Jen Gerson: We are not sending our best
What, exactly, is Alberta's delegation to America playing at? PLUS: Exclusive new poll, done for The Line, on western separatism. And we'll show our numbers.
By: Jen Gerson
Alberta’s periodic bursts of secessionist sentiment operate a little like the aurora that occasionally flash across the prairie sky, in tune with decades-long solar flare cycles. The phenomenon is always fascinating, yet it's always impossible to know how seriously to take it. It waxes and wanes in line with a number of factors, only some of which can be predicted — oil prices, the partisan stripe of the federal government, and the introduction of new regulations.
We are getting another show, of late, and The Line has responded by commissioning some fresh hot polling numbers to determine just how willing Albertans are to take up U.S. President Donald Trump’s call of becoming the 51st state.
It is not a surprise that this is being talked about again. We appear to be on the verge of a potential fourth term of loathed Liberals — after being all but promised a Conservative one. Trump has declared economic war, and openly undermines our sovereignty. Alberta has elected a premier who seems to be willing to go much further than leaders past to both threaten the federal government, and align herself with Americans. Danielle Smith has made several appearances in conservative American media institutions to argue against tariffs; she also made a public appeal to her Quebec counterpart to create a common front for greater provincial autonomy. This after threatening to form another “Fair Deal” panel if a future federal government doesn’t meet a list of requests.
In the midst of this revived inter-provincial tension, an Alberta delegation has formed, insisting that it will be travelling to the U.S. in coming weeks to meet with members of the Trump administration.
Who are they meeting? Well, they won't say.
"The response that we're getting, quite frankly, from the present U.S. administration is very positive. We've been advised that the interest in what we're doing is extremely high, and certainly everything that we've seen indicates that this is far from a fool's errand," said Jeffrey Rath, an Alberta lawyer leading the delegation, during a press conference last week held just off the lobby of a well-known Calgary hotel. The conference wasn't well publicized, and it was obscurely signed — if you knew, you knew — and was thus populated by about 80 fellow travellers of the Alberta independence movement.
"We've been advised by the people we're speaking to in the States to not disclose who it is that we're talking to at this point," Rath said. But the goal is clear. They're going to Washington to meet with representatives of the Trump administration to "determine the level of support that the government of the United States would be prepared to provide to an independent Alberta."
Admittedly, they're only independent citizens — former Premier Jason Kenney called Rath a “treasonous kook” — though the press conference featured one former Conservative MP, LaVar Payne, and the U.S. delegation will reportedly include former Conservative MP Rob Anders.
The group claims support from more, including former members of Parliament, and current sitting members of the provincial legislature. While they're not acting as representatives of Alberta, they do believe they have a "strong mandate, given the will of the people of the province of Alberta for independence at 37 per cent."
That is, they claim to have polling numbers suggesting more than a third of the province supports their bid for independence. Notably, however, Rath refused a request to release that data fully and publicly.
For those following our discussions on the matter here at The Line, you'll already know that what Rath is spelling out is awfully similar to our "nightmare scenario." A fully empowered, organized — and funded — Alberta secessionist movement is the cleavage that a hostile United States could use to divide the country upon itself. A referendum for independence could be used to deliver the province to America's increasingly obvious imperial ambitions. And this delegation, held under the auspices of the Alberta Prosperity Project — which describes itself as an "educational initiative focused on garnering support for a future where Alberta determines its destiny, ensuring prosperity and freedom for future generations, believes that just such a thing will happen by the end of the year.
If Danielle Smith declines to proactively hold a referendum on the subject, Rath said, the group would use the Citizens Initiative Petition, which is provincial legislation that citizens can use to force her hand. In a statement to the Medicine Hat News, Smith herself said she would respect that process: “Alberta has a citizen-initiated referendum law that allows concerned citizens to put forward policies for referendums. If there is support for independence, that process is the proper avenue for citizens to bring it forward for all Albertans to have a say on.”
It's not clear what, exactly, the ultimate goal of a referendum would be: independence, U.S. statehood, or the simple use of a vote to create leverage for a better deal with the federal government, following in the much-admired footsteps of the separatists of Quebec.
"Those are all questions for another day. The initial mission is to have a referendum for independence, and then following that, all of the subsequent questions can be answered in terms of future relationships with the United States," Rath noted.
What he does have right now is the usual list of Alberta's grievances, and a truly extraordinary collection of incredible promises to be fulfilled if Alberta were to govern itself, or become a U.S. state, or both. Or neither.
We could eliminate the carbon tax, avoid useless regulation of our guns and emissions. Of course, there would be no equalization. We would not have federal governments foisted upon us without our consent — which requires a fascinating view of democracy, but I digress. Rath also seemed to put all the blame for the pending trade and tariff war on the Liberal government rather than the American one.
The glory of the Commonwealth of Alberta — or something like it; again, the mere structure of a future government is a tomorrow problem — cannot be undersold. Alberta would control its own immigration. It would claim all Canadian military assets currently stationed in the province. Free of the fetters of Ottawa, Albertans would pay neither federal income tax, nor equalization. This would lead to an unbelievable doubling of the typical Albertan's purchasing power, the group claimed.
At the risk of harshing the vibe, I will note that it doesn't require a lot of economic prowess to subject these claims to even a little bit of skepticism. This miraculous post-independence windfall presumes that the newly land-locked nation would lose no economic activity. The business community of Quebec circa 1995 would like to have a word. As for the elimination of federal income taxes, this assumes that the nation of Alberta wouldn't have to fill funding gaps left behind by an absent federal government. Also, word to the wise, Americans pay federal income taxes and its states are subject to federal laws and regulations — or what’s left of them. As for claims of purchasing power; in what currency are we denominating this claim? This is not an un-crucial question for Albertans to ask.
And as for that 37-per-cent figure from which Rath derives his "strong" moral mandate; he wouldn't offer up those polling results for scrutiny. However, to her great credit, independent journalist Rachel Parker did provide part of that polling deck when I asked. She asked me not to reproduce the data in full as she has plans to write more — and as it's her data, I respect that request.
According to Parker’s research, the percentage of Albertans polled who would “strongly” or “somewhat” support the idea of an independent Alberta, either alone or with other provinces, is 37 per cent; by comparison, the support for joining the U.S. is about half that. This puts the results much closer to other national polling on the subject, including Angus Reid, which recently found that support among Albertans for joining the Americans is closer to 15 per cent.
We at The Line commissioned our own poll using Leger; our results — which we are releasing in full, and are available right here — show that about one in 10 Canadians supports joining the U.S. In Alberta and Saskatchewan/Manitoba, those numbers sit at 17 and 20 per cent, respectively.
This disparity is notable! It suggests serious discontent on the prairies. This is something a future federal government is going to need to address. However, despite Premier Danielle Smith's threats of an "unprecedented national unity crisis" if her various demands to Mark Carney were not met, the data show that support for Alberta independence is low; for joining the U.S., it's lower still. Even in the event of a Carney majority win, our poll shows that supermajorities of Canadians in every region would vote to remain part of Canada.
I want to be careful here, because I don't know what's going to happen. Predicting anything in Alberta is nigh on impossible. If Carney is elected, and if he does something catastrophically stupid and uniquely damaging to Alberta, I can't rule out the possibility of a genuine secessionist flare; nor a disingenuous referendum to leverage more rights and resources out of Ottawa.
But right now? Today?
Secession is a fringe proposition that exists more as an expression of historic backlash and populist rage than as a considered choice of a plurality of Albertans. Normies are not talking about this. Start attaching consequences and downsides to these polling questions, and I suspect that 37 per cent is going to look shaky. I've personally witnessed the same kind of rally-around-the-flag effect here as reported elsewhere in Canada.
I can’t see the future. But if an independence referendum were held today, it would fail, and it would fail emphatically. I’m not even clear that we’d even get that far. The Citizens Initiative isn't a sure thing: The APP would need to collect roughly 300,000 signatures to force the provincial government into a referendum — that's an incredibly high bar to meet.
So what, exactly, is this delegation playing at? Are they fooling themselves into believing support for their cause is high? Are they trying to foment a rebellion? Or is this something weirder: are Alberta secessionists trying to create the illusion of a mass popular mandate?
Who benefits from this?
What if the perception of a grassroots democratic initiative is all that it would take for the Americans to, at best, sow chaos in a nation that they've declared an economic rival and, at worst, actually divide the country in order to plunder Alberta's oil, mineral, and agricultural wealth?
I honestly don't know if the Americans are organized or competent enough to work this angle. But I do believe them to be ruthless enough. I believe them to be careless enough. I'd ask my fellow Canadians — and Albertans — to consider the question: What if America were to treat us in exactly the same way it has traditionally behaved toward places like South America and the Middle East? What tactics would they use? How much respect could we expect them to have for our democracy, and for the true will of the people living in it?
For what it's worth, many of the grievances that conservative Albertans feel toward Ottawa are legitimate. I feel the tug of that anger, too. But whatever problems we face as a province of five million trying to assert ourselves in a country of 41, our position won't be any stronger standing in the sea of a nation 10 times Canada’s size. And that's presuming we'd be regarded as full voting citizens at all. Blinded by anger and ambition, this delegation risks becoming catspaws to something far worse than what they seek to oppose, and I don't think they see or understand the risk they're courting.
To paraphrase Trump: We aren't sending our best.
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Literally no one is suggesting Alberta hold a referendum "right now, today" so this is quite the elaborate straw man you've built, just to knock it down. Let's check back on this in the Fall, okay?
Maybe the whole thing is a moot point. Maybe Poilievre wins, and the shackles come off our resource industries. If this happens, all this brewing discontent would evaporate overnight.
But maybe the polls are actually correct, and Carney romps to a Liberal majority.
In that case, we would begin finding out what his ACTUAL policies are in the coming months (if anyone believes he actually wants to 'axe the tax' and build the pipelines, I have a lovely bridge for sale) and sentiments on the Prairies will adjust accordingly.
...it is not some conspiracy theory, and does not require the prognostication powers of Nostradamus to predict that separatists will gain traction in such an environment.
If Quebec had hydrocarbons and Alberta had an abundance of hydroelectric power, Canada would have pipelines everywhere and electricity use would be heavily taxed. That's just who we are.
Alberta has two options; leave, or remain in Canada and support the rest of the country. If Alberta joins the US it will have little influence on national issues but, like Texas, it will be free to develop, and profit from, its natural resources. This is not an option in Canada.