Having been a teacher for close to 40 years, I take great pride in knowing that during that entire period, NOT ONCE did I ever call a student “dumb”. However, a recent article in the Leader Post article claiming that more than 40 per cent of Saskatchewan Party voters want a referendum on leaving Canada and a recent Angus Reid poll has that number exceeding 52% in the United Conservative Party membership, has me questioning whether or not I give my students—and Canadians—more intellectual credit than they deserve.

It seems that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe are Hell-bent on nursing what I call a “separatist virus” as a smoke screen to hide the stupidities being daily created in their jurisdictions, in effect sucking the oxygen out of the air and forcing honest journalists to address their blaming of Ottawa for everything “wrong” with this nation.

Personally, I don’t “buy” these statistics. Scott Moe’s closest advisor on provincial autonomy, Allan Kerpan, is irrelevant even in Eric Berntson’s old riding, and as for his “Maverick” party separation goals, even that party’s name is more likely to have a half-listening voter believing that he’s actually talking about Tom Cruise’s sequel to “Top Gun” and looking forward to the release of his next Mission Impossible adventure. 

Even in Alberta, the results of the last three by-elections must have its premier worried about how “successful” she is in trying to paint the feds as villains. In what was once considered to be the province’s most ornery and pro-“separatist” riding, Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills, the Republican Party of Alberta couldn’t even outpoll Nenshi’s NDP, and what’s even more impressive, both Nenshi in Edmonton Strathcona and Singh Brar in Edmonton Ellerslie wiped the UCP candidates off the map in all but ONE poll.

Everyone who can read knows that it is Smith who is pushing this separation button, and Moe is only going along for the ride because he hasn’t a clue as to how he can make the topic seem palpable to Saskatchewan voters; therefore, before Smith stops dropping the separation bomb on Ottawa, she wants Ottawa to guarantee that the Energy East pipeline be built, even though no one has stepped forward to finance the project, and it cannot be built quickly enough to be profitable before green sources replace petroleum as an energy alternative. Her demand that proposed emission caps to be placed upon greenhouse gases for petroleum and natural gas production be dropped, however, is a joke – that is, unless someone on the right of our political spectrum has a unique way of keeping this atmospheric pollution problem constrained within our provincial borders.

Smith’s strategy was originally formulated when Justin Trudeau was still Prime Minister and Poilievre his heir apparent. However, once Trump began his campaign to denigrate Canada as a nation, voters minds changed as they did when we wanted Stephen Harper to be gone in 2015, and now Mark Carney is being given a chance to “remake” Canada – and so as it now stands, Carney seems to be doing the right thing, as support for Conservatives have dropped over 10 basis points in the last month. What his is doing well is handling all of the “red lines” that Trudeau mentioned were troublesome to Canadians as a whole but never thought seriously about confronting (e.g.: India sending assassins to Canada to potentially murder prominent Canadian Sikhs supporting the creation of a Sikh homeland on the Asian sub-continent). 

My big question, though, is why are Smith and Moe trying to wave the “separation” threat so openly before our eyes as though this threat is “real”? Why would anyone WANT to move to, or be legislated by, an America that ranks seventeen places below Canada in being the best nation in which to live, pay more taxes, lose our social justice programs, see our civil rights destroyed when we dare to speak our mind against The One Who Would Be King, and help to pay off a staggering $7 trillion debt load caused by America’s oligarchs continuing to get tax breaks (the “Big Beautiful Bill)?

To me, separatism being waved as a threat to Canadian sovereignty is just two English-speaking pols not knowing their Canadian history. Quebec wanted to leave Canada in the 1980’s but failed to have it approved in referenda taken in 1980 and 1995. Yet, had these votes gone in favour of the Parti Quebecois, this new nation would have failed to achieve sovereignty because once the “nation” of Quebec was established, the northern section of Quebec would have reverted to Canada under international law, and Quebec’s most powerful economic engine, the James Bay hydroelectric development would end up being controlled by Newfoundland and Labrador. 

Similar treaty laws with Canada would ensure that Saskatchewan and Alberta lands would be treated in the same manner, so that if people still wanted to separate, they’d have to be the ones doing the moving, not the provincial land masses.

Given such historical precedent, one would think that perhaps Ms. Smith might choose to step back, take a couple of sick days off to rid her system of the anti-Ottawa bile constricting her ability to think, and work more closely with the rest of the premiers and the PM in helping move forward some of her saner ideas, such as having a pipeline to the Port of Churchill built to move both LNG and crude oil to international markets. 

So, what’s left for her to accede to finally get Canada moving in the right direction, which is to radically diversify its export market. That answer is easily defined: amend Bill C-5 so that Indigenous consultation and representation in any major project proposed for Canada be enshrined – not just in this bill, but incorporate its demand into our Constitution. As a final fix to bury the current ways in which governments avoid this responsibility, require all future laws or amendments to reference such need, and make it immune from changes to future laws that might invoke the “notwithstanding” clause to that law’s application.

Whether Carney has the guts to move in that direction, though, is another question.

At previous G8 summit meetings (now the G7 with Russia having been expelled for invading Crimea), more attention had been paid to the carnival of “naked” protesters than what was accomplished in their weighty discussions. Past topics include, among other things, African nations seeking global assistance in reducing various member nation’s debt, deterring nation-to-nation regional wars, and gaining greater access to “first world” markets.

The list of G7 leaders attending will include France’s Emmanuel Macron, United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and United States President Donald Trump, as well as two representatives from the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and António Costa, president of the European Council.

It is the list of supplemental dignitaries being invited to attend this summit, however, that is creating speculation as to what achievements Carney will be trying to garner from mixing an unlikely list of protagonists and antagonists to the gathering. These include Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, South Korea’s President Lee Jae-Myung, UAE’s President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte and the World Bank’s President Ajay Banga.

When you stir the pot of these individuals, you are also left wondering whether someone who was also invited to attend, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman (he declined the invitation, as did China’s Xi), might have contributed to this meeting. It’s highly unlikely that Carney would have asked him to return the Wheat Board to Canadian control, but the prince most definitely would have added meat to any discussion respecting Israel, particularly in that nation’s continued bombardment of Gaza, or for that matter its pushing the envelope of potential nuclear holocaust by unleashing its air power against an Iranian nation seemingly Hell-bent on finally “owning” nuclear arms. 

MBS could have also added insight into Carney’s hope of encouraging our world leaders to take issues of peace and national security more seriously, especially given that Saudi Arabia seems to be adapting a pose towards Israel that is willing to lend support to its war on terrorism, particularly in Yemen.

Carney’s invitation to India’s PM Modi is equally contentious, but it has nothing to do with his perhaps offering more “hi-tech” lentil-cleaning equipment to our Agribusinessess endangering trade with his nation so as to prevent future disagreements as to the quality of crop our large corporate farming community are trying to ship to India’s ports. Simply put, both the United States and Canada have accused India of planning assassinations against alleged Sikh leadership of India-based Sikhs seeking their own separate state on the Asian sub-continent. In effect, then, this is one of the many so-called “red line” diplomatic issues that the Trudeau government refused to address, and Carney is no longer willing to allow to continue to fester on the sidelines and impede Canada in its attempts to create a regime of sanity in addressing climate change, an issue that India seemingly wishes to ignore.

Other issues festering at Canada’s door, be its having to increasingly put up with foreign interference in our political affairs, be it China supporting Liberal politicians in conflicts with Taiwan or Russian techno-nerds claiming injury to Russian sovereignty due to Ukrainian aggression aren’t even prominent items on the agenda of this summit, for obvious reasons. 

First of all, as a result of Trump’s on-again-off-again tariff policies, Canada’s major economic priority now becomes one of attracting private investment to build infrastructure that leaves the adverse effects of economic domination caused by our nation being too reliant upon the United States for trade and commerce streams less punitive in its effects upon our GNP. What’s most disturbing about this issue, however, is the fact that while Alberta premier and Kristi Noem clone Danielle Smith demands an immediate expansion of pipelines to export our petroleum resources to market and Pierre Poilievre tries to explain how that lack of infrastructure allows American entrepreneurs to take advantage of such limited exportation potential, we have yet to see even a SINGLE Canadian group step up to fill this void – a problem well perceived by former PM Pierre Trudeau when his government offered western Canada its National Energy Program for consideration.

Unfortunately, the fingerprints and boot stomps of the Trump regime are already all over the potential for the G7 conference to be anything but successful. In spite of his perhaps even acknowledging that Canada will continue to support Ukraine in its efforts to free that nation from the NON-existential threat that Russia holds against Ukraine, there are the presence of Zelenskyy, Sheinbaum and Ramaphosa on acknowledging the first theme is “protecting our communities and the world,” which calls for leaders there to remind Trump that his approach to negotiations with these persons have come from the perspective of the United States being “in control” of not only their economic future, but that their existence as a developed nation remains within his power to approve.

In effect, Carney’s gamble is one in which he can expose the machinations of Trump’s oppressive behaviour towards all nations as being counterproductive towards reintroducing rational world economic order, and create an atmosphere wherein Trump can accept such a conclusion without bitterness and a desire to retaliate, not just at Canada, but the world in general.

As such, I can only wish for Carney’s success in creating this miracle – and, of course, a “Happy Father’s Day.”

Honest to God, if this “news” item that appeared in the Washington Post had been written by someone who seldom gets a story printed on Page 1, I’d have thought it to be nothing more than another meme joke going viral in our increasingly irrelevant social media. 

What was it? Oh, just Trump, finally showing some serious “annoyance” with Russian President Vladimir Putin procrastinating in getting peace talks started with Ukraine, responding to a question asking for his opinion on the recent drone attacks against Ukraine that killed over a dozen children.

Here’s how the United States “most stable genius” and leader of the most powerful military presence on the planet responded: by rhetorically asking, more or less and without any sense of irony or disbelief, whether the reporter actually “believed” that Putin would condone such actions, were he to understand that at the end of such aggression children would become the major casualties of a war that should never have been allowed to start in the first place.

“Golly gee, Donny; I’d have to think about that…” – as if!

Of what usage has social media become when all that it is doing is turning its addicted users into voyeurs of what the world is becoming because we’re allowing ourselves to believe that among other things some vainglorious “influencer” offers up an opinion on an issue, we have to immediately join that individual’s cult following? 

I wonder how Valeria Marquez would take my comment today – that is, were she still alive. 

Who’s Valeria Marquez, you might ask? Well, to put her societal role in its proper context, she is – sorry, “was” – a 23-year old Mexican “beauty influencer” who while doing a live stream presentation on TikTok this past week was shot by an on set intruder. The extremely sickening aspect of even mentioning the tragedy undergone by Ms. Marquez is that her situation will invariably receive more “shares” and voyeur commentary on Facebook or “X” than a far more serious item having just been published online in “The Line Editor” by Jason Nickerson, a “Humanitarian Representative to Canada for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières”, dealing with the emerging crisis of literally millions of potential victims of starvation, genocide, lawlessness and tribalism gathering in Sudan, the Congo, Haiti and Gaza facing possible death simply because the world’s largest superpower is too busy cleaning lint from its own navel and cutting “needless expenses” to humanitarian organizations such as USAID, instead of directing its attention to the resolution of these matters.

In the “good old days” when governments elected serious leaders, a Mike Pearson would have assembled a Canadian peace force to monitor and police such incidents as he did during the Suez crisis and Cyprus, or as our nation did following the signing of the Armistice that paused the war between the two Koreas in 1953. In todays’ world, if there’s no profit to be made in such an effort, Trump’s army isn’t going to do anything unless a protester from the “other side” decides to put a rainbow flag tied to the end of a rifle and waves it in his face – in which case, it would then be “safe” for American troops to shoot a few “protesters” just to make a point, such as demonstrating their “manhood”.

Does such a worldly crisis have a Canadian perspective? Of course it does, as in the very near future and in addition with having to come to terms with dealing with a United States president Hell-bent on humiliating our sovereignty, Prime Minister Mark Carney must also have to make a statement to the rest of the world such how Canada “sees” itself in a future in which the only crises have been created by leaders such as Trump or Putin viewing their “manhood” through the imagery of trick magnifying mirrors.

If you need an “example” as to how this is affecting our ability to govern in Canada (ignoring for the moment the threats against our sovereignty), we need only look as far as Alberta to see just how far Premier Noem – sorry, “Smith” – is creating mayhem in her attempts to “threaten” Canada should Prime Minister Carney not give into the province’s “demands” respecting pipelines, tariffs and “interference” in its commercial affairs, EVEN IF they potentially could have a substantial debilitating effect upon the nation’s economy. 

I’ve had more than a few very serious “laughs” at the online postings having been offered by my NDP colleagues in Alberta commenting upon the chaos that Smith is creating by introducing a raft full of legislative changes to environmental regulation, “green” policy and even threats to the very existence of the Canadian nation as we know it today. 

If we really want to know “WHY” Kristi (Did it again; sorry – “Danielle”) is creating this media firestorm, look no further than what Trump was doing in his first 100 days – burying the media with so many “changes” to governmental policy that it overwhelms the media in establishing priority as to which absurd proposal should take precedence in their coverage, OR “half-covering” everything, thereby missing the point of the Trump information assault altogether, not to mention the corruption that goes on below the surface of our understanding.

Right now, the conventional media has become so fixated upon providing “full coverage” that even the staunchest of anti-Trump forces are once more beginning to doubt the message being delivered by the conventional media.

Isn’t that what created our inability to see through the farce Trump was creating in the first place?