DAVID SOLWAY: SEPARATION OR COLLAPSE @Arts & Opinion

According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, since the inception of Canada’s equalization program in 1957, which sees the wealthier provinces subsidizing their less fortunate counterparts, Alberta has made a net contribution of $67 billion, $2.9 billion alone in 2021 — which in turn represents only a portion of the province’s immense financial contribution to federal coffers and the governments and residents of other provinces.

The Fraser Institute notes that the equalization drain represents “just a small part of the province’s outsized contribution to confederation in recent years.” It calculates that “the gap between Albertans’ contribution to federal revenues and federal expenditures plus transfers to the province, totalled $20.5 billion annually in 2017/18. And this measure excludes Albertans’ disproportionate cumulative contribution to the Canada Pension Plan, which on net totalled $2.9 billion in 2017.”

Albertans had voted in a referendum to abolish the system of equalization payments to other provinces. Speaking of transfer payments, it was former Premier Jason Kenney who made that issue a referendum question. Alberta voted yes, an affirmative totally ignored by Ottawa and the rest of the country.

Meanwhile, the Liberals are doing everything in their power to eviscerate Alberta’s energy industry, the source of its prosperity and a major contributor to Canada’s overall solvency, by shutting down pipeline projects, banning tanker activity along the coast of British Columbia, and levying anti-emission, net-zero protocols designed to strangle the province’s economic output. The cognitive dissonance is appalling.

Obviously, it is not only Alberta and Saskatchewan that are at risk, but the rest of the country as well, as the Liberal administration under Mark Carney moves to effectively collapse the country’s economic output. Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, and now the UK are the models for a Canadian makeover. Debt, deficit, money printing, and capital flight are the inevitable results of the net-zero fantasy. Canada is intent on committing economic suicide.

As emeritus professor of economics Steve Ambler points out, “Private investment in Canada was already hemorrhaging under the Trudeau administration. Even larger federal deficits under the new Liberal administration, and its continued emphasis on managing the economy from the top down by administrative fiat, will not improve the situation. Instead, investment funds will continue to migrate to the US where tax rates and the business climate in general are more advantageous.” Indeed, an internal government report from Policy Horizons Canada warns of a “near-collapse of Canada’s economy, trigger[ing] a mental health crisis and more grassroots approaches to housing and food—including families foraging and hunting wildlife for food.”

The state of the nation is no longer sustainable. National Energy Board member Murray Lytle argues, “Alberta independence is the end of Canada. The end of Canada is the end of a vast fortune to be earned by Laurentia,” that is, East-Central Canada, the so-called Laurentian elite. “And, as with the truckers (may they forever be blessed!)”, he continues, “Alberta independence may break a globalist spell that is ruining many other countries around the world. It is going to be the fight of a lifetime.”

It is not only Alberta that is interrogating its future. Its sister province of Saskatchewan is also contemplating secession. As expected, the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party (NDP), true to its socialist, nation-destroying roots and its handmaiden service to the Liberals, has taken exception to the province’s consideration of “new terms for Saskatchewan, whether inside Canada or as an independent nation.” NDPers are dead set against those whom they view as “tying to break up the country” — a country that seems already irreparably broken. Prosperity, competitive entrepreneurship, and individual initiative are anathema to the NDP. The Grassroots promoter of provincial independence Nadine Ness responded: “There is no difference between the natural resource destroying net zero Liberal agenda and the NDP. They are the entity trying to bring more of Ottawa into our province.” Ness is absolutely correct.

The same is true of Ontario’s faux-Conservative, Pritzker-like premier Doug Ford, who also accused Alberta Premier Danielle Smith of aiming to break up the country, saying, “We need to stand together, not tear ourselves apart.” Of course, Ford is a Liberal in Conservative clothing, was arguably the most vehement lockdown-vaccine proponent in the country, enjoyed an intimate political relationship with Justin Trudeau and now Carney, and is a shrewd operator who knows his Equalization payola would be at risk should Alberta decamp.

Premier Smith will also have her hands full dealing with the recalcitrant nuisance-factor of the various First Nations that adamantly refuse to countenance separation, arguing that it would constitute a violation of their sacred treaty rights. They insist on remaining in Canada. “This is treaty country, and any talk of separation is really insanity, because there is no pathway to separation,” said Troy ‘Bossman’ Knowlton, chief of the Piikani Nation, rather tautologically. “Our treaties predate the province,” said Kelsey Jacko, chief of the Cold Lake First Nation. Albertans who might vote in favour of Alberta independence have meanwhile been called vile names, including “f***ing white trash Alberta separatists.”

Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge and senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, argues that “indigenous threats are unlikely to faze Premier Smith,” pointing out that according to Treaty Rights, traditional lands do not belong to the various tribes but to the Crown and that the Native peoples are citizens just like everyone else. They are the recipients of privileges, not rights that supersede common law and Constitutional liberties. Moreover, reserve land makes up only 1.3% to 1.7%, at the most, of Alberta. The chiefs protesting the independence movement “appear to have suddenly become Canadian patriots, after thoroughly trashing Canada as genocidal, colonialist, and all the rest for the past few decades,” says Giesbrecht.

And yet, in a country with a “thoroughly antiquated and racist Indian Act” and a system in which band leaders mistakenly feel they deserve a pension for life, indigenous citizens living off government handouts “die almost two decades sooner than other citizens and fill up the jails and the child welfare system.” In a more caring sovereign Alberta, they might “instead graduate as the doctors, engineers, teachers and other professionals so needed in Alberta.”

Smith has assured them that their treaty rights would be respected. Clearly, the province cannot be held hostage by a minuscule minority of geopolitical passengers. Nor do they have any record of being “original inhabitants,” having no written history and therefore unable to identify the prior inhabitants they displaced after crossing the Bering Strait. In fact, the identity of an “original inhabitant” is historically unprovable.

Whatever we like to call it — secession, independence, separation, autonomy, sovereignty — it appears that the die may well have been cast. The problems are considerable, but they are not insurmountable, especially as more and more people come to realize their freedom and prosperity are relentlessly eroding under a prevaricating, net-zero fanatic. The country is rolling on the rims.

In any case, the order of events cannot be predicted. Will Canada split down the middle? Will Western separation occur before or after the national collapse? One thing is clear. Alberta and Saskatchewan can survive on their own, whether as independent nations or as the 51st and 52nd American states. They would, in fact, do very well, far better than they have done for decades. Perhaps British Columbia and Manitoba would see the light and recognize where their advantage lies, but there is no guarantee here. The rest of Canada, with the possible exception of electricity-producing Quebec and oil-producing Newfoundland, would be a dismembered basket case. (Though it must be said that the question involving Quebec and Newfoundland is moot.)

The Maritime Provinces would float off into the Atlantic and hope for the revival of the cod stocks. What would happen to the three northern Territories is anybody’s guess. Ontario, which would no longer profit from Western transfer payments, would find its economically essential auto manufacturing sector moving part by part to Detroit. Thus, a once proud and domineering province would bite the dust, and Ottawa would recede toward its original Bytown backwater condition.

The Demolition Derby is still on the drawing board, but the provinces may soon be jostling at the starting gate.