“I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.” — Jefferson Davis, the first and only President of the Confederate States of America.
~ ~ ~
Before I turn to Alberta and the East-West divide that is threatening to tear Canada apart, I want to begin with a brief story from another time and place to bring some of the complex ideas contained in this essay into focus.
In 1864, three years into the bitter U.S. Civil War, as that war was turning increasingly barbaric, Abraham Lincoln allowed Colonel James Jaquess and another colleague to secretly slip across enemy lines to travel to Richmond, Virginia, to meet with Jefferson Davis, the first and only President of the Confederate States of America, in an unofficial effort to negotiate for peace. The full exchange, originally published in the September 1864 issue of the Atlantic (Vol. 14, No. 83 — also available on Project Guttenberg), is extremely eye-opening — I recommend reading the full exchange, but will reproduce the key points below:
Early in the conversation, Colonel Jaquess asks Davis:
“Our people want peace,—your people do, and your Congress has recently said that you do. We have come to ask how it can be brought about.”
“In a very simple way,” replies Davis. “Withdraw your armies from our territory, and peace will come of itself. We do not seek to subjugate you. We are not waging an offensive war, except so far as it is offensive-defensive,—that is, so far as we are forced to invade you to prevent your invading us. Let us alone, and peace will come at once.”
“But we cannot let you alone so long as you repudiate the Union. That is the one thing the Northern people will not surrender.”
“I know. You would deny to us what you exact for yourselves,—the right of self-government.”
As the conversation evolves it becomes clear that to Colonel Jaquess, it is perfectly moral, just, and natural for the minority, even a distinct geographic minority, to willingly subordinate itself to the democratic outcomes of majority rule. When you’re part of the numerical majority, this view is as natural as the sun rising in the East.
In this context, an exasperated Davis delivers one of his most famous quotes as he touches upon a theme that ultimately underpins virtually every separatist movement and civil war in history, that the South’s minority was not willing to allow itself to be further subjugated to the will of the North’s numerical majority:
“I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, and for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves; and so the war came.”
In Davis’s view, the idea that culturally and economically distinct sovereign states should subordinate themselves to the will of the numerical majority of the United States as a collective whole was a repudiation of the principles upon which the Republic was founded, which viewed each state as a sovereign entity, free to govern their own affairs within their own state borders, united only as a Republic as a means of securing their borders against foreign aggression and to regulate interstate commerce, NOT so that other states could override the local sovereignty of individual states via the national ballot box.
In short, Davis and his Southern peers viewed the American Republic as a collection of united yet sovereign states, each with their own distinct peoples. Whereas Colonel Jaquess, Abraham Lincoln, and their Northern peers had come to view the United States as a single united entity, one people united as a single nation.
Colonel Jaquess tries to impress upon Davis that the Union far outnumbered the Confederacy (4.5 to 1) and that within the Union exists the “unanimous determination to crush the Rebellion and save the Union at every sacrifice.” However, Colonel Jaquess points out to Davis that if the rebel Confederate government could be dismantled via an immediate cessation of hostilities and the Southern states returned to the Union, now, before the growing barbarism of the war caused such resentment that all of the Southern leaders would assuredly be hanged if the South loses the war, then peace and harmony could be restored and the North would even willingly welcome the South back into the Union, forgive the bloodshed, and help the South rebuild the destruction caused by the war.
Davis turns him down.
“There are some things worse than hanging or extermination. We reckon giving up the right of self-government one of those things.”
“By self-government you mean disunion,—Southern Independence?”
“Yes.”
“And slavery, you say, is no longer an element in the contest.”
“No, it is not, it never was an essential element. It was only a means of bringing other conflicting elements to an earlier culmination. It fired the musket which was already capped and loaded. There are essential differences between the North and the South that will, however this war may end, make them two nations.”
Colonel Jaquess turned the conversation to whether the conflict can be settled by letting the combined people of the United States (Union and Confederacy together) decide the contentious questions that led to the fracture of the Union by putting those questions to a nation-wide referendum, such that the South commits itself to accepting the wishes of the democratic majority, whichever way these questions are decided. To which Davis replies:
“That the majority shall decide it, you mean. We seceded to rid ourselves of the rule of the majority, and this would subject us to it again.”
“But the majority must rule finally, either with bullets or ballots.”
“I am not so sure of that. Neither current events nor history shows that the majority rules, or ever did rule. The contrary, I think, is true.”
Colonel Jaquess is dismayed.
“But, seriously, Sir, you let the majority rule in a single State; why not let it rule in the whole country?”
“Because the States are independent and sovereign. The country is not. It is only a confederation of States; or rather it was: it is now two confederations.”
“Then we are not a people,—we are only a political partnership?”
“That is all.”
Davis concludes the meeting with Colonel Jaquess and his colleague, stating that:
“I am glad to have met you, both. I once loved the old flag as well as you do; I would have died for it; but now it is to me only the emblem of oppression.”
“I hope the day may never come, Mr. Davis, when I say that,” said the Colonel.
After they left President Davis, Colonel Jaquess’ colleague was asked about the outcome of that meeting, to which he replied:
“Nothing but war,—war to the knife.”
The philosophical divide could not be bridged. The North could not compromise on a fractured Union that would result in the continental power of the United States to splinter into independent parts. To them, the republic created by the “united states in America” had become a single indivisible nation inhabited by a single indivisible people — a single nation called the United States OF America.
By contrast, the South could not compromise on subordinating itself to the majority rule of the greater whole at the expense of losing the state sovereignty that allowed each state to pursue its own destiny within its own borders according to its own local culture and local economic needs, as the Republic’s Founding Fathers had originally intended. And so, the bid for peace failed and the war ground onwards into its final brutal year.
As Davis makes clear during this extraordinary historical exchange, the moral and economic issue of slavery was merely the trigger — underneath it all was the bigger question of state sovereignty and self-governance, and the choice between a decentralized republic versus a singular all-encompassing nation.
Abraham Lincoln later complained that Jefferson Davis’s only terms of peace were the independence of the South — the dissolution of the Union. And Navy Secretary Gideon Wells later wrote in his diary about Colonel Jaquess’ attempt to reach out to Davis, stating that:
“Colonel Jaquess is another specimen of inconsiderate and unwise, meddlesome interference. The President assented to his measure and gave him a card, or passport, to go beyond our lines. There is no doubt that the Colonel was sincere, but he found himself unequal to the task he had undertaken. Instead of persuading Jeff Davis to change his course, Davis succeeded in persuading poor Jaquess that the true course to be pursued was to let Davis & Co. do as they please. The result was that Jaquess and his friend Gilmore who went to Richmond to shear, came back shorn.”
~ ~ ~
It may surprise some readers to see me start this essay about Alberta’s struggle to assert its sovereignty within Canada with a story about the leader of the Confederate South from the U.S. Civil War era. This is a different era with different issues at stake, and most view Canada as a completely different and morally upright country that prides itself on its politeness and on its cultural and economic diversity as it avoids the raw, snarling, uncompromising politics of our American neighbors. Besides, the dividing line is East vs West, not North vs South. Surely, our divisions can be overcome with civility, grace, and appeals to unity within our larger Canadian family?
Yet once again, beneath it all, we see a country rupturing along a fault line defined by two incompatible moral world views, as incompatible as oil and water, a divided economy that reflects that moral divide, and the age old question — are we one indivisible people in one indivisible nation, or does the provincial sovereignty that’s so clearly defined in our Canadian Constitution still mean something?
What is the purpose of Canada, and who is it meant to serve? In short, this rupture isn’t merely a difference of opinion; it represents an existential philosophical rift. And that makes it very difficult for either side to back down.
The Eastern side of this Canadian fault line is dominated by a world view that is partially ideological, but mostly it is driven by self-serving self-interest and the appetite for control. Theirs is the view that emerged long before Canadian Confederation itself as Upper Canada (Ontario) set about establishing political control over British North America after the American War of Independence.
These founders of our Canadian nation sought to bind together what remained of Britian’s colonies after America’s independence to create a single nation designed to serve the needs of the Laurentian heartland of that emergent Canadian nation, while doing their best to shield Canada from dangerous democratic ideas about representative government that had seduced America to embrace republican democracy. 😱 In effect, Canada was never a bottom-up Union between free and equal provinces, but rather a top-down nation-building exercise by the center to exercise control over the extremities.
Within the parliamentary democracy that emerged, “some are clearly more equal than others” (as George Orwell might say) in the nation’s decision-making process. And provincial sovereignty, while written into the constitution, tends to get steamrolled whenever it emerges as an obstacle to Ottawa’s centrally planned agenda — the tools by which the provinces can defend their sovereignty against central overreach are lacking, by design. The Senate, the House of Commons, judicial appointments, the Privy Council, the powers vested in the Prime Minister, and so much more were all crafted to allow the Laurentian East to impose their will onto the lesser regions — in effect, Canada remains a kind of colonial project of the periphery by the elites of the heartland.
Complicating it all is the fact after 158 years of this parasitic relationship, a vast patronage network has evolved in the East (and throughout the country as a whole), which depends on maintaining that strong, centralized federal control — this patronage network uses its numerical advantage to leverage majority rule as the key strategy to impose its interests upon the rest of Canada and, when necessary, to steamroll regional or provincial sovereignty if it conflicts with their interests.
Any effort to change that oppressive constitutional status quo, which would give greater autonomy to sovereign provinces, represents an existential threat to their parasitic way of life. The moral question of oil and gas may be the trigger of the current rift, just as the moral question of slavery was the trigger in the run-up to the U.S. Civil War, but beneath it all is a broader question about how to balance provincial sovereignty against the political will of the national majority.
On the Western side of the divide are people driven by existential concerns about their ability to safeguard their local economies, their freedom, their way of life, and their prosperity after more than a decade of sustained and unrelenting economic attacks by Ottawa. And this isn’t the first time. Indeed, this fault line has been a major thorn in the West’s side from the very first day of Canadian Confederation, 158 years ago. This is merely the latest chapter in that troubled history as the Laurentian East steamrolls western provincial sovereignty to impose its globalist anti-oil-and-gas world view onto the West.
That philosophical and moral divide is now boiling over as the aftermath of the 2025 election opens an extremely dangerous new chapter in Canada’s evolution, with ramifications not just for Canada but for the whole of Western Civilization. The ideological battle between local sovereignty and centrally-controlled global socialism is coming to a head out on the Canadian prairie.
~ ~ ~
Separatist movements rarely end successfully. Most are frustrated, strangled, or crushed by the dominant power in various devious ways prior to achieving their objectives. Jefferson Davis is one of the lucky losers of history — he was spared the noose and was left in peace to write his memoires in his old age and in the comfort of his own home. All too often, separatist leaders end up suffering terribly along the way as repayment for their efforts.
One current example comes from the leader of the modern-day independence movement in the Catalonia region of Spain, who now lives in exile in Belgium — more on that specific example later). And an example from Canadian history is Louis Riel who led the Red River Rebellion in 1869-1870 in what has become Manitoba today, and then North-West Rebellion in 1885 in what later became Saskatchewan. Even though Louis Riel was fighting to address broader regional grievances, defend his people’s land rights, and achieve meaningful political representation for his people within the Canadian Parliament, but was not seeking full independence from Canada, Louis Riel was still ultimately sent to the gallows after tensions spiralled out of hand.
A smaller number of separatist movements achieve a greater degree of regional sovereignty — a limited victory — their leaders tend to fare better even as these movements as a whole fall short of their goal of full independence (i.e. Scotland, Greenland, Wales, Quebec, Basque Country, etc.). With the exception of independence movements in post-Soviet and post-Warsaw-Pact nations, not a single independence movement in any Western nation has achieved full independence since the end of the Second World War. Later on in this essay I’ll be looking at some of the tools that Canada uses to frustrate efforts to pursue separation, pioneered during Quebec’s struggle for independence.
A significant number of independence movements devolve into full scale civil war somewhere along the way — the American War of Independence, the U.S. Civil War, the complex Rhodesian Bush War that erupted following Prime Minister Ian Smith’s Universal Declaration of Independence from Britain in 1965 (a story I’ve written about in my essay The Great Unravelling, Why Democracy Failed and How to Fix it (Amazon Affiliate Link), the Irish War of Independence, the Sudanese Civil War, the Yugoslav Wars, the Eritrean War of Independence, the Sri Lankan Civil War, the Chechen Wars, the Donbas War in Eastern Ukraine between 2014 and 2022, and so on. Croatia’s bid for independence from Yugoslavia involved heavy fighting. Bosnia and Herzegovina devolved into full-scale ethnic cleansing and genocide as tensions came to a head.
On very rare occasions, full independence is achieved with minimal bloodshed, like in Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Slovenia (minimal fighting), mostly because of strong internal cohesiveness and intense pressure from outside nations to keep a lid on violence.
Still others get trapped somewhere in between, like Taiwan, Kosovo, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Transnistria, which are de-facto independent but have been unable to rally sufficient international support to achieve full UN recognition as independent countries, reflecting the unresolved international issues that could still lead these countries into full-scale war at some later date.
And even when independence is achieved, internal divisions and conflicts about what to do with that independence all to often erupt into civil war after independence as different factions compete over what comes next and which faction gets to control the newly liberated throne, with examples ranging from Nigeria after independence from the UK, South Sudan after independence from Sudan, Rwanda after independence from Belgium, Mozambique after independence from Portugal, and so on.
In short, what Alberta faces is not for the faint of heart and is a lot more complicated that simply conducting a successful separatist referendum. The mother country rarely lets her children leave peacefully. And the children need to come to a unified agreement about what independence means once they achieve independence from their parent.
And so, it’s time for a Deep Dive into the storm that’s brewing in the West.
~ ~ ~
On May 5th, Premier Danielle Smith addressed her province and laid out a set of political demands in order to fix the broken relationship between Alberta and the federal government in Ottawa. What’s different about this demand and the many fruitless attempts that have come before is that, for the first time, the possibility of national divorce is now openly and firmly out on the table, with a clear ultimatum set for a referendum (in 2026) and a clear path that citizens must follow to gather the necessary signatures for a citizen-led petition to put that fateful question to the Albertan people.
I’ve included a link to her full 19-minute speech below (on YouTube) and encourage you to watch it before we dive deeper in this essay. The comments for her video are turned off on YouTube, but she also posted her video address on X (Twitter) where the comments section is already filling up very, very fast.
It summarizes the issues fueling the conflict in our current era as provincial sovereignty collides with national majority rule, and allows you to hear her lay out Alberta’s demands of Ottawa in her own words, all of which provides context for the deeper dive that follows in this essay as it becomes clear why, despite how reasonable Alberta’s demands are, those demands will be virtually impossible for Ottawa to fulfill. This is the beginning, not the end, of a fractious divide that is threatening to cleave Canada in two.
To briefly summarize her video address, Premier Smith discussed a lost decade during which Ottawa has engaged in sustained economic attacks against Alberta’s economy by systematically weaponizing malicious regulation and using a host of other devious strategies to block pipelines, cancel oil and gas projects, ban the tanker ships that are required to get oil to international markets, and made the approvals process for new projects so onerous and expensive that they have effectively throttled investment in the region, especially in the oil and gas industry but in many other industries as well.
Furthermore, Ottawa has cynically placed a cap on oil and gas industry emissions and hammered the industry with crippling carbon taxes. They’ve even imposed net-zero mandates on the power grid, which makes the power grid in the province increasingly unreliable and even dangerous. And so far the courts have not put a stop to any of it despite the fact that Ottawa is clearly in violation of Alberta’s provincial sovereignty, as defined by our constitution.
As Premier Smith points out, “this onslaught of anti-energy, anti-agriculture, and anti-resource development policies has scared away global investments to the tune of half a trillion dollars, driving those investments and jobs out of Canada to much more attractive climates in the United States, Asia, and the Middle East.”
The prairie provinces are Canada’s economic engine. Yet after a decade of ideological Liberal rule, Canada is now dead last in economic growth among industrialized nations.
Premier Smith laid out Alberta’s four unconditional demands to end this assault and restore Alberta’s constitutionally guaranteed provincial sovereignty:
a guaranteed corridor and port access to tidewater off the Pacific, Arctic, and Atlantic coasts for the export of oil, gas, critical minerals, and other resources, in amounts supported by the free market, rather than by the diktats and whims of Ottawa. (in other words, free access to world markets and no sneaky ways of imposing production caps by Ottawa — we’ll talk about the implications of her demand to access the Atlantic coast shortly)
the federal government must end all federal interference in the development of provincial resources by repealing the No New Pipelines Law (bill C-69), the oil tanker ban, the net-zero electricity regulations, the oil and gas emissions cap, the net-zero vehicle mandate, and any federal law or regulation that proports to regulate industrial carbon emissions, plastics, or the commercial free speech of energy companies (this final point is in reference to an attempt in 2024 by Parliament to pass legislation that would criminalize speaking well of fossil fuels!).
the federal government must refrain from imposing export taxes or restrictions on the export of Alberta resources without the consent of the government of Alberta. As she says, “Frankly, all provinces should be given that same respect for their resources.”
and finally, the federal government must provide to Alberta the same per capita federal transfers and equalization payments as is received by the other three largest provinces, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia. (In effect, this is an end to the massively abused system of Equalization Payments, retaining the system only as a way to help the smallest and weakest provinces and territories while putting a stop to Quebec and Ontario using it to plunder the West).
As she said, if these points are agreed to, this would eliminate the doubts that many Albertans feel about the future of Alberta as a part of Canada. If passed, Alberta could continue on as a sovereign province under a de-fanged Canadian federal umbrella.
She’s not the first to demand some version of these things, but this time there’s an ultimatum looming over her words that provides real consequences if Ottawa resorts to its usual strategy of simply ignoring anything it doesn’t like or steamrolling over Alberta as it has over the past decade. This time national divorce is on the table.
Premier Smith explained that she is putting together a number of judicial, academic, and economic advisors to create a new “Alberta Next” panel to discuss Alberta’s future in Canada, and explore the steps Alberta can take to protect itself against the current or future hostile policies of the federal government. Some of the more popular ideas from that panel will be put to a provincial referendum in 2026 (the ultimate form of direct democracy). These new ideas would build on reforms that are already underway like the effort to create a provincial police force to end Alberta’s contract with the federally-run RCMP, thus mimicking the system that Quebec has as it too seeks to exert its own provincial sovereignty.
But there’s more. It’s what comes next that actually matters.
She emphasized that her government will not take steps for a government-led initiative to put a vote for separation on the referendum ballot. However, and this is the important part, “if there is a successful citizen-led referendum petition that is able to gather the requisite number of signatures requesting such a question to be put on a referendum, our government will respect the democratic process and include that question on the provincial 2026 referendum ballot as well.” Translation: if there is to be separation, it will come in the form of a citizen-led national divorce.
This comes on the back of a new Albertan law announced only a week earlier, reducing the number of signatures required for a citizen-led petition to trigger a constitutional referendum (i.e. for a separatist referendum). This new law reduces the threshold to trigger a referendum to only 177,000 signatures, down from the previously required 600,000.
The message is clear.
Nonetheless, she laid out reasons why she feels that Alberta still has plenty of tools to fend off Ottawa’s attacks and why she feels that a joint and prosperous united Canada that honors its Constitutional limits is still the best way forward, and that she will do everything in her power to negotiate a fair deal for Alberta.
In other words, she is not a separatist, something she emphasized repeatedly. This is a wise move at this stage of the game. It’s extremely dangerous for a separatist movement to coalesce around any individual leader.
A case in point… in 2017, after a request made by the Spanish government, Spain’s Constitutional Court declared an impending referendum on Catalonia’s self-determination to be in breach of the Spanish Constitution. The fed-up Catalonian leaders went ahead with the referendum anyway in spite of a police crackdown. The National Police Corps and the Guardia Civil intervened to prevent voting even as local Catalonian police allowed voting to continue. Turnout was thus abysmally low, at only 43%, due to so many polling stations being closed and the violence that erupted on that fateful day between civilians and police. Yet of the votes that were cast, 92% voted in favor of Catalonia becoming its own republic.
The Supreme Court intervened once again. Local police were investigated for disobedience and one Catalan mayor even investigated for sedition. After the Catalan government declared its intention to act upon the results of the referendum anyway and unilaterally declare independence from Spain, the Spanish government responded by summarily dismissing the entire Catalan government and imposing direct rule by the Spanish federal government.
The President of the government of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, fled to Belgium to avoid arrest, but in 2018 German police arrested him nonetheless and he faced extradition back to Spain. Long story short, after lots of back and forth and plenty of legal drama, the European Court of Justice finally intervened in 2022 to restore his parliamentary immunity. In 2024, he briefly returned to Spain from his exile in Belgium, gave a speech advocating for Catalonia’s right to self-determination, and then was forced to free into the crowd as a large-scale police operation began in order to try to arrest him. One local police officer was arrested on suspicion of helping Puigdemont escape, and Puigdemont is now back to living in exile in Belgium to escape the wrath of the Spanish government.
Although I have no idea what her true beliefs are, Premier Danielle Smith’s stance is wise at this stage of the game — by distancing herself from the separatist movement and by making it clear that if it happens it must happen as a citizen-led initiative, via petitions and a direct-democracy referendum, it helps insulate Premier Smith and her government from legal shenanigans if/when Ottawa starts playing nasty. It also avoids the mistake of allowing individual political personalities to define the movement. This reduces the risk that individual personalities become the target for a government- and media-led smear campaign that could tarnish the whole movement — instead the onus is put on Ottawa to do what it takes to convince the Albertan people that Canada is still a nation worth being part of.
Furthermore, it also establishes a clear precedent for what happens AFTER a successful referendum — it sets the precedent that an independent Alberta would emerge as a bottom-up republic, with government “by the people, for the people” rather than repeating the mistake of becoming a smaller top-down elite-led dictatorship with Edmonton rather than Ottawa holding the whip.
If separatism makes it onto the referendum ballot, it’s because Ottawa failed to earn back the support of the Albertan people, and the people themselves pushed for independence. Meanwhile, Premier Smith remains neutral, tasked with carrying out the people’s will whichever way the cards fall, establishing herself as the servant not the master of her people.
However, she also went out of her way to emphasize that those who are considering a national divorce are loyal Albertans too, NOT traitors, and that if a citizen-led separatist referendum is successful, she will accept the judgement of her fellow Albertans even if they choose to vote for a national divorce. Thus, those working on the petitions have nothing to fear from Premier Smith’s government.
Her demands are clear. And she now has a citizen-led ace in her back pocket if Ottawa doesn’t dance to her tune. The gauntlet has been thrown down.
But this is where things begin to get difficult. Even if Ottawa wanted to give Premier Smith everything she asked for, saying yes to her demands is virtually impossible and risks tearing the country apart from the other end.
Before I dive into the second half of this essay — into Ottawa’s impossible choices as it faces up to Alberta’s demands, the challenges and dangers that lie ahead if a separatist referendum is successful, and the devious tools at Ottawa’s disposal to block Alberta’s exit — I want to thank all my paid subscribers for your support. It means the world to me!
If you are not already a paid subscriber, I’d like to ask for your support in the form of a paid subscription to my Substack. These kinds of essays require a colossal amount of time, effort, and research to produce. My freedom to explore ideas and think out-of-the-box comes from the fact that I am 100% reader-supported by people like you.
But if you’re not ready to sign up for a paid subscription, perhaps you’d consider leaving me a tip in the Tip Jar on my website to help support my writing.
Ottawa, Trapped Between a Rock and a Hard Place
At first glance, Premier Smith’s demands seem quite reasonable, perfectly in line with our Constitution, with our constitutional concept of provincial sovereignty, and with the ethos of Western liberal democracy itself. And yet, her demands are virtually impossible for Ottawa to fulfill, even if Ottawa wanted to.
What Premier Smith has laid out is, functionally, the end of the federally-led climate crusade in Canada. The federal government can respect provincial autonomy. Or it can impose its climate crusade onto dissenting provinces by authoritarian diktat. But not both.
This presents a major problem for a Liberal government whose entire support base across the rest of the nation has been built on that fictitious climate narrative — after all, Mark Carney was the UN’s Special Envoy on Climate Action. Turning his back on that narrative now would spark a revolt among his support base.
Furthermore, the climate narrative is one of the main load-bearing myths of our era to justify the global socialist movement and the accelerating centralization of power in the hands of federal and international institutions as they continue to eat away at local and regional autonomy. Without the climate crusade, power begins to flow the other way.
If Alberta gets its way, its provincial sovereignty would overrule these climate-justified power grabs and the concentration of power at the federal and international level would begin to unravel. Respecting provincial sovereignty effectively renders Canada’s international climate agreements and internationally-agreed climate targets null and void. And no federal leader could ever sign another one without Alberta’s approval.
If Carney backs off in order to respect Alberta’s provincial sovereignty, he betrays the expectations of a very large number of people. But if Carney rides roughshod over Alberta’s demands to cater to his base and sustain the power-hungry globalist climate crusade, he triggers a separatist referendum in Alberta. Check mate.
Alberta’s four demands strike at the very heart of the climate belief system. It transfers power back to local jurisdictions. It restores provincial and national sovereignty. It kills the ESG initiatives and carbon taxes that are central to the WEF-led vision that is being imposed upon the world. And once granted to Alberta, her demands would ripple outward through the rest of the Canadian provinces, and beyond — why would any corporation remain headquartered in Toronto if it can exempt itself from all that baloney simply by relocating to Alberta? Whatever Alberta gets will immediately be demanded by the other provinces too. And so, provincial sovereignty is the grenade that unravels the entire climate crusade in Canada.
Ideology aside, there are a lot of people, corporations, institutions, and governments at all levels in Canada that are financially and politically dependent upon keeping that Green narrative alive. It’s their gravy train. They’re going to be putting a lot of pressure on Ottawa not to give an inch. That leaves Mark Carney to choose between putting the authoritarian squeeze on Alberta to satisfy his base or risk the wrath of the support base that put him in power.
Even his own newly acquired power as Prime Minister is at risk — he still relies on the eco-radical and radically socialist NDP party to maintain his grip on Parliament because he failed to win an outright majority in the recent election. That leaves him with very little room to manoeuver without triggering an election that could strip him of power. Yet if he begins to squeeze Alberta, separation looms. So, he’s in a bit of pickle.
Equalization is equally problematic for Ottawa. Quebec is a major net beneficiary of equalization payments. Take that away and the case for Quebec separation becomes much easier to sell to Quebec’s electorate. And so, without equalization to grease the wheels, Ottawa would simply appease one separatist movement while fueling the other.
