By Senator Paula Simons
So I’m calling on us to do something un-Canadian: to put aside our habitual self-deprecation and stand up for the country we love—and reject the idea of a sovereign Alberta whose founding principles seem to be miserliness, xenophobia and transphobia. We need to raise our voices to denounce the dark fantasy of a landlocked, petulant petrostate dedicated to hoarding wealth, denouncing immigrants, denying climate change, spurning vaccines, protecting patriarchy and endangering queer kids. Because Alberta’s current crop of separatists don’t just want to leave Canada. They seem to want to opt out of the 21st century entirely.
Alberta is the wound the US wants to get an opening from. This isn’t just the normal list of grievances, the more you give the more they will take. If it ever leaves, it will join the US. The moment it joins the US, it will act as a list of grievances generator for further territorial invasions. The Alberta First Nations are perfectly well aware that this is just flavor of imperialism hidden as independence, just like Russia did with Ukraine’s oblasts.