Alberta is the Texas, the Kentucky, possibly the Venezuela, or maybe the Saudi Arabia of Canada: a petro-state where the Conservatives always win elections.
Of all of Canada, Alberta seems the most in line with mainstream US-American culture, which is to say very right-wing, Christianist, GOP-style, anti-environmentalist, and Reaganite. It attracts great numbers of Yanks to work in its oil industry.
Ted Cruz, who is either a parody of a don’t-mess-wit’-Texas conservative or in actuality an extreme form of one, was born there. Steve Harper, the Ronald Reagan of Canada, is from there.
Alberta is either the great bulwark keeping Canada from becoming, y’know, a European social democracy, or culturally a part of the USA in Canada by mistake.
So, I ask you: Should the USA annex Alberta? This is a serious question.
Sometimes you have to destroy a nation (or steal a little piece of it anyway) to save it. We’d be doing it for God, Baseball and APPLE PIE AND THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF ALL THAT OIL!!! I LOVE this plan!
(There isn’t a serious answer to this…not only doesn’t Alberta want to be part of the US, we don’t really want to expand either, and our relationship with Canada is about as close as to any nation on earth, so I doubt there is anything that either country would want to do to jeopardize that)