Canada’s oil-rich province is set to vote on leaving Canada: The big question. Will NATO gather together 41 nations to ensure that Albertans don’t go it alone?
Alberta’s premier has agreed to let residents decide whether the province should pursue independence.
Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta will hold a vote in October on whether to remain in the country or take steps toward a binding independence referendum, Premier Danielle Smith has announced.
Stay or go
The vote is expected to be held on October 19. It will ask Albertans whether they really want the province to remain in Canada.
Smith stressed that this will not be a binding independence referendum, but will instead gauge whether the people want to pursue one.
302,000 turn their backs on Ottawa
The announcement comes after pro-independence group Stay Free Alberta submitted nearly 302,000 signatures to trigger a citizen-led referendum on leaving Canada.
The required threshold was 177,732 signatures, equal to 10% of the votes cast in the previous provincial election.
Oil Grab
Smith has said she supports Alberta remaining in Canada, but argued that the people should be able to express their views on the province’s future.
The initiative was challenged in court by First Nations groups, who argued that secession would violate treaty rights.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney responded by saying Alberta is ’essential’ to Canada and vowed to build a stronger country.
Oil for Albertans
Ottawa has sought to address some of Alberta’s long-running grievances, including disputes over energy policy and access to export markets for the province’s oil and gas sector.
Alberta Sucked Dry
Alberta is one of Canada’s most important energy-producing regions and has long been at odds with the federal government over environmental regulations, taxation, and pipeline access.
Separatist sentiment has been fueled by claims that Ottawa has held back the province’s resource economy, though polling suggests full independence remains a minority position.
Even if Albertans vote to pursue independence and hold an official referendum, the province cannot unilaterally leave Canada.
Hot air referendum
Under Canada’s constitutional framework, a clear referendum result would require negotiations with the federal government and other provinces, while legal challenges from indigenous groups could further complicate the process.
THANK YOU FOR SHARING WITH FRIENDS AND SOCIAL MEDIA. WE WELCOME READERS’ COMMENTS
Share this:
Categories: Political
Michael Walsh Stories and Books 
As a Canadian, thank you for describing the situation better than most non Canadian(and even some Canadian) sites. You have the MAGA types who think its a one vote and out the door the next day. Some pundits closer to “our views” even write the whole thing off as a US backed recent push, which while I’m sure there is some of that, the desire for more control goes back a long way, and Alberta’s fortunes have waxed and waned over the 120 or so years they’ve been officially a province.
“modern” origins of the movement can be put in the early 1980’s with the National Energy Policy by Pierre(reputed dad of Justin) Trudeau, nationalizing Petro- Fina into Petro-Canada, which has since gone private sector again, and price controls and tax changes to ensure consumers didnt get gouged, but at the expense of developers of said oil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_Program
That period of high inflation in the west hit Canada as well (infamous 6 and 5 price and wage controls, sky high interest rates, luckily I was a kid then, so was happy about my almost 20% Canada Saving Bond, while my dad had to deal with the business end of the inflation related bills of the era.
Natural Resources are a Provincial area of government, so the policy was seen as a federal overreach in a nation, that while has a pretty good spread of provincial and federal spheres of influence, does tend to pander to the feds more than people like, as the feds have the purse of equalization payments and health care payments(while its a provincial area, the rising costs and limited taxation powers of provinces have them hooked on pipe daddy Ottawa making with the cash. Also Liberals knew they stood little chance of getting votes from Alberta, so they were viewed as an area that could be used with impunity.
There’s also a racial/linguistic issue as well that divides Alberta and the RoC, Like many western nations, the mid to late 60s saw a weakening of “old stock Canadians” voting power and bloc by unfettered immigration of rival blocs of voters https://uppercanadiancavalier.substack.com/p/the-bangladeshi-coup-that-overthrew?r=75q18d&triedRedirect=true This also cemented the East’s hold on Canada as the majority of Urban large areas are in Ontario and Quebec. Offical bilingualism of French and English also further divided Alberta, as it had a far lower french speaking population than eastern provinces (back in the day it was the complaint about French printed on peoples boxes of Corn Flakes in areas where few ppl spoke it.
Aside from being a cultural irritant, it also locked out many Albertans from federal gov’t employment and influence. true, many could and did learn it, but the very fact of said ppl being willing to do so meant more than not, they were allied with the “laurentian elite” or power block of ppl in Quebec and Ontario.
Now Alberta has had eras, especially prior to the discovery of oil in Leduc, in the 30s that Alberta received federal money vs providing money to the feds, so that also needs to be included in the story as well. My take is Alberta will eventually take a vote, like Quebec has done twice, and like them, will use the threat of leaving to extract more control over things like Quebec has a separate tax and pension system, among other things.
It’s a problem that could have been solved decades ago, but the Ont/Que power compact that it managed to get from Atlantic Canada, which in the days of sail, was the economically dominant area, has selfishly held onto it, refusing to recognize as ppl moved west, and then oil and mining wealth discovered, the west needed a bigger seat at the table. Conservatives treated them as a bonus vote area, as they could often cobble enough votes from Ontario to win when the Liberals had worn out their welcome, that they didnt treat it as a serious issue either, where the Liberals sought to hobble the west, as it only was viewed as a enemy to them.
To finish off, ironically as the US would like to carve it off, it was Trumps insistence on getting all of Canada as the 51st state that woke up the normally sleeping Canadian nationalism,(the TL:DR of why that was dumb, Canada as a whole is like adding a second California, so dem rule forever), so even if Alberta can get enough votes, aside from the economics of the breadwinner of the nation leaving, the antibodies of the rest of the nation will attack any such action (look into the mid 90s Quebec vote for examples of that).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Comrade kommissar Carney (Bank of England) will be OK with that?
Central Bank=halfway to New Man workers utopia.
LikeLiked by 1 person