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Milo Hrnić's avatar

I can't help but think the arguments sound like what an abuser would share with a spouse before they leave. I'm not pro separation, but the "you could never leave because you are helpless without me" voice only encourages emotions for separatism.

As for scale, the US is much larger than Canada and would delivery services much more efficiently if pure cost is a concern.

As for the left supporting unity, it's because they support centralization because centralization from Ottawa is left coded and a bigger more intrusive government force. Look at the federal labour code vs Alberta's for instance.

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Mark Jacka's avatar

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.

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