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.
