As of December 2018, a resurgent sovereigntist / separatist movement is gaining a solid toe-hold in my home province of Alberta.
The thrust of the discontent is simple (as any populist argument is wont to be) and it’s thus : Ottawa is a net suck on the province’s considerable natural resource wealth and Albertans have finally been humiliated enough by the endless string of pipeline delays.i Enough is enough. We’re tired of being the both the backbone and the bitch of this country. We want to control our own destiny, not least of which means shipping oil and gas to the insatiable Asian market… by crook or by hook.
Besides, what do the bureaucratic leeches in Ottawawaii still offer this land of pioneers, entrepreneurs, oilmen, and risk-takers ? It needs to be more than branding and feel-goods if Alberta is going to continue under Confederation, but that seems to be the current arrangement.
Thankfully, times change. And so help me Canada won’t see its 200th birthday with its current borders. But are we ready yet ?
The leading proponent for change today is Derek Fildebrandt of the newly formed Freedom Conservative Party of Alberta. Derek is a career politician, so he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of executing on his separatist dream in a political world increasingly dominated by real men with skin in the game, but he’s at least paving the way for the right man.iii
The future for Alberta is obviously sovereignty / separatism, but we’re not there yet. The economic climate in Alberta isn’t as good as it should be five years after the last oil price crash (because reading Contravex is hard mkay), but with CAD/USD at only $0.73, we’re still somewhat protected from the full impact of the pitiful USD$ 28.76 that Western Canadian Select (WCS) currently trades at. Ultimately, the overall picture here is not nearly dire enough… yet… and the right leader is nowhere in sight.iv But these are still early days of the Information Age. This pot still has more stirring to do before it’s ready to serve.
Patience, fellow Albertans. Our time will come.
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- From a National Post article in which the comments got pretty heated, Theo sums it up :
- See my recent tour of the admittedly rather beautiful capital city here, here, and here to get a sense of what $22 bn/year buys you for infrastructure. Yes, you read that right, TWENTY-TWO BEEEEELLEEEEOOONNNN. That’s two twos with niiiine zeroes. Per annum. In a two-working-parents-with-two-children household, that’s an additional $20`465 per year, or $1`705 per month every month for the rest of your natural born lives, which is a 28.8% increase from the current median annual family income of $70,986 in the province. Still think no one’s stealing from you ? ↩
- SITG is a prerequisite for real change, at least of the fiat-populist variety. See Trump, Putin, Duterte, Netanyahu, Bolsonaro, etc.
Basically, no cucked smiley faces allowed. Sorry Derek. ↩
- You can tell that Fildebrandt lives in an alt-universe where microaggressive politics are the be-all-and-end-all of the entire universe based on his latest tizzy : seriously petty allegations of election financing misreporting by the United Conservative Party (UCP) in the amount of, I hope you’re sitting down, $283! Hurr.
Not that Derek won’t ruffle some feathers and maybe even win a couple seats, but the UCP is still most likely to displace the New Democratic Party (NDP) come Election 2019, as predicted on this very blog in 2015. Rah rah rah. You heard it here first, etc. ↩