Alberta Bound

Since this essay jumped into my brain yesterday, I have done a lot of thinking about Alberta, and I have moved from outrage to concern and hope.

My outrage started with my reaction to the Alberta separatist proponents. How dare they even THINK of stealing away a piece of my Canada?! (Yes, interrobang.) This is my country. Our country. You cannot raid it and plunder it, you selfish idiots.

And some of these people flagrantly misusing personal voter information.

You don’t own Alberta any more than I do. A whole lot of the descendants of the original occupants—the Indigenous people—are permanently settled in Alberta. Five of our country’s most beautiful national parks are right there on federal land in Alberta, including Banff National Park, the oldest national park in Canada.

Then there is the practical side of things. Do you really want a land-locked country, with border crossings and an army and setting up your embassies across the rest of North America. Would you have an Alberta dollar, and would you still honour Canadian Tire money? And what would you do about King Charles? Really, this has not been thought through. It is sabre-rattling. You might get the Republic of Alberta, but it would be riddled with pieces still clearly belonging to Canada and the Indigenous people. Don’t even let us get started on whether you would rather be US citizens than Canadian.

I got all worked up in my mind and planned to write to ORGASM, that is, the Organization for the Right Ghastly Alberta Separation Movement. Here was my idea:   yes you can take Alberta out of Canada, and here’s how: Take your big map of Canada, lay it out on the dining room table, take your black marker from the kitchen drawer, and draw a straight line from Coutts (yes, thank you, we all know where that is now) up to the very northwest corner of what is now Alberta. Now, give everything to the left of that to BC, and everything to the right to Saskatchewan. Poof, Alberta, you are gone. BC gets Calgary and Saskatchewan gets Edmonton. Yes, provincial boundaries can be redrawn. A bit of a fuss, but doable. I don’t think it would even need the participation—much less approval—of Canadians living in Alberta. I could be wrong on that.

We would have to rename Alsask—to, maybe, The Town Formerly Known as Alsask. Lloydminster would lose its border-town cachet. The Saskatchewan Roughriders would still be the supreme football team in the province, if not the country. There would be some adjustments.

But all that was just my outrage having a tantrum.  

I want to come to the defence of, if not the separatists, the alienated. In corporate law, there is a concept that minority shareholders should not be exploited or have their rights steamrollered by the majority shareholders. I think the alienated in Alberta must feel like minority shareholders. They live in a country where the federal election is already won or lost before the polls even close in Alberta and BC. They feel ignored and abused by those who run the country from Ottawa. Remember that slogan (thank you Ralph Klein) that was slung around in the 1970s? Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark?   That’s how hurt and mad they felt. They are always picking up the tab and no one picks up the tab for them.

Politically, Alberta has been home to a strong base of conservative voters. I prefer the word “conservative” to “right-wing” in my new consideration of the Alberta situation. If you use a term including “wing”, you move very quickly to wingnuts, to name-calling, to derision. So, let’s stick with “conservative”. The best of conservatism must spring from caution, care not to destroy, desire for safety. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. And fear. Fear of loss coming with change.

Alberta’s economic future may lie with tourism, because the big oil and gas industry, and the big underground wealth located in that province, may be going the way of the bustle. Fashions change. Knowledge and understanding evolve. Things that used to be just fine are no longer just fine. And change is threatening and traumatic for people who are by nature conservative. Did Alberta make the conservatives conservative? How is it that the Alberta political culture is so different from the Quebec political culture? Who knows.  

At the other end of things are the progressives. Those who welcome change that they hope will be change for the better. While the conservatives want to keep a tight fist around their tax dollars, the progressives are ready to keep our community money in a dish in the hall, for worthy projects and for sharing.  

In passing, I want to say that Alberta is full of wonderful people, including dear friends of mine, and cousins and cousins-once-removed. It produces wonderful musicians.   There is the Fringe Festival. Banff! Jasper! Lake Louise! Cowboy hats and cowboy dreams. And in my childhood, Alberta always seemed to have lovely, paved highways, compared to my old stubble-jumping, gravel-roaded, poor cousin of a province, dear Saskatchewan. Alberta money, nouveau riche. Even, allegedly, no rats. (See my jealousy.)

But back to the minority shareholder. To feel powerless, unappreciated, unheard, trampled upon, is to feel resentment. And resentment breeds political huffery and puffery.

I think we need to do something, or maybe many things, to promote a feeling of love for our whole country in all of us, and a sense of belonging to it, sea to sea to sea, that is bigger than the politics of the day. We all need to have an Alberta family come to stay with us, in our house, for 10 days every year, and we can eat pie and talk and listen. Also, a Quebec family, in our house, for 10 days every year. Oh, and yes please, a Nova Scotia family and a Newfoundland and Labrador family for at least 10 days a year, because just think of the music! The music! And a family from Nunavut. Yes, the darlings. And people should be able to bring their dog. Everybody should be sent home with an extra new suitcase, for all the presents we want to send them home with. Because we love them.

This would be a very good initial investment, or outlay, from the spanking new Canada Sovereign Wealth Fund. A big grant, every year, for every Canadian, to have an ambassador family from another province to visit at your house, and for you to fly to visit them, and take a nice hostess gift. Preferably something edible. Honestly, wouldn’t this be wonderful? (You can tell I have deep-seated progressive leanings: I am quite ready to raid the piggy-bank…)

Maybe it would help, in this giant country, to have an electoral system more reflective of all of us than this first-past-the-post business. Maybe we need more committees.

Right now, I want to say to the Albertans flirting with separation, I am ready to listen to you. Really listen. I want to comfort you and talk with you and brainstorm. We need to talk about how to make things better, for you, for us, and for the grandchildren, and for their grandchildren.

I am speaking as an elder.