The issue of Alberta separation has been getting plenty of attention both inside the province and across Canada. Not all of it is helpful.
A prime example of unhelpfulness is an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail last week with an attention-getting headline: “Alberta’s separatism is hollow, artificial and all about money.” Writer Robert Pattillo highlights the obvious difference between the growing sovereignty movement in Alberta and the long-standing movement in Quebec in that Quebec has a distinct language and culture to fight for.
He also highlights the cultural distinctiveness of Newfoundland and Labrador – the only province of Canada to have been its own country, a separate dominion of the British Empire in the early 20th century – and even hearkened back to Louis Riel’s initial Red River uprising that led to the creation of the province of Manitoba in 1870.
The implication is clear, from the headline on down: economic reasons are not a justifiable reason to tear a county apart, and Alberta’s separatist movement is, by definition, illegitimate.
But that’s missing an important point. Separatism is really not about money, it’s about what the money represents – appreciation for what the west brings to Confederation.
And that lack of appreciation is far from new. There’s a famous (and oft-copied) editorial cartoon, The Canadian Milch Cow, that Arch Davis drew in 1915 for the Grain Growers Guide, depicting a trio of hard-working farmers in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba pitching hay for a hungry cow that’s feeding. The udders, meanwhile, are in Eastern Canada being milked by top-hatted banker types into buckets labeled Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal.
It's the same spirit that prompted Preston Manning to found the Reform Party in the 1980s with the slogan “The West Wants In!”
Prime Minister Mark Carney appears stepping up to the mark on the fiscal side, taking steps to make major energy projects easier to approve (though the proof of that will only come with a project being proposed and then approved).
But the real answer to Alberta separatists can’t be economic – it’s not just about allowing new outlets for Alberta energy to tidewater. It’s about acknowledging that energy as a major source of Canadian prosperity. Federal transfer payments to Quebec and the Atlantic provinces which support health care and child care there don’t grow on trees; they come out of the Alberta oil sands.
Call us naïve, but we suspect some people beating the independence drum today could end up being the biggest backers of Canada if they felt the West was truly appreciated for its role in Canadian prosperity.
And there’s precedent for that kind of display. In 1995, just days before Quebec’s second referendum on sovereignty, hundreds of thousands of Canadians from every province, including Alberta, descended on Montreal for a rally to show their love for Quebec. While it can’t be proven that rally saved the country from splitting, the narrowness of the final vote means that it just might have.
If Ontario premier Doug Ford wants to play Captain Canada again, as he did earlier this year in the face of U.S. tariff threats, he doesn’t need to organize a mass rally in Calgary to show the love. But he could help spread the message elsewhere that Alberta prosperity – fuelled by Alberta energy as well as agriculture – is a key component of the Canadian way of life.
Albertans are willing to help others – but nobody wants their help to be taken for granted.
Could it be as simple as saying “thank you”? No. But it is a start. And it doesn’t cost anything.
