You think you are going to get a better deal from a country where you have ZERO political clout? Surrounded 85% by the country you claim in your fevered imagination has been blockading you and 15% by one who will be either run by people who find your government repulsive or who think of you as some kind of 21st century version of a resource extraction colony.
It is to laugh.
No county has ‘political clout’ over another. Now, do we have economic clout? Yep, quite a lot actually. The third largest oil and gas reserves on the planet type of clout. They type of clout that would eliminate debt, allow tax rates to be in the low teens or even lower type of clout driving investment at unseen levels type of clout. So much clout in fact that the premiers of other provinces have only our oil and gas as the only remaining leverage with the US and expect us to sacrifice it to save jobs for them. Yes, we have clout.
Repulsive? This is the main reason we want to leave. The left is insane and is driving the country to ruin with their divisive rhetoric and whacky policies. They, rightly, point out flaws in others, but when the lens is turned back on them are incapable of any sort of recognition or responsibility. And we’re ‘repulsive’ for saying the emperor has no clothes.
I’ll give you an easy one. You’re non-repulsive government over the last 14 years has driven over a trillion dollars of investment from Canada. Any responsibility for that? How about even an acknowledgment of it?
You keep throwing out claims with no substantiation and we will keep ignoring them as if they were rectally extracted. Agreed?
I don’t follow how this would make Alberta any better off.
Look to Iran. Having massive amounts of oil and gas reserves makes you the plaything of empires who have no interest in your sovereignty. Maybe you feel it’s like that already but breaking Alberta off into its own petro-state doesn’t fix it. Blockading your neighbors definitely doesn’t fix it and I would think that would be fairly obvious if you’ve been watching the news lately.
Canadian pension funds have a mandate to globally diversify so it’s not the government’s fault that they invest overseas. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Why would you count sound investment as a loss?
Why does BC get to put a toll on Alberta products counter to the constitution? How is this fair? Why can’t Alberta do the same?
If Alberta was independent, then we could protect ourselves.
FYI, Alberta isn’t Iran.
Long suspected, now confirmed: Russian bot farms are all over social media, promoting Alberta separation.
Oh, and while the Russian influencers are covert, the campaign by the United states is described as “overt”.
[Albertans targeted by pro-separation ‘influence campaigns’]
(Albertans targeted by pro-separation ‘influence campaigns’)
But Premier Smith is not troubled by this at all:
"“I trust that Albertans are able to do that research. I trust that they can identify sources that are credible and sources that are not.”
Quite true. Alberta has 5% of the population of Iran. Just for the sake of a bit of humour, let’s picture this independent Alberta. It would be tiny, completely unprotected and vulnerable, lacking any of Canada’s formal and traditional agreements and relationships with the US, and would fall to American hegemonistic dominance so fast it would make your head spin – and history tells us with stunning clarity that this would not be to your benefit. At all. Colonization never is to the colonized.
Right. I’ve said this before. But the motivations are different. Russia is supporting Alberta separation lunatics because it wants to destabilize western democracies. The MAGA-infested USA is supporting them because it wants to colonize more resources, at least for as long as oil and gas remain useful commodities. This will become less and less important as EVs begin to dominate, so with any luck, after it’s no longer useful to them, the US may just be content to let the new Nation of Alberta fade away into becoming another of the world’s backwaters.
This. Alberta would not become a state. Obviously not.
They would be magnanimously granted the status of “territory”.
No congressional representation in the house or the senate.
No voting for president.
US federal taxes payable (as well as Alberta territorial taxes)
Importantly: All natural resources are owned and controlled by the US federal government.
Healthcare removed from provincial control, and given over to US owned private insurance corporations.