Jared Wesley, Peggy Garritty and Jim Dinning: Abuse? Really?

Alberta separatists like to pretend that they are the victims in a toxic relationship. If anything, it's the other way around.

Jeffrey Rath of Stay Free Alberta (Jason Franson/ The Canadian Press)

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By: Jared Wesley, Peggy Garritty and Jim Dinning

Alberta separatists are fond of saying our province is trapped in an abusive relationship with the rest of Canada.

At their rallies and town halls, the metaphor is as unavoidable as the opening prayer. Stay Free Alberta spokesman Jeffrey Rath and Republican Party leader Cam Davies are both on record as saying Alberta is in a “toxic and abusive” relationship with Ottawa. Popular separatist memes feature imagery of Alberta as the battered wife fleeing an abusive federal husband.

These comparisons trivialize the experience of people who have endured intimate partner violence.

But let’s take the vile metaphor seriously for a moment. If there is a toxic dynamic in Alberta’s relationship with the rest of Canada right now, it’s coming from the separatists. They are the ones poisoning the partnership by isolating Albertans from the country they helped build, promising a utopian future, gaslighting them into mistrusting their own Canadian identity, and using ultimatums to make them choose province over patriotism.

Let’s start with the isolation, a classic tactic in emotional manipulation.

Separatists don’t simply ask Albertans to reject Ottawa. They ask us to mistrust our own feelings by turning away from neighbours, relatives, treaty obligations, national institutions, and a shared history. They want Albertans to make their world smaller.

Separatists are fond of telling Albertans that the rest of Canada doesn’t respect or deserve us, and that Ottawa can never be trusted. This is like insisting that our fellow citizens are all somehow out to get us despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. “They’re using you,” the separatists insist. “They’ve betrayed you, laughed at you, and you’d be a fool for staying.” With that mindset, separatism is simply a matter of self-respect.

But most Albertans don’t want to leave Canada. They want a better place within it with more influence, more recognition, and — yes — more respect. They want the chance to lead, not leave.

Many separatists know this, instinctively. That’s why they rarely tell the truth about what it would take to achieve independence. Instead, they sell a fantasy version where Albertans resolve all of their grievances with none of the costs or consequences. We can leave Canada, they suggest, but somehow keep all of the Canadian things we love, from our pensions and passports to our markets, security arrangements, and citizenship rights. We can have all of the benefits of Canada’s social and economic union without paying any taxes.

Going well beyond what Quebec once called “sovereignty-association,” the Alberta separatists are promising more than just a great spousal support deal; they’re guaranteeing we can remain friends with full benefits.

The reality: for Alberta to be as prosperous outside Canada as within it, the separatists would need to rebuild the very close ties we already have with the other provinces and our various trading partners. All of those arrangements would need to be negotiated from scratch, with Alberta a lone party bargaining against dozens of others. It makes you wonder why we’d want to leave in the first place, if we’d have to spend years and billions of dollars just to get back to the status quo ante.

That’s why separatists pivot to gaslighting, telling people not to trust their own sense of reality.

Using the classic “DARVO” technique, separatists Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. They reject any risks associated with their project, slag anyone who raises them as anti-Albertan, and then cry foul when asked basic questions about treaties, borders, debt, currency, pensions, trade, or citizenship.

The gaslighting extends to identity. Albertans know who they are. Most of us carry more than one loyalty at a time. The vast majority of us consider ourselves both Albertan and Canadian. Yet separatists keep telling us that these dual attachments are a sign of weakness. They imply that loving Canada makes us naive, submissive, brainwashed, or insufficiently loyal to Alberta. As if our patriotism is some kind of false consciousness.

Then comes the emotional blackmail. If Canada really loved Alberta, it would give us everything we demand. By the same token, if Albertans truly loved their province, they would be willing to leave Canada.

Like a manipulative partner who makes you choose between your spouse and your friends, separatists frame the choice as being between province or country. On one side, pride, courage, and freedom. On the other, humiliation, cowardice, and servitude. Those ultimatums are the hallmark of an unhealthy relationship.

Separatists will label our observations as fearmongering. By pushing back against the separatists’ fantastical claims, they’ll say federalists are bullying Alberta into staying in an abusive relationship with the rest of Canada. Quite the opposite.

In healthy relationships and democracies, people make room for complexity. Albertans can be angry with a political party or level of government without hating the province or country they serve. Through federalism, we are allowed to demand reform without threatening to dissolve the union.

Separatist politics does the opposite, cultivating some of the most obvious traits of toxic relationships. Separatism erases all nuance and dismisses mixed feelings as weakness. Separatists catastrophize, insisting that every federal policy disagreement is an existential threat to the Alberta way of life. To balance this out, they engage in love-bombing — flattering Albertans into believing that they are somehow far freer, smarter, harder-working, and more virtuous than everyone else in Canada.

This makes the separatists’ use of the abuse metaphor so revealing. It is projection. They complain that Canadian culture has shifted away from them while trying to coerce Albertans into choosing one narrow form of identity over another. Separatists charge the rest of Canada with contempt while sneering at fellow Albertans who remain proudly Canadian. They accuse Confederation of trapping Alberta while trying to trap Albertans inside a smaller, angrier province.

Enough. Albertans deserve better than this.

Alberta is not a helpless victim locked in a violent marriage with the rest of Canada. We have agency, wealth, constitutional protections, influence, and opportunity. Yes, we have grievances, too. But these are not proof of abuse. There’s a world of difference between disappointment and oppression.

Their use of the abuse metaphor was always offensive. But if separatists insist on using it, Albertans should judge their behaviour by those same standards.

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