north, and Id love to have the alberta grid connected to newfie hydro, rather than having quebec sell newfie power to americans
That is wrong. You were probably thinking of British Columbia, where no such grand Treaties were ever enacted.
do you actually know what the terms are, and who has what responsibility to them?
you might want to do some amount of research before accusing the french ...
who by far out of the colonial powers had the best relationship with indigenous people in north america, and whos relationships created a new culture blending french and indigenous cultures together into the Metis,
... of genocide.
I've been saying it for a while not but "independence" is a distraction and not the end goal here. The inevitable outcome would be annexation by the US.
The concept of an independent Alberta as an identity is a fringe matter, not equivalent with generalized notions of alienation and grievances related to equivalence within confederation on a policy level.
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if age is a disqualifying factor, hating on toronto cant be a fundamental part of the canadian identity
No, it's not a thing.
I don't think them leaving the country is the right solution, but this is what happens when people feel ignored for a long time, they go with the nuclear option of leaving. It's very clear that a lot of people in Alberta feel mistreated, and the governments should be working to hear their concerns and make changes. But sadly they seem to do the opposite and ignore them and continue to make negative remarks about them which furthers the problem.
In fact their behaviour is similar to the dismissive behaviour you have been showing in these replies to the other user.
That's some bad karma, pretending you can read someone like that and attempting to beat them down with your ignorance and then claim to be a victim.
Also, which Alberta? Edmonton? Cardston? Fort McMurray? Lloydminster? Grande Prairie? Canmore? I guarantee you will find varying levels of Albertan identity and many different perspectives in each. Albertan identity is not a mirage.
However, they failed to even get enough signatures to properly form. Their platform is to "basically remove Alberta from confederation" (the party founder's words). But note: there was no Alberta before confederation.
Alberta business owners having a beef with Ottawa leadership is not the same as a common and foundational identity across Alberta that desires independence. That latter notion is in the extreme minority. Fringe stuff. For instance, the support between the WIP (and aligned groups) is similar to the support for the province's Communist parties.
No. But I don’t think we’d put people in jail for it unless they were ready to overthrow the government. (Hell, we didn’t even charge the actual people trying to violently overthrow the government with treason.)
it left the thinking and talking side when it became actions.
"we" in this case is canada and the canadian government, and have had no such armed attempted to overthrow the government.
For a similar item you should instead compare to the truckers thing, where a group similarly collected agitation money from the US, then did the agitation. Their bank accounts are still frozen afaik, and some are finishing their prison sentences now
But I can see what you mean here. Just that I'd phrase it as "you will just have to live with the outcome" and not "you voted for this outcome" or "52% of the population wanted this" as it was phrased above. That is what I'd call fudging numbers to sound better than they were :p
There might be a situation where you have decide between two equally bad things. In that case not voting would be okay. But that's rarely the case.
Sometimes it's okay to just vote against the worse of the choices. That's still better than doing nothing. You WILL get one of the choices (unless there is a revolution or something). It's not like you will get none of these if you don't vote. Therefore apathy and not voting is a bad thing.
Example Brexit: You could vote remain or leave. There was no third option. Everyone who didn't vote because none of the options were what they wanted, still got leave. It didn't matter if their stance was "remain but maybe work on the terms" or anything else. The result was "leave". Functionally they accepted that. Functionally they sad "leave" because the majority of the voters said "leave". It didn't matter what they wanted. Only what they got. Just because they didn't vote.
Same goes for US elections. "I don't want either of them" translates to you get what the others want if you don't vote. Always. This can happen when you vote as well but then you at least made your voice heard. Your vote was recorded. There were more people with another opinion. That's democracy. Anything else is apathy and in my eyes you lost all right to complain.
Disclaimer: I am assuming a working voting system and the ability to vote.
I think the dismissive attitude here is proving my point.
And noticeably, the opinions of the Albertans are generally different from the rest of the country! How curious for a place without an identity of its own, as you claim.
I've never experienced this myself despite living here for years, working in oil/resource/agriculture-adjacent sectors most of my life, and spending a few years in Ontario. It is, in my experience, purely CPC/UCP propaganda. I certainly wouldn't have spent january pushing edmontonians out of their parking lots if I despised them lol