Many commenters seem to be appealing to an almost religious defense of present political borders. That attitude is untenable: there is nothing sacred about national boundaries, they are mere political artifacts like rules, regulations, tax codes, etc. If the people want to change them, they absolutely have the right to do so.
OK, but there are some logistical issues here- let's say Alberta votes to secede and this is somehow legally viable. All of the Albertan voters who didn't want to secede- including the native tribes- could then by your rules vote to secede from Alberta and join back to Canada. It'd be a mess. Towns and counties would split themselves in half, and so on.
What would happen if a landlocked town within Alberta wants to rejoin Canada- how would you handle that?
Russia is currently placing Russian citizens in the occupied parts of Ukraine exactly for this reason. If there will ever be a vote whether the Donbas Oblast or the Luhansk Oblast want to rejoin Ukraine, you can bet the vote will be pro Russia.
Cool. I suppose we'll see the U.S. support referenda in the Basque territory in Spain, Northern Ireland, the West Bank, Gaza, and Texas soon. Maybe in Guam and Hawaii, too.
Sure, and history deals the cards we're given and so on and so forth. Why don't we have referendums on keeping the US Constitution every year? That would be democratic as hell.
That's fine and all, but leave all by yourself. A territory isn't owned by the people that happen to be there. It's bound up in the systems and institutions they found and accepted, ingrained into a much bigger machinery. Alberta's own referendum already shows this: a court halted the petition because First Nations weren't consulted, because their claims predate any popular vote.
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.
Yes, and here "Canadians want" is used to say "the people within 100km of the St. Lawrence want". (That's actually part of the problem.)
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.
> AB sees, correctly, an inordinate amount of tax per capita go out for the privilege of policies intended to kneecap that region's development.
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.
Yes, also the right to self-determination is an unalienable human right.
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.
As a non-Albertan, this seems like a great bargaining ploy to get some leverage against the Federal Government, just like Quebec did. Most political parties in Canada seem to ignore and exploit the West most of the time, whereas they treat Quebec (transfer payments) and the maritimes (oil revenues and employment insurance) much more thoughtfully.
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.
That's what they said about Brexit. 52% of the population voted yes in a single election, and the rest got dragged along for a multi-year ride. Current polls put support for the decision at 31%, but it's too late.
That makes no sense to me. They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?!
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
> They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?!
Yes, of course, they didn’t give a shit. They couldn’t be bothered. Outcome was whatever for them.
You summed up my point. If someone doesn't vote if they can they support what ever the majority of the votes wanted. They were fine with it. So in they end they wanted what the majority wanted because that is the result. Everything else is fudging the numbers to feel better.
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.
Rationally, and unlike what that dirty old lady in The Holy Grail suggests, binding votes impacting foreign relations should happen on a single 50.01% vote and never ratified or verified.
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’.
They know that getting a legitimate majority vote is pretty much impossible. This probably isn't their intention. They want to get any vote on the ballot, then cry about the results being falsified and beg the US to invade. They want to be treated like Crimea.
~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.
It's clear it's a pandering to the provincial government base, and has zero legitimacy. This all stems from a boneheaded move to unify the right in Alberta to prevent another NDP leadership term - that term being something that actually did our province some good.
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.
I see from other comments that there's some concern over the validity of the signatures. But comparing the number of signatures on competiting petitions doesn't tell us much. I assume signature gathering in Alberta shares some common ideas with places I've lived... If you want something on the ballot you have a minimum number of signatures to gather, maybe another tier that enables a faster process, and you want to collect some number beyond that because some signatures will be found invalid, but after that there's no reason to continue collecting.
> 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.
Because now I'm interested... It seems that the last year, the full bench ruled that a referrendum on seccession without consultation is unacceptable.
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 is a consultation? That sounds like a vague ill-defined veto over ever making changes.
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 already separate first nations not joined to Canada or Alberta. I don't understand why Alberta not wanting to participate in Federalism anymore is an issue.
> They are already separate first nations not joined to Canada or Alberta
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''
As an Albertan, I'm embarrassed that this is the image we project to the world, and sad that our punishment for collusion with foreign enemies isn't stronger or better enforced.
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.
As an outsider I like this idea of being able to vote yourself out. This is the ultimate test of a democracy, imho, that you can leave it democratically (by vote and not by force).
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.
It's actually not available to most people that live in any third world country, otherwise migration would be significantly higher than it already is.
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
If there are no good options to migrate to, that doesn't provide a way out. And, as a migrant, that's ignoring the cost of migration (e.g. the decades it takes to lose a speech accent and not be seen as "the foreigner", assuming your ethnicity allows for that anyway)
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
You realize that this is the perfect way for foreign influence to destabilize western society, right?
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.
Maybe, but I have trouble with the framing. Referendum votes are >50%. If a foreign nation can get >50% of the Albertans to agree to something, that's still democracy.
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.
A foreign adversary only has to convince or “add” the difference needed to reach 50%. It never starts at 0.
I can’t 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?
A related issue is whether, or to what extent, a seceded entity can itself be subject to secession. This concern came up in Quebec when Cree and other groups suggested they'd drop out of post-separation Quebec and ''rejoin'' Canada. Quebec separatists were outraged at the thought of First Nations and pro-Federalist geographical areas turning their new entity into ''Swiss cheese''. It is highly likely that Alberta separatists would face the same challenges and take an equally dim view.
In a parallel universe - UK never left EU as Scotland, Northern Ireland, and City of London kicked out England and Wales out of UK, and saved everyone years of turmoil.
With strong justification, as one of the reasons their earlier bid for secession from the UK was squashed was the argument that secession from the UK would also automatically kick them out of the EU.
>That is still in play as the failure of Brexit solidifies.
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.
Sure, the country didn't go back to be a developing nation, but "similar economic trajectories" leaves a lot of margin for how much better or worse it could have been. Purely economically, about 2-5% of GDP growth seems to have been left on the table, and in terms of human cost it's really hard to say anything positive about closing international borders between similar and allied countries
> Quebec separatists were outraged at the thought of First Nations and pro-Federalist geographical areas turning their new entity into ''Swiss cheese''. It is highly likely that Alberta separatists would face the same challenges and take an equally dim view.
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.
> 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.
> 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 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).
Of these, I really only see "indigenous rights/claims" as a particularly difficult issue.
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.
By glossing over all the details as “surmountable” you are illustrating how easy it is to ignore critical complexity. Debt includes concepts like “what does independent Alberta actually own or have to go into debt to purchase if major assets within its borders are literally Canadian federal property or connected to existing treaty rights?” This answer makes or breaks the entire proposal and does not have an easy or obvious solution.
An independent Alberta would face the Dutch disease effect crashing the employment figures, wages and viability of everything except oil and gas. At least a 10% jump in unemployment in two years.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Its mainly urbanites vs the rest of the province which is a pretty standard pattern in Canada.
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 saw the cbc about that video, and the guy said that even if they finally vote to leave, they will have tons of conversations with Canada regarding currency, laws etc. + other provinces have a say on this. It looks like it's not that easy.
While I appreciate the sentiment, that would be condemning a great many Albertans who want nothing to do with separation to a fate I would rather not see a fellow Canadian faced with.
That would be very interesting. I would love to see how that would play out (particularly with California and DC), but it would kill the political balance in both countries. I think having to consider opposing viewpoints is probably paramount to how we have both flourished historically.
I want to agree, and I do in part, but I don’t believe Smith is a particularly democratic actor and there’s more happening here that shouldn’t occur in a democracy.
> 10% of the population being able to put major policies to a referendum is a bit silly.
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.
Important context, this referendum isn't binding, but rather a referendum on whether a binding referendum should be held. Separation is deeply unpopular, but Smith has been putting her thumb on the scale every step of the way, and this non-binding referendum isn't subject to the Clarity act in the same way that a subsequent binding one would be.
Thank you for a factually and legally grounded take on this. Lots of comments seem to think this has zero precedent or applicable legislation and just want to make it up as they go, much like the poorly informed and inarticulate separatists here in Alberta.
If I recall correctly, the Brexit referendum wasn't binding either. When the result ended up the way it did, there was sufficient political capital to push it through without a follow up vote.
The Brexit referendum was non-binding for important constitutional reasons.
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
Maybe you can help illuminate something that confused me about the result of the referendum. I thought it was worded such that voting yes would lead to a committee determining the details, and that that would lead to a second referendum? It felt like the UK population was tricked into voting for a 'sure I'll hear out your plan' which then turned into 'cool, we'll make a plan and then begin implementing it'.
> Maybe you can help illuminate something that confused me about the result of the referendum. I thought it was worded such that voting yes would lead to a committee determining the details, and that that would lead to a second referendum.
The wording of such a famous referendum shouldn't be hard to find if you want to know the wording
> 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
Thank you for those links. Those are written in a way that it's very obvious what you'd be voting for. I must have been thinking of some other voting measure, unless my memory is (very possibly) faulty.
I don’t remember anyone before the referendum saying it would be the first of two.
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.
In hindsight, I think I was misremembering that a second referendum was debated beforehand. But the non-binding aspect of the first had me thinking it would lead to further definition before it was embarked upon. Was there elections held between referendum and determining to do it?
Is there actually even a legal process for leaving Canada? I would assume you can't just decide to leave.
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.
> 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.
What surprised me about Canada is that sometimes there are fewer barriers to trade with outside countries, than between provinces! I recall someone saying "Canada needs an internal free trade agreement."
It's a result of the second Quebec referendum. The Clarity Act may appear like it facilitates leaving the federation, but many critics (among them federalist and sovereigntists) believe that the law is too vague as it give the House of Commons the responsibility to determine "whether a clear majority had expressed itself". What that means in numerical terms? Nobody knows. Further the House of Commons has the right to override the referendum if they deem it to contradict any of the under-specified tenets of the Clarity act. Finally, you need to amend the Canadian constitution to finally separate, which according to my understanding, requires the approval of all the (remaining) provinces.
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.
It was put into place after Quebec held a referendum that was close in 1995. Canada remedied the situation by making clear what it would take to leave.
Discussing separation is okay when QC threatens it - hence the clarity act. But when AB wants to do it, they are just a bunch of redneck traitors according to the rest of Canada.
(Cue the "AB is nothing", "AB has no culture", folks that don't have a clue what they are talking about).
Not a vote to separate. Quebec only tried to win a referendum giving the Province the authority from voters to approach the federal government with negotiations to achieve separation. Its more than a pedantic difference.
Part of the reason the clarity act is called the clarity act, was the belief the referendum question was intentionally unclear to trick people into voting for it.
> Is there actually even a legal process for leaving Canada?
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.
Smith is doing this because now outrageous amounts of American plutocrat money is going to flow into pushing the "leave Canada" position (from ketamine-rot trash like Musk. American plutocrats despise that a functional country not ruled by the super-rich sits so close). Smith has gone to the US to plan with her American partners repeatedly.
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 don't get it. They're having a referendum on whether or not to have a referendum? Why bother with two steps?
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.
It's a very complicated situation in Alberta. There were basically two competing petitions. A "Forever Canada" petition which supported Alberta staying in Canada, however it was built to force the provincial government to hold a vote in parliament about separation, therefore forcing all representatives to show their true feelings on separation.
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.
Interestingly, my state (Wisconsin) has a two step process for constitutional amendments. An amendment has to pass a referendum in two consecutive legislative sessions. It still doesn't prevent us from doing stupid things, but it seems to be programmed as a check on hasty voting, or on people assuming that nobody's going to vote.
> I don't get it. They're having a referendum on whether or not to have a referendum?
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.
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')
This is the phenomenon originally named "fake news" in the US during the 2016 elections. As in the comments that YouTube exposé you linked, despite what the evidence in the original investigations showed there were lots of accusations that this stuff was part of coordinated influence campaigns from outside countries. Threatened by this, Trump used the phrase against his criticism: labeling that the real fake news and any deeper discussion on it dropped from US politics.
The real issue is that these platforms have commoditized rumor in a way that gets around our cultural taboos about the practice.
With all the turmoil in US and other parts of the world I was completely unaware Albertans want to leave.
> 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.
Few Albertans. The Forever Canada petition got over 10% of the entire population to sign it. Considering that it was a grassroots effort and that you had to sign in person, meaning you had to go out of your way to sign an entirely optional petition, really shows how much support there is in Alberta to remain.
Related: Alberta Voter Data was leaked to an American Company by the separatist movement. Also, the question right now is if there will be a referendum proposal.
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.
Mini Brexit in the sense that a foreign entity is working to destabilize another.
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.
> A province seceding from Canada is way bigger than the UK leaving the EU
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.
What? The UK is doing better economically than Germany right now.
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.
> 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.
Misleading: not a direct referendum but a ballot question in the upcoming election on whether the government and entities should pursue the process to separate.
What I find interesting as a neutral observer is how people's views are often based on their own personal opinions about the country and region, and not the principles of democracy and the human right of self-determination. It seems like, if you like the country then you are a federalist and the separatists are traitors, anti-democratic, etc. If you don't like the country, the separatists are freedom fighters, and it's the federalists who are anti-democratic.
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.
If you want to understand why Alberta is holding a referendum on whether they should hold another separate legally-binding referendum in the future, you have to look at the recent court case where a judge in Alberta ruled that one of the two main petitions wasn’t allowed to proceed (The one that specifically called for a legally-binding referendum). The judges stated reason is that First Nations were not adequately consulted (interesting how this never came up in the Quebec referendums). As a result, the premier of Alberta suggested that until they appeal that court case that they cannot have a legally binding referendum. As such, for now, all they cannot do is a non-legally binding referendum on whether they should hold a legally binding referendum once they court case becomes resolved.
"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."
95% of Alberta is unceded First Nations land. It is not a valid country without it - without the consent of the relevant First Nations, a separated Alberta would be a few municipalities enveloped by... Canada.
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.
As far as I know, First Nations lands in Alberta are indeed ''ceded'' under Treaties 6, 7, and 8 with the Crown. British Columbia is a province with a huge proportion of unceded land, but not Alberta.
The treaties with the crown require the crown consult with them before adjusting them. This means that Albertan secession can't happen without their consent, as it would by definition, completely and unilaterally adjust the terms of those treaties.
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.
So because Quebec ancestors killed all the people who opposed the conquest of that land, it's okay for Quebec to secede?
But because another set of Canadians didn't kill off all the natives that still claimed Alberta's land, they can't secede legally?
Is that the logic?
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,
Wow, I'm not sure where you're going with that. Read up on the ''Brandy Parlit'' debates and you'll see that genocide of indigenous people was never at play in early Quebec. The relationship between European colonists in New France/Lower Canada/Quebec and First Nations has always been frought, but not genocidal.
U.S. wants more oil and pays influencers. Even if anyone is a legitimate Albertan separatist, voting in favor of it in this political climate is self-destructive.
Some modern precedents for countries established by peaceful legal secession include:
- 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.
And do what? There is no 'Albertan' national identity, like there is in Quebec, or Ukraine, or Taiwan or Ireland. You can't build an independent nation around something that is only wanted by a single political party, who have no fucking idea of how to include everyone who isn't a Tory on board with their project.
Trace it back a bit, and you'll find that there's nothing to this that isn't driven by the Department of State.
Québécois separatism is also driven by a single party with no plan for what to do with all the other groups. I also don’t think that an independent Quebec would be a good idea, but they have leveraged the idea to get equalization payments and increased voting rights. These concessions largely come at the expense of Alberta, so it shouldn’t be hard to see why people would be frustrated without any cia operations.
Albertan/Western Canadian identity is totally a thing, and has been around for a lot longer than this latest round of separatist sentiment. The west has been griping about unfair treatment from the federal government for over a century now, so 1) this isn't primarily driven by foreign interference and 2) it's not coming out of nowhere.
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.
Former Albertan here. Alberta even griped about unfair treatment when their conservative party had a majority in Ottawa for almost a decade. It’s just what people have learned to say.
A huge amount of academic research into ''western alienation'' has been, and continues to be, researched at Canadian universities. The concept is bedrock to studies of Canadian history and political science.
If you don't think it's a thing then you're either not from here, or haven't been paying attention. The average Canadian's opinion of Alberta is also very telling, with most of the rest of the country seeming to despise the province, or think it's some sort of regressive backwater.
You're being incredibly silly with your arguments. If you talk to anyone in the country outside of Alberta you're very likely to hear a negative tone when talking about them, especially if they are liberal. Our governments have very much fostered a hostile relationship with Alberta and has done very little to address their concerns. Anybody surprised by Alberta wanting out has had their head in the sand.
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.
No, it's not proving anything of the sort. You're trying to claim that the average canadian despises alberta, and that's simply not a thing. It is in fact invented whole-cloth.
According to this poll (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/poll-canadians-living...), nearly half of Canadians think that:
1) Alberta is not a welcoming place
2) Albertans don't care about other Canadians
3) Alberta is not a place they would feel comfortable living
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.
Can't avoid gloating over this one. Just like the Palestinian identity was created and weaponized against Israel by the Arab world, now Canadians will get a taste of their own medicine courtesy of the Trump admin.
You got the sides wrong unfortunately, one of the states you are mentioning was literally created in the last century and is now doing the same thing that prompted its creation. But it must be nice living in ignorance and buying the propaganda.
But why gloat? What are you winning? Even if there were prizes here (spoiler: all the loot boxes are empty in this game), do you perceive yourself better off because of this?
>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.
If Trump didn’t threaten annexation of Canada, this would have a much higher probability of success. It would also likely lead to Alberta becoming the 51st state
No. It's pretty clear that the Liberals have achieved dynasty status, only 25% of Canadians are net taxpayers, the rest live partially or fully on handouts, or are government employees whose income comes from taxes in the first place.
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.
This is truly trolling escaping the Internet. It's by no means the first instance; "The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed". The best time to have started taking this seriously was probably October 2015 or something. The next best time is now. These performative fits by thoughtless Adult Children get backed by real money, for purposes mysterious to me, but they seem purposes dark enough it would be nice to have a working system that would investigate deeply and make illustrative examples out of the benefactors. Oh but for a working democracy or a healthy journalism, what might we find? Carve "Cui bono?" on my tombstone so when they plow the place over for tract housing to cram their useful fools into, maybe the rubble will catch a person's eye and make them wonder.
No, as the subthread starter points out it is about paid influencers and not about heretical opinions. Bessent and Bannon overtly want the oil and Alberta as a 51st state:
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.
> it is about paid influencers and not about heretical opinions
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.
We could arrange a swap. Make Washington-Oregon-California into the province of South British Columbia and the great lakes region and New England into New Lower Canada.
"Wrongthink". Lol man, if you think that taking money from a country whose head of state has recently said that they may need to forcibly annex your own country, and then using that money to illegally obtain the personal information of citizens so you can attempt to break your country apart is merely "wrongthink" then you need to completely recalibrate yourself.
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.
> you would absolutely never tolerate a country like, say, China, supporting, both monetarily and otherwise, a group agitating for California to leave the union
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.)
That's not true, a number of Jan 6 people were convicted of seditious conspiracy, it's just that those convictions have now been vacated because the coup plotters have now ended up in charge regardless through other means.
I know of two people that moved away from Canada and consider themselves refugees for various reasons. It seems... a little out there. But it is a thing.
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.
10% of the population produces nearly 20% of the country's GDP. That kind of lopsided representation is dangerous breeding ground for contempt, so this kind of thing is not really surprising. Will be interesting to see where it goes.
Nobody thought there was any realistic chance of the UK leaving the EU either...
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.
Since you are comparing Canada and the U.S.A., let's look at some popular phrasing from each's Constitutions:
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.
I mean.. it's not like it's Alberta that produces the oil. Oil is concentrated in smaller places than that, so why shouldn't those places then separate from Alberta?
From this article it sounds like it's the people of Alberta that want to vote on succession. Including the ones that don't literally live on an oil field.
i think its mostly people that live pretty far from any oil fields that are the big proponents?
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
Speaking as an Albertan, it's only a very loud and vocal minority. The UCP government has seen that the premier only stays in power if they cowtow to the fringe crazies in the party, and that's what she's doing.
I met a Québécois woman years ago that said their own independence movement was shut down in part because of new immigrants to Canada not wanting to leave the commonwealth. No clue if that’s right or not. But given how much of a cash cow the western provinces are for Canada, and the mega spike in immigration it makes me wonder
Many commenters seem to be appealing to an almost religious defense of present political borders. That attitude is untenable: there is nothing sacred about national boundaries, they are mere political artifacts like rules, regulations, tax codes, etc. If the people want to change them, they absolutely have the right to do so.
https://unifixion.substack.com/p/political-boundaries-are-no...
OK, but there are some logistical issues here- let's say Alberta votes to secede and this is somehow legally viable. All of the Albertan voters who didn't want to secede- including the native tribes- could then by your rules vote to secede from Alberta and join back to Canada. It'd be a mess. Towns and counties would split themselves in half, and so on.
What would happen if a landlocked town within Alberta wants to rejoin Canada- how would you handle that?
Eh, it ain't ever happening anyways, this is just the UCP and other assorted wack-jobs playing games with Ottawa again.
All the Oil Sands land is treaty land, so First Nations get it if we leave.
Russia is currently placing Russian citizens in the occupied parts of Ukraine exactly for this reason. If there will ever be a vote whether the Donbas Oblast or the Luhansk Oblast want to rejoin Ukraine, you can bet the vote will be pro Russia.
Cool. I suppose we'll see the U.S. support referenda in the Basque territory in Spain, Northern Ireland, the West Bank, Gaza, and Texas soon. Maybe in Guam and Hawaii, too.
Nice NED propaganda.
Sure, and history deals the cards we're given and so on and so forth. Why don't we have referendums on keeping the US Constitution every year? That would be democratic as hell.
That's fine and all, but leave all by yourself. A territory isn't owned by the people that happen to be there. It's bound up in the systems and institutions they found and accepted, ingrained into a much bigger machinery. Alberta's own referendum already shows this: a court halted the petition because First Nations weren't consulted, because their claims predate any popular vote.
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.
But the meaning of "people want" is very delicately depending on the geographical area and moment in time.
Yes, and here "Canadians want" is used to say "the people within 100km of the St. Lawrence want". (That's actually part of the problem.)
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.
> AB sees, correctly, an inordinate amount of tax per capita go out for the privilege of policies intended to kneecap that region's development.
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.
Yes, also the right to self-determination is an unalienable human right.
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.
What about the right of not being determined by others? Say, the 10% who vote no.
Isn't that the problem with democracy? The tyranny of the majority and all that?
Lincoln disagreed. The good man even had the balls to let loose Sherman.
The referendum is actually about having a referendum first.
"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...
As an albertan this feels like desperate pandering to a tiny vocal minority to distract from real issues. Almost nobody wants this.
As a non-Albertan, this seems like a great bargaining ploy to get some leverage against the Federal Government, just like Quebec did. Most political parties in Canada seem to ignore and exploit the West most of the time, whereas they treat Quebec (transfer payments) and the maritimes (oil revenues and employment insurance) much more thoughtfully.
Exploit the West? Thats rich and definitely a western centric short sighted viewpoint.
Many in the west certainly wouldn't agree with you now, or 100+ years ago.
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 Salmon Arm Salute is still remembered in the West: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/a-b-c-museum-says-its...
A vote should end up showing that to be the case at least.
That's what they said about Brexit. 52% of the population voted yes in a single election, and the rest got dragged along for a multi-year ride. Current polls put support for the decision at 31%, but it's too late.
> 52% of the population voted yes
Huh? 37% of the eligible voters, much less the population, voted yes according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...
Everyone who didn't vote and had the ability, voted yes as well. If you don't vote you go along what the majority wants. So for me 52% is correct.
You have to vote for what you want or at least against what you don't want. Otherwise you are an enabler.
That makes no sense to me. They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?!
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
> They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?!
Yes, of course, they didn’t give a shit. They couldn’t be bothered. Outcome was whatever for them.
If you choose not to vote, then you are implicitly voting for "whatever ends up winning."
You summed up my point. If someone doesn't vote if they can they support what ever the majority of the votes wanted. They were fine with it. So in they end they wanted what the majority wanted because that is the result. Everything else is fudging the numbers to feel better.
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.
About a quarter voted yes, about a quarter voted no, about a quarter didn't vote and a quarter couldn't vote
Rationally, and unlike what that dirty old lady in The Holy Grail suggests, binding votes impacting foreign relations should happen on a single 50.01% vote and never ratified or verified.
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’.
Unless you make sure that most, if not all adults can vote, it won't show it.
If you only have 45% of your population votes, regardless of reason, you aren't actually getting the public opinion.
If people choose not to vote, then clearly their opinion on the issue wasn't very strong to begin with.
maybe in the same way that we have to keep voting on awful privacy legislation
They know that getting a legitimate majority vote is pretty much impossible. This probably isn't their intention. They want to get any vote on the ballot, then cry about the results being falsified and beg the US to invade. They want to be treated like Crimea.
Some numbers to consider:
~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.
It's clear it's a pandering to the provincial government base, and has zero legitimacy. This all stems from a boneheaded move to unify the right in Alberta to prevent another NDP leadership term - that term being something that actually did our province some good.
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.
I see from other comments that there's some concern over the validity of the signatures. But comparing the number of signatures on competiting petitions doesn't tell us much. I assume signature gathering in Alberta shares some common ideas with places I've lived... If you want something on the ballot you have a minimum number of signatures to gather, maybe another tier that enables a faster process, and you want to collect some number beyond that because some signatures will be found invalid, but after that there's no reason to continue collecting.
> 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.
Courts have determined that in these processes consultation must occur even at early times as this.
Because now I'm interested... It seems that the last year, the full bench ruled that a referrendum on seccession without consultation is unacceptable.
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.
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.
Isn't the important number not the total population, but the number of people who show up to vote?
What is a consultation? That sounds like a vague ill-defined veto over ever making changes.
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 already separate first nations not joined to Canada or Alberta. I don't understand why Alberta not wanting to participate in Federalism anymore is an issue.
> They are already separate first nations not joined to Canada or Alberta
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''
As an Albertan, I'm embarrassed that this is the image we project to the world, and sad that our punishment for collusion with foreign enemies isn't stronger or better enforced.
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.
As an outsider I like this idea of being able to vote yourself out. This is the ultimate test of a democracy, imho, that you can leave it democratically (by vote and not by force).
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.
> As an outsider I like this idea of being able to vote yourself out
"Voting with your feet" is an option available to almost everyone except North Koreans.
It's actually not available to most people that live in any third world country, otherwise migration would be significantly higher than it already is.
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
If there are no good options to migrate to, that doesn't provide a way out. And, as a migrant, that's ignoring the cost of migration (e.g. the decades it takes to lose a speech accent and not be seen as "the foreigner", assuming your ethnicity allows for that anyway)
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
You realize that this is the perfect way for foreign influence to destabilize western society, right?
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.
Maybe, but I have trouble with the framing. Referendum votes are >50%. If a foreign nation can get >50% of the Albertans to agree to something, that's still democracy.
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.
A foreign adversary only has to convince or “add” the difference needed to reach 50%. It never starts at 0.
I can’t 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?
> One of the "separatist" leaders is hiding from the law in Texas
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-...
Apparently more than one are in hiding, TIL. Seems appropriate for the kind of folk that do this.
A related issue is whether, or to what extent, a seceded entity can itself be subject to secession. This concern came up in Quebec when Cree and other groups suggested they'd drop out of post-separation Quebec and ''rejoin'' Canada. Quebec separatists were outraged at the thought of First Nations and pro-Federalist geographical areas turning their new entity into ''Swiss cheese''. It is highly likely that Alberta separatists would face the same challenges and take an equally dim view.
Another case: when Brexit happened, IIRC some people in Scotland were suggesting secession from the UK post-Brexit so they could rejoin the EU.
In a parallel universe - UK never left EU as Scotland, Northern Ireland, and City of London kicked out England and Wales out of UK, and saved everyone years of turmoil.
/sarcasm
With strong justification, as one of the reasons their earlier bid for secession from the UK was squashed was the argument that secession from the UK would also automatically kick them out of the EU.
That is still in play as the failure of Brexit solidifies. They can follow the lead of Ireland and the arrangements for the land crossing with N.I.
>That is still in play as the failure of Brexit solidifies.
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.
Sure, the country didn't go back to be a developing nation, but "similar economic trajectories" leaves a lot of margin for how much better or worse it could have been. Purely economically, about 2-5% of GDP growth seems to have been left on the table, and in terms of human cost it's really hard to say anything positive about closing international borders between similar and allied countries
> Quebec separatists were outraged at the thought of First Nations and pro-Federalist geographical areas turning their new entity into ''Swiss cheese''. It is highly likely that Alberta separatists would face the same challenges and take an equally dim view.
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.
> 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.
Citation needed. Good luck
un-elected government officials and activist judges
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.
That's not what it means, but go off. Although yes it is generally used pejoratively, and if you are using the term, its for a rhetorical effect.
> 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 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).
It has been my experience that people always seem to want simple solutions to complex problems.
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.
Of these, I really only see "indigenous rights/claims" as a particularly difficult issue.
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.
By glossing over all the details as “surmountable” you are illustrating how easy it is to ignore critical complexity. Debt includes concepts like “what does independent Alberta actually own or have to go into debt to purchase if major assets within its borders are literally Canadian federal property or connected to existing treaty rights?” This answer makes or breaks the entire proposal and does not have an easy or obvious solution.
Surmountable - "possible to deal with or solve successfully".
Does not mean "easy". It means they can be overcome.
I'll give you that currency isn't a huge issue. From what I recall, Quebec wanted to continue using the Canadian dollar if they separated.
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.
An independent Alberta would face the Dutch disease effect crashing the employment figures, wages and viability of everything except oil and gas. At least a 10% jump in unemployment in two years.
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.
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.
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.
Its mainly urbanites vs the rest of the province which is a pretty standard pattern in Canada.
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 saw the cbc about that video, and the guy said that even if they finally vote to leave, they will have tons of conversations with Canada regarding currency, laws etc. + other provinces have a say on this. It looks like it's not that easy.
As a Minnesotan I would gladly trade Alberta for Minnesota and become Canadian.
While I appreciate the sentiment, that would be condemning a great many Albertans who want nothing to do with separation to a fate I would rather not see a fellow Canadian faced with.
As long as Minnesota would have me I'd happily move there instead of staying in Alberta if this were to happen
Along with the local Canadian salary it entails?
I have no doubt Wisconsin would second the motion.
I think most of Canada (and probably America) would be okay with trading all the great lakes touching American states + the US west coast for Alberta.
Albertans are Canadians, and no, we're not going to condemn them to becoming americans or face dislocation over the actions of some loud idiots.
That would be very interesting. I would love to see how that would play out (particularly with California and DC), but it would kill the political balance in both countries. I think having to consider opposing viewpoints is probably paramount to how we have both flourished historically.
Such a waste of time, money, media space, human hours on useless thing.
Beats spending time on Tik Tok and social media!
This is part of Democracy.
I want to agree, and I do in part, but I don’t believe Smith is a particularly democratic actor and there’s more happening here that shouldn’t occur in a democracy.
She may just be happy that MHCare is out of the news. However, I'm not sure if this is any better.
Not like this it isn't.
Smith and the UCP have not been acting democratically whatsoever. Trying to paint it that way is either ignorant or deliberately malicious.
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.
> This is part of Democracy
It doesn’t need to be. 10% of the population being able to put major policies to a referendum is a bit silly.
Don’t look at our Swiss system, you won’t like what you see
> Don’t look at our Swiss system, you won’t like what you see
I vote in Zurich :). Our system has cooling-off features that Alberta does not.
Hey, mind getting in contact? :) See my profile for my info
> 10% of the population being able to put major policies to a referendum is a bit silly.
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.
Important context, this referendum isn't binding, but rather a referendum on whether a binding referendum should be held. Separation is deeply unpopular, but Smith has been putting her thumb on the scale every step of the way, and this non-binding referendum isn't subject to the Clarity act in the same way that a subsequent binding one would be.
Thank you for a factually and legally grounded take on this. Lots of comments seem to think this has zero precedent or applicable legislation and just want to make it up as they go, much like the poorly informed and inarticulate separatists here in Alberta.
If I recall correctly, the Brexit referendum wasn't binding either. When the result ended up the way it did, there was sufficient political capital to push it through without a follow up vote.
The Brexit referendum was non-binding for important constitutional reasons.
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
Maybe you can help illuminate something that confused me about the result of the referendum. I thought it was worded such that voting yes would lead to a committee determining the details, and that that would lead to a second referendum? It felt like the UK population was tricked into voting for a 'sure I'll hear out your plan' which then turned into 'cool, we'll make a plan and then begin implementing it'.
> Maybe you can help illuminate something that confused me about the result of the referendum. I thought it was worded such that voting yes would lead to a committee determining the details, and that that would lead to a second referendum.
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
Thank you for those links. Those are written in a way that it's very obvious what you'd be voting for. I must have been thinking of some other voting measure, unless my memory is (very possibly) faulty.
I don’t remember anyone before the referendum saying it would be the first of two.
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.
Also based on the fact that no specific plan for brexit had popular support.
In hindsight, I think I was misremembering that a second referendum was debated beforehand. But the non-binding aspect of the first had me thinking it would lead to further definition before it was embarked upon. Was there elections held between referendum and determining to do it?
Is there actually even a legal process for leaving Canada? I would assume you can't just decide to leave.
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.
> 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.
What surprised me about Canada is that sometimes there are fewer barriers to trade with outside countries, than between provinces! I recall someone saying "Canada needs an internal free trade agreement."
thats the current prime minister you are referring to
It's a result of the second Quebec referendum. The Clarity Act may appear like it facilitates leaving the federation, but many critics (among them federalist and sovereigntists) believe that the law is too vague as it give the House of Commons the responsibility to determine "whether a clear majority had expressed itself". What that means in numerical terms? Nobody knows. Further the House of Commons has the right to override the referendum if they deem it to contradict any of the under-specified tenets of the Clarity act. Finally, you need to amend the Canadian constitution to finally separate, which according to my understanding, requires the approval of all the (remaining) provinces.
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.
> the law is too vague as it give the House of Commons the responsibility to determine "whether a clear majority had expressed itself"
If it really came down to it, i think it would be the supreme court that decides.
It was put into place after Quebec held a referendum that was close in 1995. Canada remedied the situation by making clear what it would take to leave.
EU famously has one. Of course you might not consider it a country.
EU doesn't call itself a country strategically to not trigger the usual suspects
Discussing separation is okay when QC threatens it - hence the clarity act. But when AB wants to do it, they are just a bunch of redneck traitors according to the rest of Canada.
(Cue the "AB is nothing", "AB has no culture", folks that don't have a clue what they are talking about).
It's a thing because Quebec has tried to separate before.
Not a vote to separate. Quebec only tried to win a referendum giving the Province the authority from voters to approach the federal government with negotiations to achieve separation. Its more than a pedantic difference.
Part of the reason the clarity act is called the clarity act, was the belief the referendum question was intentionally unclear to trick people into voting for it.
It should be the least surprising thing about Canada - it has been dealing with separatist referendums for decades.
One such referendum, in 1995, was preceded by decades of discussion in Quebec of the pros and cons that triggered a 1980 referendum.
> Is there actually even a legal process for leaving Canada?
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.
Yes, but having a law is cheaper than having a war
The law is pointless if the province really wants to leave.
Smith is doing this because now outrageous amounts of American plutocrat money is going to flow into pushing the "leave Canada" position (from ketamine-rot trash like Musk. American plutocrats despise that a functional country not ruled by the super-rich sits so close). Smith has gone to the US to plan with her American partners repeatedly.
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".
It is technically possible to separate legally, but there are so many intentional roadblocks that it is effectively impossible to do so.
I don't get it. They're having a referendum on whether or not to have a referendum? Why bother with two steps?
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.
It's a very complicated situation in Alberta. There were basically two competing petitions. A "Forever Canada" petition which supported Alberta staying in Canada, however it was built to force the provincial government to hold a vote in parliament about separation, therefore forcing all representatives to show their true feelings on separation.
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.
Interestingly, my state (Wisconsin) has a two step process for constitutional amendments. An amendment has to pass a referendum in two consecutive legislative sessions. It still doesn't prevent us from doing stupid things, but it seems to be programmed as a check on hasty voting, or on people assuming that nobody's going to vote.
> I don't get it. They're having a referendum on whether or not to have a referendum?
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarity_Act
Bill C-20 passed in 2000. It's not so much effort to type "canadian clarity act" into a search engine or wikipedia.
> Still, opinion polls suggest that the majority of Albertans would vote against separating.
This feels familiar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXafC7tlqt0
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')
This is the phenomenon originally named "fake news" in the US during the 2016 elections. As in the comments that YouTube exposé you linked, despite what the evidence in the original investigations showed there were lots of accusations that this stuff was part of coordinated influence campaigns from outside countries. Threatened by this, Trump used the phrase against his criticism: labeling that the real fake news and any deeper discussion on it dropped from US politics.
The real issue is that these platforms have commoditized rumor in a way that gets around our cultural taboos about the practice.
With all the turmoil in US and other parts of the world I was completely unaware Albertans want to leave.
> 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.
> Ah interesting. I always thought US is rather decentralized with each state with its own government and laws and such
Maybe before being president was a daily ego boost in taking over the news
Some Albertans.
Few Albertans. The Forever Canada petition got over 10% of the entire population to sign it. Considering that it was a grassroots effort and that you had to sign in person, meaning you had to go out of your way to sign an entirely optional petition, really shows how much support there is in Alberta to remain.
I've put up some basic numbers in another comment that foreshadow what a futile exercise this is likely to be for the separatists.
If they force their opponent to chew through all their available resources leaving them unable to respond in other areas, was it really futile?
they arent that smart - they're burning through their own resources responding to trolls from their other policies like easy recall petitions
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
I'm not following your comment. How do you envision what you're suggesting, in real world terms?
If they secede the US can go help them with democracy. They do have oil.
Related: Alberta Voter Data was leaked to an American Company by the separatist movement. Also, the question right now is if there will be a referendum proposal.
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.
Mini brexit? A province seceding from Canada is way bigger than the UK leaving the EU.
Mini Brexit in the sense that a foreign entity is working to destabilize another.
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.
> A province seceding from Canada is way bigger than the UK leaving the EU
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.
What? The UK is doing better economically than Germany right now.
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.
> The origins of the data are not yet known
> 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.
isn't this more about alberta to hold referendum on whether or not to hold a referendum on whether to remain in Canada
Misleading: not a direct referendum but a ballot question in the upcoming election on whether the government and entities should pursue the process to separate.
What I find interesting as a neutral observer is how people's views are often based on their own personal opinions about the country and region, and not the principles of democracy and the human right of self-determination. It seems like, if you like the country then you are a federalist and the separatists are traitors, anti-democratic, etc. If you don't like the country, the separatists are freedom fighters, and it's the federalists who are anti-democratic.
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.
If you want to understand why Alberta is holding a referendum on whether they should hold another separate legally-binding referendum in the future, you have to look at the recent court case where a judge in Alberta ruled that one of the two main petitions wasn’t allowed to proceed (The one that specifically called for a legally-binding referendum). The judges stated reason is that First Nations were not adequately consulted (interesting how this never came up in the Quebec referendums). As a result, the premier of Alberta suggested that until they appeal that court case that they cannot have a legally binding referendum. As such, for now, all they cannot do is a non-legally binding referendum on whether they should hold a legally binding referendum once they court case becomes resolved.
>interesting how this never came up in the Quebec referendums
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."
Why not just wait until the court case is resolved?
It might take years. Once it's solved, Smith, Trump and the americans financing this BS might be gone.
95% of Alberta is unceded First Nations land. It is not a valid country without it - without the consent of the relevant First Nations, a separated Alberta would be a few municipalities enveloped by... Canada.
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.
As far as I know, First Nations lands in Alberta are indeed ''ceded'' under Treaties 6, 7, and 8 with the Crown. British Columbia is a province with a huge proportion of unceded land, but not Alberta.
The treaties with the crown require the crown consult with them before adjusting them. This means that Albertan secession can't happen without their consent, as it would by definition, completely and unilaterally adjust the terms of those treaties.
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.
> 95% of Alberta is unceded First Nations land
That is wrong. You were probably thinking of British Columbia, where no such grand Treaties were ever enacted.
hang on, your previous claim was that its unceded land, with no treaty contract at all - which is it?
do you actually know what the terms are, and who has what responsibility to them?
So because Quebec ancestors killed all the people who opposed the conquest of that land, it's okay for Quebec to secede? But because another set of Canadians didn't kill off all the natives that still claimed Alberta's land, they can't secede legally? Is that the logic?
quebec is on treaty land.
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.
Wow, I'm not sure where you're going with that. Read up on the ''Brandy Parlit'' debates and you'll see that genocide of indigenous people was never at play in early Quebec. The relationship between European colonists in New France/Lower Canada/Quebec and First Nations has always been frought, but not genocidal.
Pretty sure Quebec would have to break apart in order to separate too
U.S. wants more oil and pays influencers. Even if anyone is a legitimate Albertan separatist, voting in favor of it in this political climate is self-destructive.
There's, sadly, been a significant uptick in self destructive voting tendencies for certain voting demographics as of late.
Mainly UK and her former colonies.
Mainly UK and her former colonies.
You might think this if the only language you can read is English.
Some modern precedents for countries established by peaceful legal secession include:
- 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.
And do what? There is no 'Albertan' national identity, like there is in Quebec, or Ukraine, or Taiwan or Ireland. You can't build an independent nation around something that is only wanted by a single political party, who have no fucking idea of how to include everyone who isn't a Tory on board with their project.
Trace it back a bit, and you'll find that there's nothing to this that isn't driven by the Department of State.
Québécois separatism is also driven by a single party with no plan for what to do with all the other groups. I also don’t think that an independent Quebec would be a good idea, but they have leveraged the idea to get equalization payments and increased voting rights. These concessions largely come at the expense of Alberta, so it shouldn’t be hard to see why people would be frustrated without any cia operations.
At least Quebec actually does have a distinct nation/culture/ethnicity/language.
Albertan/Western Canadian identity is totally a thing, and has been around for a lot longer than this latest round of separatist sentiment. The west has been griping about unfair treatment from the federal government for over a century now, so 1) this isn't primarily driven by foreign interference and 2) it's not coming out of nowhere.
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.
Former Albertan here. Alberta even griped about unfair treatment when their conservative party had a majority in Ottawa for almost a decade. It’s just what people have learned to say.
there's no reason to call it not a culture.
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
Alberta was created out of several divisions of the NWT barely over 100 years ago, formed by the federal government of Canada.
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.
Toronto is much much younger than alberta, formed by the government of ontario
if age is a disqualifying factor, hating on toronto cant be a fundamental part of the canadian identity
A huge amount of academic research into ''western alienation'' has been, and continues to be, researched at Canadian universities. The concept is bedrock to studies of Canadian history and political science.
If you don't think it's a thing then you're either not from here, or haven't been paying attention. The average Canadian's opinion of Alberta is also very telling, with most of the rest of the country seeming to despise the province, or think it's some sort of regressive backwater.
Meanwhile our Prime Minister was raised in Edmonton...
No, it's not a thing.
You're being incredibly silly with your arguments. If you talk to anyone in the country outside of Alberta you're very likely to hear a negative tone when talking about them, especially if they are liberal. Our governments have very much fostered a hostile relationship with Alberta and has done very little to address their concerns. Anybody surprised by Alberta wanting out has had their head in the sand.
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 doesn't make any sense, that's like saying because Trump was raised in New York and he's now president, that New York identity isn't a thing.
I think the dismissive attitude here is proving my point.
No, it's not proving anything of the sort. You're trying to claim that the average canadian despises alberta, and that's simply not a thing. It is in fact invented whole-cloth.
According to this poll (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/poll-canadians-living...), nearly half of Canadians think that: 1) Alberta is not a welcoming place 2) Albertans don't care about other Canadians 3) Alberta is not a place they would feel comfortable living
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.
You said “despises”. Your evidence falls wide of the net.
And you have no evidence at all
Can't avoid gloating over this one. Just like the Palestinian identity was created and weaponized against Israel by the Arab world, now Canadians will get a taste of their own medicine courtesy of the Trump admin.
You got the sides wrong unfortunately, one of the states you are mentioning was literally created in the last century and is now doing the same thing that prompted its creation. But it must be nice living in ignorance and buying the propaganda.
But why gloat? What are you winning? Even if there were prizes here (spoiler: all the loot boxes are empty in this game), do you perceive yourself better off because of this?
>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.
There's a minor difference.
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.
> Albertans, while obviously the most disadvantaged and persecuted Canadians in recorded history
Um what?
(The author is complimenting us on our ability to recognize sarcasm in the wild, don't ruin it)
If Trump didn’t threaten annexation of Canada, this would have a much higher probability of success. It would also likely lead to Alberta becoming the 51st state
it would also have a much lower chance of being put on the table.
the separatists are the people that heard trump say that, and said YES PLEASE
Incoming Canadian Civil War?
No, they're civilized.
No.
No. It's pretty clear that the Liberals have achieved dynasty status, only 25% of Canadians are net taxpayers, the rest live partially or fully on handouts, or are government employees whose income comes from taxes in the first place.
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.
Investigate and imprison the people who are pushing this because of money received from the US.
This is truly trolling escaping the Internet. It's by no means the first instance; "The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed". The best time to have started taking this seriously was probably October 2015 or something. The next best time is now. These performative fits by thoughtless Adult Children get backed by real money, for purposes mysterious to me, but they seem purposes dark enough it would be nice to have a working system that would investigate deeply and make illustrative examples out of the benefactors. Oh but for a working democracy or a healthy journalism, what might we find? Carve "Cui bono?" on my tombstone so when they plow the place over for tract housing to cram their useful fools into, maybe the rubble will catch a person's eye and make them wonder.
> This is truly trolling escaping the Internet
The referendum? Or calling for imprisoning people for wrongthink?
No, as the subthread starter points out it is about paid influencers and not about heretical opinions. Bessent and Bannon overtly want the oil and Alberta as a 51st state:
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.
> it is about paid influencers and not about heretical opinions
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.
We could arrange a swap. Make Washington-Oregon-California into the province of South British Columbia and the great lakes region and New England into New Lower Canada.
"Wrongthink". Lol man, if you think that taking money from a country whose head of state has recently said that they may need to forcibly annex your own country, and then using that money to illegally obtain the personal information of citizens so you can attempt to break your country apart is merely "wrongthink" then you need to completely recalibrate yourself.
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.
> you would absolutely never tolerate a country like, say, China, supporting, both monetarily and otherwise, a group agitating for California to leave the union
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.)
That's not true, a number of Jan 6 people were convicted of seditious conspiracy, it's just that those convictions have now been vacated because the coup plotters have now ended up in charge regardless through other means.
Those other means being winning a free and fair election?
You misspelled “treason”
> You misspelled “treason”
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.
“took american money to” is treason.
For what crime?
Allegedly they have taken money from americans or maybe russians. It is generally a crime to take foreign money as part of a political campaign.
Treason
Sedition, technically.
A referendum is neither of those.
I know of two people that moved away from Canada and consider themselves refugees for various reasons. It seems... a little out there. But it is a thing.
> But it is a thing.
On a per capita basis, 50x more Canadians move to the US than the other way round.
It's more than just a thing.
> it is a thing
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...
Iran also has a functioning court system w/ both qadi & mufti offering opinions.
> Iran also has a functioning court system
Fair enough, I should have said credible.
I'm not enough of an expert in 12er Shia fiqh to say how credible they are-but they are there.
10% of the population produces nearly 20% of the country's GDP. That kind of lopsided representation is dangerous breeding ground for contempt, so this kind of thing is not really surprising. Will be interesting to see where it goes.
Nobody thought there was any realistic chance of the UK leaving the EU either...
By that framing you are saying that Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver should also all seek secession.
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.
> There is no legal precedent.
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.
Since you are comparing Canada and the U.S.A., let's look at some popular phrasing from each's Constitutions:
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.
I mean.. it's not like it's Alberta that produces the oil. Oil is concentrated in smaller places than that, so why shouldn't those places then separate from Alberta?
Incorrect. If you've ever been through Alberta you'd already know that though.
Oil & gas fields, and wells, are distributed over much of Alberta.
https://static.aer.ca/prd/documents/catalog/Map90_Oil_Gas_Fi...
i did a bit of playing with aer data back in december, and was super surprised just how distributed the wells are.
without doubt there is a main concentration around Lloydminister though, and the developed oil sands at least are all in one place
From this article it sounds like it's the people of Alberta that want to vote on succession. Including the ones that don't literally live on an oil field.
i think its mostly people that live pretty far from any oil fields that are the big proponents?
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
Speaking as an Albertan, it's only a very loud and vocal minority. The UCP government has seen that the premier only stays in power if they cowtow to the fringe crazies in the party, and that's what she's doing.
I met a Québécois woman years ago that said their own independence movement was shut down in part because of new immigrants to Canada not wanting to leave the commonwealth. No clue if that’s right or not. But given how much of a cash cow the western provinces are for Canada, and the mega spike in immigration it makes me wonder
Thats not hard to believe. An immigrant wouldnt be a part of some native separatist movement.
Maybe look for information instead of sharing uninformed opinions on a random anecdote?
Net federal tax by province for 2024:
To call the west a “cash cow” is just a bit misleading, even if you grant the separatists British Columbia, which is frankly a laughable notion.Would you be kind and recalculate this per person in each province? Thank you!
Blaming immigrants … never gets old, does it?
The part about immigration and Quebec is right though, doesn't mean the immigrants are to blame.
Fwiw my only familial connection to Canada is my Levantine immigrant cousins in Quebec