Elections have consequences, and sometimes they come rather swiftly. In the case of the recent federal election, the consequence that is now looming in Canada is the breakup of the nation. Canada was not founded as one big blob of a country, but as a federation of provinces, and it seems as if there has always been some sort of separatist movement in play as long as one can remember.
It used to be Quebec that wanted to separate, purportedly to protect their culture. They had several referenda, all of which failed, but only by a hair’s breadth. The reason that they failed was because it became clear to Quebeckers that they would pay a price for breaking away from the rest of Canada greater than they wished to pay. Even during the era of referenda, they were already paying a price. Capital and the head offices of large corporations moved out of the province, as did a good chunk of the Jewish population, and consequently, Toronto, the city to which this movement headed, came to surpass Montreal as the biggest city and financial capital of the nation.
The province that wants to break away now is Alberta, and since the Liberals won the last election, albeit with only a minority government, the independence spirit in that province has greatly intensified.
They know all about Mark Carney’s decarbonization obsession, which is manifestly a continuation, if not a beefing up of the destructive Liberal policies under Justin Trudeau before him. But there is a big difference between Alberta separating from Canada than Quebec because though had Quebec separated it would have hurt the province more than it did the rest of the country, were Alberta to separate the effect would be quite the opposite because that province with its vast energy resources happens to be the foremost economic engine that drives the rest of the country.
On May 5, Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, delivered an address to the province in which she declaimed, “We just want to be free. Free to develop and export that incredible wealth of resources we have for the benefit of our families and future generations. Free to pursue opportunities with the ideals of entrepreneurship, hard work, and innovation that have become synonymous with the name of our province.” The destructive Liberal anti-energy policies are almost too numerous to list. (RELATED: Trump’s Mysterious Support of Canada’s Liberals)
With the recent blackouts in Europe as background, the province has already initiated a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s energy cap. In her speech, Smith demanded that the federal government repeal Bill C-69, known as the No More Pipelines Act. (The province has already won a lawsuit against the federal government on this matter, but so far, the feds have refused to act on the court’s ruling.) She demanded that Carney end the oil tanker ban as well as the net-zero vehicle mandate and federal laws regulating carbon emissions and plastics, and censoring the free speech of energy companies. (RELATED: Canada’s Manchurian Candidate)
In addition, because Alberta is landlocked, it wants access to a port so that it can export its oil and gas to energy-hungry countries abroad and bring trillions of dollars of revenue to benefit not only the province but the rest of the country. This access would also benefit indigenous communities over whose territory the pipelines would travel.
It is commonly known that energy drives prosperity, which is why developing nations are so energy hungry. On the other hand, the Liberals’ anti-energy policies have driven away billions of dollars of foreign investment, and Canada is now dead last in terms of productivity among all of the industrialized nations of the world. (RELATED: Canada’s Mark Carney Shares the Same Goal as China — Ending American Dominance)
In Canada, the legacy media are bought and paid for through subsidies by the federal government and the CBC, the state media company, which no one but a shrinking audience of old people watches anymore, does its best to run cover for its Liberal bosses. It is now only the independent press outlets, such as Juno News, that are willing to ask the tough questions, and during the election campaign, the Liberals did their best to shield Carney from them.
Journalists from these outlets were regularly escorted away by the police during Liberal rallies, and this culminated at the end of the campaign when Elections Canada, which runs the debates and is supposed to be impartial, cancelled the traditional press scrum that has always followed them. Carney is smarter than Trudeau but whenever tough questions have been posed to him such as his lying about moving his investment company to the U.S. or his plagiarizing his doctoral thesis, has likewise been reduced to hemming and hawing and mealy-mouthed responses.
Since the Liberals won the election with only a minority government, they are therefore being very careful about image management. Risibly, Carney holds his press conferences while sitting behind a desk presumably from which he gets his authority, like a teacher being approached by students during quiet time in the classroom or like a doctor or lawyer in the consulting room. It’s hard to say how long he will be able to hang on to this “Father Knows Best” demeanor because some hard decisions are coming up next.
First, there are his negotiations over tariffs with Trump. When Chrystia Freeland went down to Washington to renegotiate NAFTA, she was sidelined from the talks, having called Trump a dictator, and was readmitted to the negotiating table after Mexico had finished negotiating a deal with America. Nevertheless, she came home bragging that she had gotten a great deal for Canada.
During the election campaign, Carney proclaimed that Canada’s relationship with its southern neighbor was over. It is doubtful that he will repeat that assertion when talking with President Trump. But if he does not make a deal with the President that makes these destructive tariffs get reduced or go away entirely, then the economic pain on top of what is already felt in Canada due to inflation and low productivity will continue to vex the country as time goes on. (RELATED: The Future Is Dim for US–Canada Relations)
Meanwhile Premier Smith has announced that her government will be gathering signatures for a referendum to be held in 2026 if the federal government continues to renege on its promises to repeal or delete the regulations that have been crippling the Alberta economy.
If a referendum succeeded, it would be hard to predict how Carney would react. Alberta is a reliably Conservative-voting province, and perhaps he would say good riddance, now with the Conservative votes of that province out of the way, the Liberals could settle down to a permanent Liberal majority. On the other hand, he has threatened to invoke, for unspecified reasons, the Emergency Measures Act that was used by Trudeau to crush the Truckers Freedom Convoy. So, can we expect tanks to roll into Alberta after Referendum Day? Oh wait, the minuscule number that Canada had due to Trudeau’s depletion of Canada’s military has already been sent to Ukraine!
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