Jen Gerson: Some advice for the rest of you on talking to Alberta

That includes you, Laurentian Elites.

By: Jen Gerson

Watching reaction to the mainstreaming of Albertan separatism has been a ride. Over the past week, I’ve witnessed Albertans, politicians, central Canadians, and premiers take their moment, offering candid comments ranging from the conciliatory, to on-point critique, to the spectacularly counterproductive.

And as an Albertan who has been writing about separatism and alienation and policy grievances for more than a decade, I am sympathetic to the many people in Canada who feel compelled to weigh on the pending referendum but fear making matters worse.

The fear is justified.

Every single smarmy and condescending comment from any prominent Canadian will be weaponized by separatists as proof of contempt ahead of the vote. But that doesn’t mean it’s wise to coddle separatists, or to treat some of their more patently absurd and even sinister claims as neutral statements of fact.

It simply means that those who choose to add their voice to this debate need to ask themselves the sorts of questions that we all, frankly, should be asking ourselves regularly: what is our positionality in this — to what extent will geography, background, or class colour or impact my statements in the eyes of someone determined to see me as “The Other”? What is my actual intention, and can I act with enough empathy to be effective?

And, perhaps most difficult: Is this something I need to say at all?

I’m going to offer my own take, for whatever it’s worth, about how to approach this issue honestly, but also with a touch of care and compassion. I don’t believe “Easterners” — nor, for that matter, even western-er westerners, nor northerners — can or should be expected to silence themselves on a question that affects all of us. But I do think there may be some helpful approaches I can offer.

Firstly, I think we need to draw a hard distinction between “western alienation or grievances” and “separatism.”

Western alienation is an ancient sore spot; Alberta has real beefs about House seat representation, equalization, cultural alienation, geographic institutional capture, and the general ennui that accompanies the sense that Canada is in decline and nothing really gets done or built here. For more than a decade, this country has turned pipeline construction and oil development into the front of a pointless and self-destructive war of virtue against the country’s best economic interests. Albertans are correct to be angry about a Canada that pulls its nose up at the very resource development that funds the country’s much self-regarded social safety net.

Albertans are right to be further incensed by the seemingly countless government programs and subsidies and special considerations that go into developing advanced manufacturing in more populous, vote-rich regions, often at the direct expense of the regions that hew wood and draw water.

Who do you think is backstopping all of that, guys? Where would, say, Bombardier be today if Canada’s GDP weren’t propped up by the oil and gas that Quebec is too precious to see shipped through its province?

I cut my teeth as a journalist pointing out these kinds of problems.

But alienation is a very different beast than separation. The latter is fuelled by the former, certainly — but the movement as a whole has morphed into something else entirely. It’s moved away from a productive kind of politics that channels anger into political coalitions and proactive policy improvements and into a counterproductive fantasy LARP that is training its adherents to believe that any or all of these disagreements can be resolved by a secession free of risks and consequences and trade-offs. We’re watching in real time while this movement devolves into something far removed from the “legitimate grievances” that spawned it, into conspiracism, fanaticism and even outright racism in some quarters.

In short, it’s entirely correct to take complaints seriously. It’s entirely folly to act as if separation is a serious answer to those complaints.

I would argue that it’s dangerous folly to even entertain the idea that playing with separation — even via a vote you expect to lose — is something that can meaningfully improve the lives of ordinary Albertans. A lever only works if you can control it, and I simply do not believe that Alberta’s political class can control this one whit.

In recent days, we’ve seen a spectrum of political responses. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre promised that his MPs would be campaigning for Team Canada — a welcome note. Mark Carney has offered anodyne warnings that a separation vote would be “unhelpful” to investment, risks a Brexit-like outcome, and simply isn’t something that Albertans voted to consider — all true, and all arguments I’ve made myself.

We’ve seen Wab Kinew stand up for the “duty to consult,” challenging Premier Danielle Smith directly in an open press conference.

There is an ongoing debate about the legal clarity of that duty, and about the tactical wisdom of attempting to shut down the Citizens’ Initiative petition that would lead to this referendum via court challenges by four Alberta First Nations people.

For a moment, I want to put a pin in those questions to note something else. It is First Nations people who are standing up for Canada, here. Clearly. Unequivocally. Boldly.

And in Conservative circles increasingly alarmed by the implications of UNDRIP, of “nation-to-nation” relations, of reconciliation, and of property rights, this ought to be pointed out.

Who is standing up for Confederation? Who is not?

Who are the patriots, here?

On the flip side, we have also seen comments that are catastrophically misguided.

The NDP’s Avi Lewis won the round by saying Alberta’s separatism movement has “no point of comparison with the historic sovereignty movement in Quebec.”

Regardless of what one thinks about Alberta’s alignments and motives, it’s materially absurd to position only one province’s secession ambitions as legitimate. That’s taking “asymmetric federalism” too far. Either we all have a legal path toward secession, or none of us ought to. We are all citizens subject to the same fundamental rights, or some of us are more equal than others.

I, for one, think there should be no legal path to secession for any province and the second-order outcomes of the last 40 years on this topic ought to be an object lesson in why. However, the law is what it is. Once the hilt of the knife is given to one, everyone will take his turn as he dares.

But perhaps nothing has annoyed me more to date than watching Conservatives stationed in Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal tut-tut their fellow Laurentian Elites, as if being Conservative made them immune to the same prejudicial bias. Carney is fanning the flames, and any critique of separatism, no matter how anodyne, is deemed worthy of the highest reproach.

Yes, Conservative strategist Cole Hogan, I am picking on you, here. He and I have crossed swords on Twitter several times on this very point: the more Conservatives undermine the criticisms of separatism from the Liberals, the harder they make it for us Albertan federalists to make exactly the same points.

“We face a national unity crisis. It is not something that can be flippantly dismissed by those in other parts of the country that would suggest that Alberta, for example, should simply pay up and shut up,” said departing Battle River—Crowfoot MP Damien Kurek.

“Alberta deserves a fair voice in the federation, just like every province.”

Of course, if this statement is true, it also presumes the opposite. There have been a range of reactions to Albertan separatism. “Flippant dismissal” is not how I’d characterize the bulk of it.

And implying that Albertans don’t have a fair voice in the federation is a pretty ironic thing to note from an Alberta MP giving a speech in the House of Commons.

They, too, are attempting to define the frame of acceptable debate from the east. There are plenty of Albertans — including Conservative MPs — who are furious not with the presumed stream of callous disrespect and cruelty ceaselessly emerging from the House of Commons. Rather, they, like the majority of Albertans, are angry that we’re wasting our time and energy talking about something as dangerous and counterproductive as separatism at all.
Who speaks for those Albertans?

Guys, I hate to be a buzzkill, but the latest polling shows that Carney and Poilievre are about equally popular in Alberta.

However widespread frustration and grievance, the majority of Albertans at present don’t support separatism as a viable option — and would need to be materially misled and manipulated into voting for even a non-binding referendum to support that position. On this specific topic, Mark Carney is speaking for the majority of Albertans. And those conservatives demanding we treat separatism with the utmost care and respect are themselves seemingly blind to the fact that they are speaking not for the actual majority of the province, but rather to the significant plurality of conservative Albertans who donate to their party and populate their boards and nomination contests.

Albertans are not one thing.

We do not all share the same opinions.

Albertan “grievances” are usually reduced to a stock list of complaints ranging from that cartoon from 1905 featuring westerners feeding the cow that easterners milk, to the reviled Tanker Ban.

But if you poke at this issue for even a moment, you’ll quickly discover that a lot of Albertans don’t actually give a shit about the divided city of Lloydminster; nor about unequal representation in the senate. Plenty of Albertans support industrial carbon taxes and slower growth in the oil sands.

Most Albertans actually consider themselves moderate.

Here’s a fun fact: As part of an extensive polling series conducted by the CBC almost 10 years ago, a shocking 86 per cent of Albertans think the province is too dependent on oil and gas. They also widely supported higher oil and gas royalties, and also increased pipeline infrastructure.

One of the great fantasies about this province is that because it reliably votes Conservative, this makes it a kind of Conservative Cultural Monoculture. (This is in part why the unexpected win of Rachel Notley and the NDP in 2015 proved to be so traumatic for diehard partisans. It shattered their illusions about the Conservative heartland, leading to the forcible reunion of two very disparate conservative provincial parties — all to prevent the horror of the other side winning an election in a two-party democratic system from ever being repeated.)

Separatism takes this tendency to its extreme, treating the majority who dissent from its narrow vision of an Independent Republican future as, somehow, “not Albertan.”

Well, I’ve lived here for 16 years. I’ve covered all of these grievances as the Western Correspondent of the National Post. I am an independent journalist, own a company domiciled in Alberta, I’m someone who takes no money from the federal government. I was born in Calgary and gave birth to my son in the same hospital where I, myself, was born.

And, echoing the reported words of our Liberal prime minister, I think separatism is stupid.

If that means I don’t count as an “Albertan” by separatist logic, then who does, exactly, and why? How shabby and conformist is your vision of this future nation?

I understand there will be much handwringing about the “right way” to approach separatism from around the country in coming months. Self awareness and an understanding of the history of the province are good places to start.

But if you actually want to be helpful, stop worrying so much about other peoples’ tone, get your asses out here, and start making the case for Canada. Which, by the way, really shouldn’t be difficult, especially when the reality of the alternatives are laid out in full view.

And if you really cannot do that — if you really cannot bring yourself to put the good of the country and all of the Albertans within it first and foremost, then perhaps reconsider your own centrality to this debate.

I say this with love, Laurentian Elites, both left and right. It wouldn’t kill you to cede the floor and let some of the other voices in this debate have their moment, too.

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