Well, here we are folks. The Friday before the big day. Either the end of Canada as we know it or some form of capitulation to Ontario and a handover of our economic sovereignty to either Quebec or the globalist cabal. Did I get that right?
This is the one for all the marbles. Independence! Leverage! Ridiculously complicated ballots and questions!
So.
Many.
Questions.
Yup. It’s Referendumb Time.
In all its glory.
I know I said eventually I would come out with the Crude Observations final word on the Alberta referendum but if you haven’t figured out what my final word on this subject is going to be, you just haven’t been paying attention.
I think it’s dumb and economically self-destructive. I have voted already because the last thing I want to do is get stuck in some massive line. I did the mail-in ballot. Even that process was bonkers. You had to get your ballot in by a fixed date instead of having it postmarked before the election. Which means we had to rely on Canada Post (irony). My kid’s ballot (who is attending school in the US) did not arrive in time for it to be completed and sent back.
I voted remain.
I have been consistent in my position and never wavered. I did not get swayed by the moronic “leverage” argument that would do nothing but commit us to another decade of economic uncertainty and political chaos.
That we must go through this $150 million charade to pacify and placate a minority of loud and grifting voices that have somehow infiltrated the UCP party leadership ranks is both offensive and maddening.
There is no leverage in uncertainty and rejection.
Things are actually improving here. Why are we looking to end it? It’s dumb. Given the choice I would ignore it if it wasn’t so dangerous to do that.
And it’s all so hard to escape anyway. Certainly not now that the Quebec provincial election has been held and the separatist (not going to call them sovereigntist, it’s a dumb evasion and hard to pronounce) Parti Quebecois has won a resounding mandate – a minority government with the electoral support of a whopping 19% of the voting age population. Yikes. And now we are saddled with the prospect of a third Quebec referendum on separation which will be as successful as the last two and the one in Alberta. The more remarkable thing about the Quebec election (on top of the ritual economic self-destructive never-endum referendum debate) was the complete and utter annihilation of the incumbent CAQ party who were wiped off the electoral map, their votes split off to one of the other three major parties (why does Quebec have so many parties?).
So, while Quebec scurries off to keep the rest of the country hostage to its sovereignty association pipe-dream, we get to keep doing what we’re doing out here.
Also last week we got that crazy expose by the inestimable Carrie Tait of the Globe and Mail regarding the Keystone Kops stumble-bumbling cast of separatist grifters and their unconscionable outreach to the US government and various and nefarious black-site political operatives and the purported scheming and selling out of the interests of Albertans’ interests in royalties, water and economic independence in support of their ill-thought out and absurd separatist fever-dream.
In that light, contemplating Quebec and what might have been or coulda, woulda, shoulda been along with the comical impossibility of seeing that whole 60 years of collective psychosis repeat itself, I got myself thinking about what separatism might actually mean and or entail.
I see so many of these social media posts that spend time defending or castigating the pro or anti side and so many people saying that neither has been able to articulate a proper argument for either option (hint, it’s dumb question – we know what federalism and Canada looks like, we live here and a separate Alberta is a complicated fantasy).
I mean despite best efforts no one can really know what you might gain or what you might lose.
Bu these are the things that matter!
So instead of publishing some heart-tugging tribute to Canada, I felt compelled to develop a definitive list of separatist “stuff”.
As I am wont to do.
So here goes – the Crude Observations List of the top things Albertans are likely to lose should they dance the separatist tango to its logical end. Some tongue in cheek, some not.
Hockey Night in Canada – look, I know it’s already been replaced by Cricket because Canada’s concentrated media empires are gobbling up every last profitable property, but how can you have hockey night IN Canada if you are OUT of Canada?”
The Canadian Football League. I suppose we could put teams in Lethbridge and Red Deer and have an Alberta Football League. The Player content rules would be ridiculous.
WestJet. Yes. WestJet. It’s a Canadian chartered airline. It’s likely to need to move.
Dehavilland Canada. It’s got Canada in its name. It’s going to go.
Hockey. Not the sport. The Teams. I don’t see how that works for already struggling franchises.
All of our National Parks. They are National parks. They belong to Canada.
Pacific Party Pipeline. Highly doubtful any Federal government will support this after being kicked in the nuts.
The official right to blame every policy you disagree with on “Ottawa.” Once you’re sovereign, the villain has to be someone local, and local villains are much harder to blame, especially if it’s you.
Threatening separation as a negotiating tactic. You can only play the “we’re outta here” card while you’re still inside the building.
Canadian Tire money. For obvious reasons. Think of all those rolls of funny money in your junk drawer that you will never be able to use.
Assuming you can afford to leave the country on an actual plane, the automatic acceptance that comes with the backpack flag. The red maple leaf currently signals “I’m a nice polite Canadian so please don’t look down on me and be mean”. A new flag will require a longer explanation at every hostel and the likelihood of Americans coopting the Alberta flag is low.
Blaming equalization while still cashing in on the broader Canadian credit rating. Independence means your bond yields are yours alone.
Being called “the Texas of Canada.” Texas already exists so you can’t use the name. Now we will be just “the Alberta of North America,” which is terrible branding.
Being able to use the phrase “coast to coast to coast.” There ain’t no coasts.
The CBC. Look, everyone hates it but it will need to be replaced with something. You can still hate public broadcasting, but it will be our public broadcasting, which ruins the fun.
Interprovincial trade. If you thought that was hard, wait ‘til you’re a separate country.
The Stanley Cup’s Canadian aura. An independent Alberta can’t lay claim to having won any cups. It’s in the rules.
“Sorry” is Canadian soft power. An indepednenet Alberta will need its own word. Oopsie Poopsie comes to mind.
We won’t be an associate member of the EU. This means all those European passport lines will be the super long ones.
I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it will be to travel to Mexico.
The ability to mock Quebec’s distinct society will be diminished. Distinctiveness is less special once everyone has it.
Tim Hortons as a national institution rather than a franchisor with aggressive expansion plans.
Free rides on the “we heat your houses” line. Once you’re separate, it’s just a commercial for exports, and the other side can negotiate.
The Royals. Are we still part of the monarchy? Is Chuckles our king or do we get a new king like Temu Booss Hogg Jeffrey Rath and his cowboy hat crown. Do we have to have our own governor general?
The loonie will be gone. A new coin needs an animal mascot for continuity. A rat makes the most sense, but Alberta is rat-free.
Will we keep the name Alberta? It’s actually a pretty weak name given it pays homage to a consort.
We will no longer be able to complain about official bilingualism but someone still has to decide what goes on the highway signs.
Being included in “Canada’s” Olympic medal count so the winter olympics feel collectively successful even when the roster is mostly from elsewhere.
The Mounties’ red serge as ambient branding. What colour are the uniforms going to be?.
Poutine, maple syrup and nanaimo bars are now someone else’s national foods.
Election-night maps where Alberta is a large, reliable blue block that makes the graphic look decisive. New maps will be smaller and full of local grudges.
The lingering option to move to B.C. or Saskatchewan and still call it “just going to another province.” After separation, that’s emigration, and your cousins will mention it at Thanksgiving.
Now for some more serious ones.
Investment that never arrives. Existing projects can be sold or delayed; the larger loss is capital that simply prices Alberta as a new sovereign with an untested currency, trade status, and fiscal path, and goes elsewhere. That shows up as a higher risk premium long before any firm announces it is leaving.
Treaty-level access to the U.S. market. CUSMA is an agreement with Canada. A separate Alberta would have to negotiate its own terms with Washington, almost certainly from a weaker position and without automatic continuity for rules of origin, energy, or dispute settlement.
Frictionless access to the rest of the Canadian market. Interprovincial barriers already exist, but they are still domestic. Independence converts the B.C., Saskatchewan, and Ontario markets into foreign markets, with customs, standards, and political risk attached to pipelines, oil, gas, electricity, beef, and manufactured goods.
A credible currency and payments system. Staying on the Canadian dollar means monetary policy set in Ottawa with no lender of last resort of your own. A new currency means transition costs, reserve requirements, and a period in which contracts, mortgages, and pensions have to be redenominated under uncertainty.
The federal borrowing rate and deposit framework. Ottawa’s credit rating and the CDIC backstop are shared infrastructure. A new country inherits a negotiated share of federal debt and has to establish its own rating, bond market, and deposit insurance from scratch.
Labour mobility and credential recognition. Canadians can currently move, work, and have many professional licences recognized across provinces with relatively little friction. That becomes immigration and foreign-credential policy in both directions.
Pipeline and port politics as foreign policy. Rights-of-way through B.C. or to tidewater stop being internal Canadian disputes and become bilateral negotiations with a neighbour that has its own voters and its own leverage and cares even less about you than it did when you were a necessary stop on the way to Banff.
Federal programs that are national in scale. Examples include major research granting councils, some agricultural risk-management tools, export financing, and the apparatus that negotiates and defends trade remedies. Replacing them at provincial scale costs more per person.
Citizenship and consular reach. A Canadian passport currently carries visa-free or visa-on-arrival access built up by a G7 state. A new Alberta passport starts over, and Canadians who remain in Alberta, or Albertans with family elsewhere in Canada, face a residency and citizenship split that no one has fully designed.
Fiscal predictability during the transition itself. Even if long-run budgets could be made to balance, the multi-year period of asset division, debt talks, tax-base redesign, and contract uncertainty is when households and firms delay decisions. That transition drag is a cost whether or not the end state is richer.
A few more silly ones to end on a lighter note.
Goodbye to the national parks. Banff, Jasper, Waterton, Elk Island and Wood Buffalo become foreign parks with a visa window, a currency-exchange booth, and a ranger who has to explain why your lifelong park pass is now a souvenir.
Canada Geese become a cross-border incident. The flocks still land on the tailings ponds, but now every migration is an unauthorized entry and someone has to decide whether honking counts as a customs declaration.
Family reunions in Kelowna require a passport. The lake is the same, the Airbnb is the same, most of the people you visit are still from Grande Prairie, but there is now a border post between the wake boat and the beer cooler.
National Music Centre leaves.
Convoys won’t have anywhere interesting to drive to anymore.
We will need to find a new city to complain about instead of Toronto.
We will be stuck with Nickelback.
Pierre Poilievre will lose his seat again – wait, maybe that’s not a bad thing
All the other Canada brags/inventions that we have will be gone.
- Created Superman
- Created Basketball
- World’s longest coastline
- Poutine
- The zipper
- Smoked Meat
- Insulin
- Pacemaker
- Robertson Screw
- Wonderbra
- Light bulb
- Electric Wheelchair
- The telephone
- Five-pin bowling
- Time zones
- Snowmobile
- Canola
- Java script
- Terry Fox
- Celine Dion
- Michael J. Fox
- Spiffy flag
- Elbows
Have a nice weekend everyone. Vote early. Vote often. Remain. There. I said it.
