LIVE NOW: On The Line asks, where’s Nenshi?
Jen Gerson and Dave Cournoyer chat Alberta politics and why the NDP can’t score
Hello, friends. We’re splitting On The Line’s releases into audio and video. Videos are now in the late afternoon/evenings, and you can check ‘em out in all our usual places. (Audio options can all be found here, as ever.)
This week on On The Line, Jen Gerson is joined by Dave Cournoyer — Alberta politics watcher, writer at daveberta.ca, and longtime chronicler of this province’s wilder turns — for a conversation that cuts through the noise and gets to the big question: what is actually going on in Alberta right now?
The conversation opens with a serious look at the growing undercurrent of separatist sentiment inside the United Conservative Party. They unpack the emotional pull of independence, the logistical realities of separation, and why this movement — once fringe — is now creeping toward the mainstream. They also explore the federal government’s role in fuelling some of this rage, and how Alberta’s energy economy keeps acting as both asset and anchor.
And then, the inevitable question that must be asked in any progressive conversation in this province: where the hell is Naheed Nenshi? Jen presses Dave on why the Alberta NDP is missing in action while the UCP is rolling out wildly controversial ideas. The moment is ripe. The opportunity is obvious. And yet ... nothing.
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Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the separatist discourse in Alberta is that no one seems willing or capable of articulating a clear argument for why it is good to remain in Canada.
I want to be very clear: I’m NOT waiting for arguments about why separatism is bad or expensive, I want to know why the Dominion is worth saving. This podcast does a lot of the former, almost none of the latter. The best that Dave could say was “Canada isn’t that bad.” Persuasive.
Because I hate myself, I’ve listened to several years of The Line podcast, where Gerson and Gurney repeatedly discuss how Canada is broken. I agree. We are broken, in many ways. And we continually choose mediocrity instead of having frank conversations about what we want to be as a country.
THAT, to my mind, is the obvious missing piece.
Because the “expense” arguments are, frankly, very weak! And none are unique to Alberta. Everything is expensive, everything has tradeoffs. We make tradeoffs to be part of the Dominion. It’s the cost of state building. It’s like saying “why do we need to spend money on national defence” - well, if you want to be a country, then there are certain things you have to spend money on. And if a majority of Albertans what to separate, then they aren’t going to care about an extra billion on X, because it’ll be in pursuit of the larger goal that they’ve deliberately chosen.
To the separatist inclined Albertan, just yelling at them that separatism is bad or has consequences is really, really dumb, no matter how true it might be. Because that Albertan sees a broken Canada, an Alberta with legitimate grievances, and thinks “there’s not much worth saving here and the rest of the country doesn’t even want us anyways. Sure there are downsides, but status quo isn’t perfect either.”
If Canada were worth being a part of, and I genuinely think it is, then that’s the argument to make. If you talk about “well if you become a country then you’ll have to pay for a military, isn’t that just stupid” then, well, Alberta’s gone.
I also want to be clear that this isn’t a defence of the fantastical assumptions of the average Alberta separatist. But the separatists will win if the statists can’t form and defend the basic argument that Canada is worth saving. Because no one is making that argument right now.
Jen, I have just paused the video to respond to one of your points. Well two.
You mention that Danielle Smith is avoiding having a referendum on various topics - you specifically use the proposed Alberta Pension Plan as a f'r instance - and you find that an example of anti-democratic practice.
Wellllll.... perhaps. But, then, perhaps not.
The proponents of separation have to get signatures to force a referendum on that issue. There is nothing to prevent the proponents of either an APP or of retaining the CPP from also raising sufficient signatures to force a referendum.
As a final (well, perhaps not final, final) point you note that Kenney held a referendum on equalization a few years ago (three years, coming up four years, I seem to recall) and you assert that that vote simply sank out of sight and was never heard from again. You are both correct and incorrect.
Yes, that vote sank out of sight but please recall that Kenney was not at all a fan of that referendum (yes, he called the referendum but he didn't want to) and he never pressed the feds on the point afterwards. Further, there was no legislation that required the feds to address it. By contrast, the Clarity Act asserts that Canada must negotiate in good faith in the event of a clear decision on a clear question, etc., etc. Is that a sufficient difference? I don't know, but the asserted formality is certainly different from the earlier referendum; whether Otterwer would react differently I cannot say.