Alberta separatism push roils Canada
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
So the only viable outcome really is American annexation. (Additionally not advancing the Albertan grievance of only selling oil to one customer...)
There are other landlocked countries throughout the world so it's not like it's impossible, but Alberta would be creating an uphill to climb.
Bottom line is that none of Alberta's longstanding limited market oil pipeline grievances are solved by becoming a landlocked independent state.
Writes someone in English. I don't think everyone would agree.
And a natural foreign ally.
So why should I trust one to build in my backyard?
It would necessarily pass through Native land and the native tribes dont want it on their land. Forcing it through is a tribal sovereignty issue.
It's not just God. I also know!
The Democrats believe climate change is real, the externalities of fossil fuel extraction, processing, and consumption are real, the injured parties in pipeline construction are their constituents, and the fossil fuel companies fund Republicans and Republican-aligned organizations.
It's a really deep mystery, but I've sussed it out. Me and God.
https://mydakotan.com/2025/04/keystone-pipeline-resumes-oper...
Trade deals are not made with generosity towards oil producers in mind.
Alberta has oil majority of it foreign owed and wants free pipelines paid by the rest of Canada as subsidy and they got one for free and they believe they get more for free...
I am a physical oil trader and I buy 200,000 barrels of oil a day to supply refineries in Canada. I have also worked on financing for Energy East, Keystone XL, Northern Gateway, TMX and the Line 9 reversal in my career. Trust me when I say the Canadian government is the problem and Alberta would be MUCH better off from an oil perspective split off of Canada.
Not to mention all the other things Alberta loses. BC the popular vacation and retirement spot, and like Spain to the British would be closed off to Albertans with their holiday homes now under foreign buyer and speculation taxation.
It’s all ceded territory, and assuming an independent Alberta retains the crown why would it present any issue?
> Indians DO HEREBY CEDE, RELEASE, SURRENDER AND YIELD UP to the Government of the Dominion of Canada, for Her Majesty the Queen and Her successors for ever, all their rights, titles and privileges whatsoever, to the lands included within the following limits, that is to say:
https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100028813/1581293624...
Even if Alberta became a republic or joined the US, its secession after all, a moment when old agreements which by their original text promising a fresh suit of clothes to each chief every 3 years and $5 per year to every band member are up for even more re-evaluation than they have already been subject to.
It's a manufactured grievance. Alberta's been pumping and selling more oil than at any point in its history under Trudeau's liberals.
https://economicdashboard.alberta.ca/dashboard/oil-productio...
Trace this separatism bullshit back, and you'll find the fingers of the American right fully entwined in all this.
What all the separatists fail to be aware of is that 98% of Alberta is treaty land. It can't secede as a land-locked province, it could only secede as a bunch of fragmented municipalities surrounded by First Nations.
The only actual way towards it would be invasion and annexation by the United States. I hope that anyone looking forward to that timeline is also looking forward to IEDs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/enwwwm/map_of_the_...
(Probably with Colorado + NM as a little USC exclave now, and maybe with Saskatchewan joining Alberta as part of Trumpland.)
Regardless, let's say two places have very different values and ideas about how they want to live and what goals to pursue. What the hell gives one place the right, particularly when it consistently votes down the desired values of the other, to prevent it from leaving and going its own way? Self-determination as a principle isn't magically restricted to national borders only. That would be a ridiculous assertion.
How granular does this asserted right go? Should Edmonton be able to secede from Alberta? Can I run outside and put up a flag on my front lawn?
Yes
>Can I run outside and put up a flag on my front lawn?
Yes, but the overhead burden of running a municipality even if it only has a population of 1 would likely quickly make you reconsider
I hope more people can embrace this way of thinking. It's not really partisan. If anything it lets people operate more democratically where voices and engagement mean more. It lets people live how they want in communities with shared values. It lets us run many different policy experiments across many different places to develop better policies.
There are practical limits to this principle, very hard for a landlocked city to secede, but at least in principle it seems morally correct if not practically possible. But I struggle to see how someone can conceivably oppose colonialism and also oppose secession.
On a more practical note, the Alberta government is currently actively meddling in municipal politics and policies, so in the currently discussed application it seems more of a "I want to have a government that's as large as possible that I can still have power over".
I don't support Alberta meddling in local politics. I don't support the US federal or state governments doing this. If cities or neighborhoods want to come together and say "we want a blue community in this red state" or vice versa that's a just form of self-governance.
I actually believe this is how we make democracy work better. It has scale problems but remains the least-bad form of government so we should work to design systems that make it function well.
Letting people self-assort to live with others with their values under rules that reflect those within reason is good.
If we fixed our voting system to be more truly representative I think some of these divisions would go away.
Canadians like to argue that no province can secede from Canada because it would be illegal but the reality is that if a referendum showed 50%+ of people in Alberta supported independence then the US would support Alberta and that’s the only thing that matters. A lot of Canadian press is wilfully ignorant of that fact.
I don't make a habit of ignoring major world powers when they threaten annexation, and many others who are "paying attention" don't either.
Trudeau is no longer here, those threats continue to be made, even in the _presence_ of the current leader of Canada. I don't understand how one could not take these threats seriously.
Please don't do regional flamewar on HN. Like national flamewar and religious flamewar, it's a circle of hell we want to avoid here. You can make your substantive points without it, so please do that instead.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of tension in Alberta - but as it stands, this movement is more of a way to voice discontent, rather than a serious plan to become a sovereign state. IMO, it's not worth a dramatic full-page treatment that paints this as a likely possibility - but foreign reporting on Canadian issues has often been very questionable.
Which is everything to say about today's media. They are, wrong, made up and late. They are only here for the clicks and view. Not for informing anyone.
I spent the majority of my life in BC, but I've been away for the last 15 years.
BC, Quebec and the federal government have prevented further oil industry development while enjoying Alberta tax revenue from said oil industry. That's the basic gripe. And as far as I can tell, it's true.
The whole country is pro-oil now because we've realized we need to be stronger. This election cycle was drastically different compared to the last one which was completely about "climate change". Which was ridiculous imo.
Seperatism is bad, but being pro-Alberta is good. Being pro-Canadian oil and infrastructure development is good.
Every country needs to be taking climate change seriously for their own sake. Very few are. China is, and surprise surprise - China is outpacing western nations in a lot of different areas. Their rate of development is truly spectacular.
It's fun and games not to care, but the reality is economic prosperity is a long term game. You need to make decisions now that will decide 50 years from now. Oil is on the way out, it's the wrong horse to back for extremely expensive infrastructure.
If someone says "BC is Liberal" when discussing multiple provinces, they're probably referring to the distribution of federal MPs from BC. And in three of the last four elections including the most recent, the Liberals have "won" BC federally.
What is happening is:
1) Conservatives believed they had a sure path to a super-majority in Ottawa.
2) Trump spoils everything.
3) But Trump is their hero, they'd never blame him. So they blame the usual suspects: Trudeau and the Libs.
4) Because they can't do anything about the Libs victory, they do what spoiled children do when they hear "no": throw a tantrum.
5) Because the media needs circus and drama to catch eyeballs, the media goes to overdrama on their tantrum.
6) Because children on tantrum love attention, they double down on crying and yelling. Go to 4.
(Edit: to be clear, these are just proposals the government is exploring at this point.)
> test whether their low-tax haven will survive leaving Canada.
The math already makes sense from a tax perspective. Alberta is a net contributor to the rest of the country, mainly due to resource royalties.
But to me, the question is whether that would still hold when it has to work out trade deals with two neighbouring countries, while small (pop. 5 million), and landlocked.
To be clear, none of this has been enacted. The UCP love to threaten, but those initiatives have not proven to be popular with Albertans.
> But to me, the question is whether that would still hold when it has to work out trade deals with two neighbouring countries, while small (pop. 5 million), and landlocked.
And when Alberta needs to take on all the things that the federal government does for them.
Unpopularity didn't stop them from changing the environmental rules to allow a new coal mine in the eastern slopes of the Rockies. The vast majority of Albertans were opposed and they went ahead anyway.
There is a fund (AIMCo) that the government is proposing to convert in to a general pension plan. So far that has not been popular enough to translate into concrete action.
> All provinces also already run their own police forces.
No, rural policing is handled by the RCMP in 8 provinces. Ontario has the OPP and Quebec has SQ.
> So there has been no movement on this in Alberta.
The idea of the police force is more popular with voters than the idea of the pension plan. So, something could come of it: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-plans-to-cre...
However it appears to not be moving forward anymore.
https://www.benefitsandpensionsmonitor.com/news/industry-new...
The only way this could happen is if the only other country Alberta borders, the United States, strongly supports the separation— strongly enough to break ties with Canada over it that is. And if it does, I suspect Alberta wouldn't be independent very long. All trade and most defense would be with and thanks to the United States. It'd be easy for the USA to annex Alberta.
Mind you it's not a bastion of first world quality of living.
Switzerland is in a similar position, albeit surrounded by the EU, and they are part of the Schengen region.
Usually what you do is prioritize good enough relations to avoid war.
Canada wouldn't keep its arms closed as it looses its most profitable province, connection to its western ocean, and over 11% of its population. Unless the USA vows to defend Alberta, this would certainly mean Canadian troops marching towards Edmonton. It's an existential threat. Looking at the map, it splits Canada in two.
I'm not saying this would mean war. Alberta doesn't have the right geography or military power to fight a war with Canada, unlike, say, the South in the American Civil War. Canadian troops would into Edmonton with little resistance and Alberta would return to Canada.
The only way Alberta could remain independent is if the USA defended it. I don't think this would mean war either— Canada would never go to war with the United States. At most troops from both sides would be positioned on each side of the border, to show they mean business, but Canada wouldn't fire a shot.
Knowing thus, that Alberta depends on them for both trade and defense (reminder, Alberta is land-locked and could only trade with the USA or Canada), and given their recent expansionist rhetoric, would the USA really opt to keep Alberta as an independent country they spent money defending, but get no taxes or land jurisdiction from, or would they expect to eventually incorporate it?
I'll admit it'd be a little cool in the winter but NWT is still a part of Canada.
Since you said looking at a map; almost all of Alberta is treaty land, be a very interesting and long court case before anything comes of it, no matter what our lobbyist Premier wants to do.
Of the few Canadian troops that exist, most of them are sourced from the West (just like the US, for that matter). It's difficult to prosecute a war without any soldiers.
[1]: https://www.canada.ca/en/army/corporate/ie-map-divisions.htm...
Why are countries begging their regions to stay? It’s obviously just a negotiation or political rhetoric. If these movements actually had to take themselves seriously they would immediately dissolve I think.
However they are also, in my opinion, being promoted by state actors who want to weaken Canadian and American national identity. In that way, it's important to not push people into stronger support of the secessionist position.
This has not been true for years. Oil sands costs are lower than US shale costs: https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/varcoe-canadian...
The oil sands projects are longer-lived (no need to continually dig new wells), and labour costs have been optimized after the price shock of 2014.
It will continue to be an energy juggernaut
And Alberta is quite far from big electricity markets. It's far cheaper to put overbuild solar in places with poor sunshine than it is to build a HVDC line.
Plus Alberta will have to compete with Arizona and neighboring states, which have even more sunshine than Alberta does.
Northern Alberta would probably not do very good, but southern Alberta would be fine I'm sure
They have cheap gas though, and that could be used in the winter.
But overbuilding can. It's already a fairly common idea.
Solar doesn’t compete with oil, it competes with other electricity generation like coal and gas. But even that is not declining yet, globally.
Global coal demand may finally have reached its peak, if we’re being optimistic.
Natural gas and oil demand are still increasing.
I'm sure the other provinces also wish they had such high paying jobs and contributed more in taxes!
Avg individual income Alberta: 74,237
Avg individual income New Brunswick: 57,336.
I’d expect that even the least wealthy province is a net tax contributor. Equalization is only ~5% of the total budget.
Danielle Smith, our provincial premier (equivalent to a state governor) is trying to pull a David Cameron to appease the separatist wing of her party.
Heck just last year, the most prominent city in Alberta, Calgary, needed help just dealing with breaking a huge water main breaking.
With drought becoming more of a real threat every year Alberta will be in a shitty place being landlocked.
We are gonna need the rest of Canada’s help. Unfortunately, we can’t drink the oil.
Next elections are in 2026 and I think that by then, something, I don't know what, but some event, some context difficult to predict, will put back Quebec separatism on the forefront. This time around, there will be many, many less people coming to the front to defend Canada, which is already pretty weak now.
So yeah, that's my wild prediction: Canada doesn't exist anymore in 2027.
Look at the election map: the elected party has near-zero representation west of Ontario (even in the cities where you'd expect it to be, with the exception of Vancouver which is its own thing).
Westerners are unhappy with paying top tax dollar for policies that are intended to destroy Western economic productivity and culture (whether one likes what that is or not is ultimately irrelevant).
Thus- from their perspective- if Easterners cannot be reasoned with, then there's no reason that they should accept Eastern rule as legitimate. Thus the recent moves to, if not outright reject it entirely, renegotiate the amount of political power that their outsized economic productivity (especially per capita) is currently buying them... because for the last 6 years (with every indication that it'll actually be 10+ due to de facto Toronto/Quebec coalition government), it's zero.
The Conservative Party makes more sense as a nascent Bloc Ouest than anything else. And if Eastern voters continue to reject all their reforms, well, there's nothing illegitimate about ending an abusive marriage.
Fundamentally, Canada's provinces don't care about each other. It's not a real country.
It's like when COVID broke out. The initial public emotion was "everything is going to be alright!". It went strong for a little while, but it broke off eventually.
Alberta separatism is something that has been floated at various points in the zeitgeist, but for many, many reasons[0], I have mostly heard it spoken about unseriously by all but few on the fringe.
The Quebec sovereignty movement came on the wings of the Quiet Revolution[1] which had critical mass and large support from the francophone population which made up the vast majority of the province.
[0] It's unpopularity among alberans and impracticality as a landlocked province, being chief among them.
I had been sick of hearing them complain about Trudeau for years.
They thought it was obvious things were going to swing the other way and instead the country voted to stay on the same path that Trudeau literally resigned from.
Canada is basically a one party state at this point. It would be like if the only US media was the NY Times, MSNBC and CNN. The media jumped on Trump's comments about the 51st state and swung the election with ease.
It is not just Alberta, the people I know are in Ontario but there is nothing they can do. They would for sure move to Alberta if this happened. It will all be framed like this is some crazy fringe idea though even though 19 of 20 Canadians I know would agree.
The absurd thing to me with Alberta separatism is that there is no way the US would allow this. They would be a defenseless resource rich territory for Chinese infiltration.
Canada is in huge trouble. They are basically single party, money laundering haven at this point with a Soviet style media brainwashing regime.
Ultimately, In the long run I think Canada ends up a casualty caught in the cross fire between the US and China.
Conservatives should be more upset about Erin O’Toole losing to Trudeau than about Poilievre losing to Carney - that was more indicative of a bad party leader winning over a better one.
It was a vote against Poilievre, I'm not a fan of career politicians, less of those who only seem to have slogans and no bills with their names on them (well okay he got one passed).
I was slightly hopeful he'd take his pension and fuck off, yeah I'm in the trades too.
I'm Latin-American, so this doesn't sound at all nutty to me. The USA has long been doing this: from successful attempts promoting separatism in Panama and Texas, to failed attempt in Sonora and Baja California (officially a private citizen acting in his own accord, but conveniently enjoying the complacency of the US Government). It's one of the strategies big powers use, and there's more examples of this in Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world.
I think it's worth considering that perhaps this isn't Russian-fueled separatism, but American-fueled. The would gain a lot USA from an independent Alberta. It'd go the way of Texas— independent for about a year and then incorporated into the United States. Moreover, Alberta statehood would create a geographical rift in Canada that would place immense pressure on British Columbia to go independent or join the United States too.
It would also make the future annexation of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon much more likely, which would not only give the USA better access to the North-West Passage [1] and a wealth of resources, but it would connect Alaska to the rest of the continental USA.
[1]: https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/future-northern-sea-route...
Many movements "wittingly" receive external support. From wikipedia[0]:
> In 2022, a report by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) identified Qatar as the most significant foreign donor to American universities. The research revealed that from 2001 to 2021, US higher education institutions received US$13 billion in funding from foreign sources, with Qatar contributing donations totaling $4.7 billion to universities in the United States.
In addition to investing in US Universities, Qatar is also host to the the Hamas political apparatus, which operates out of Doha.
Foreign propagandists don't exclusively target right wing radical movements, they are very happy to exploit leftists as well!
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatari_involvement_in_US_highe...
The only actual test of separatism in albert has been support for the pension plan and that has been so abysmal they've put the entire push on hold.
Which is why it's important to remember that polls are a moment in time and the circumstances of that moment.
One divisive comment from Carney or his cabinet. One Trump truth. One more set of tariffs. That's all it takes for a 20% swing in polling that already shows that shows that 36% of Albertans are for leaving[1].
Also worth adding that everyone is sleeping on Saskatchewan which is crucially important to Canada, even more ignored by the Liberals than Alberta, and just as likely to leave.
Saskatchewan is also suffering China's tariffs on Canada, which Carney has not ever responded to and ignores almost as much as he ignores Saskatchewan itself[2].
[1] https://angusreid.org/referendum-alberta-saskatchewan-smith-...
[2] https://www.rbc.com/en/thought-leadership/the-trade-hub/food...
People complain about have/have-not provinces, but Alberta would be in a much worse position as a independent nation. There are benefits to Confederation beyond just shuffling tax dollars around.
For all of the doomsday talk, hand-wringing, and sky-is-falling bluster, nothing substantial/consequential seems to have materialized.
You have to be careful about these arguments. A lot of them were post-fact rationalisation by Brexiteers who needed to justify their actions, and they did it by erecting strawmen. Nobody said that the sky would be falling. Nobody sane, anyway. What was said was things like “immigration will happen anyway because the UK has a structural need for manpower”, which is true and immigration is still increasing; “this will create more red tape rather than less”, which it did; “exports will fall and it is our major market”, which they did and it still is; and so on.
If you read actual prospective papers from the time, the warnings were true, give or take the massive spanner in the works that was Covid. The EU did not roll over, and the UK did not get access to the single market without costs. The UK was sidelined and just spent 10 years cap in hand trying to get free trade deals. Fishermen are not better off, far from it. Environment regulations did get to shit. The cost in terms of GDP was massive. Poverty did rise (although it was bound to rise anyway with pre-Brexit policies).
If the whole thing is not a massive self-inflicted shot in the feet, I don’t know what is.
Sometimes continuing the status quo is attractive, but wrong in the long term.
The EU moves appeared to be out of spite at the time. Perhaps things will thaw over time?
The UK has a long history of being fiercely independent, so I can at least understand the desire to separate from the EU (which appears, to a foreigner, to be assembling into a nation of states, similar to the US).
At a previous job I worked, there were lunchroom conversations among the younger developers (in their 20s), all of a leftist persuasion. They were convinced that people in the UK would be dying because there was no access to medicine (that came from the mainland), and even in some cases hunger (though they didn't go so far as to claim starvation).
For the rest of you it may be the case that the people saying these same things were online, and therefor suspect (as it should be), but for me these were real-life conversations that I overheard. Perhaps this phenomenon was atypical, and almost everywhere else it was untrue, and of course you shouldn't take my word for it either, but with proper skepticism keep in mind I'm reporting something different here.
You can begin here:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/19/how-has-bri...
Purely a protest of the wealthy and the haters of export? It didn't seem like it at the time. I thought they were fighting a Nazi-ridden post-apocalyptic deathscape. The numbers of dead from medication shortages was supposed to be massive. Was that ever a sane or good-faith prediction?
I'm sure there's a lot of people behind the PR push for independence and similarly there will be a lot of people behind a counter PR push against independence. Assuming that another position exists merely because of powerful interests usually leads to a lot of strife as two sides of an issue can never reconcile their differences; after all you can't debate against a position that is perceived as being held by people due to powerful interests tricking them into holding it. The reverse will also naturally happen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_separatism#Opinion_pol...
Like I said, there's now people going door to door and flyers being handed out. Important to note, it's not just about separation, it's explicitly in connection to the "Republican Party of Alberta", a newly rebranded political party that has, to date, been entirely inconsequential (the preceding Buffalo Party got 106 votes in the 2023 Provincial Election). There's an obvious and concerted effort to coordinate the sentiment through a single centralized source.
I'm not saying the sentiment didn't exist at all before them, there's always been grumblings, but they are latching on to it and intentionally turning it up to 11.
And yes, the people funding it have deep pockets. It's the oil industry. You know what else though? The oil industry bankrolls nearly everything in Alberta. Oil royalties are the reason we don't have PST. It employs hundreds of thousands. That money then supports construction, services, etc...
Anyone who was in Alberta when oil was booming knows exactly what it does for the province.
Also, it's Canada's #1 export. It keeps the dollar at least almost respectable. And billions get taken from Alberta to pay for the welfare of Canadians in other provinces. Alberta's GDP per capita is literally 35% higher than Canada's... And that's with them kneecapping us...
The reason Danielle et al were cozying up to US politicians at private events, pushing narratives like embracing America's new direction, isn't for independence or a new federal plan - it's to become the 51st state.
From the horse's mouth...
There's a nice chart at the bottom to show how much each province pays, and which provinces receive equalization payments (it's in red). Alberta pays 50% more per capita than any Eastern province and doesn't receive equalization (obviously).
What sort of pull do the oil companies have over NY Times and other media that's reverberating this?
Money pours in when oil prices are high. That's not exactly under Alberta's control. What happens when there's an energy bear market? What is the push towards alternative energy going to do in the long run? Also Alberta is landlocked which would make exporting oil more difficult if Alberta becomes a country. One of PP's talking point (not wrong IMO) was that not having invested in being able to export to non-US customers was forcing Canada to sell oil for lower prices to the US.
EDIT: another random thought is that a lot of labor in Alberta came from out of the province. How is separating going to impact that?
The ability to sell more oil at a higher price, and to lose less of the revenue as tax.
Complete socialization of externalities: for example oil companies are flagrantly ignoring their legal obligations to clean up abandoned sites, and the current government is moving to assume the liability for them. Having that and similar cost offloading happen without the pesky federal courts interfering is worth some investment.
Europe is basically begging for oil and gas to replace Russia, but Quebec is blocking any pipelines going east.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/china-canada-oil-trans-moun...
Everyone can draw a circle such that they feel aggrieved. But that’s no great feat, nor is it commendable.
The unaccountable extra-national corporations who control most of Alberta’s oil production won’t suddenly become more generous and compliant to the needs of Albertans upon separation. You don’t have the balls or the leverage to control them. The province will have less leverage in the long run than before without the other two thirds of Canada’s economy to lever with in trade deals.
The main selling point it seems is to make the rest of Canada suffer as hard as possible. Make no mistake, we absolutely will suffer from the withdrawal of being cut off that black tar we’re addicted to from you. But you’re far more addicted to it than the rest of us are. What comes after?
As someone with deep connection to the rural roots of this place, this seperatism stuff feels fake.
People whose sole skill is exploitation of others always seem to believe they can run the world better than others; it’s why they bankroll these movements.
If not, what makes the existing governments more legitimate than those fake "unification dreams"?
And I bet liberals will focus on the former in an attempt to ignore the latter, just like they did with Trump.
When it comes to foreign influence we need to be asking why people are so angry that they can be swayed by some lame low effort memes and honestly kind of dumb propaganda. Russian, Chinese, and other propaganda is not even very good, but it doesn’t have to be. It just has to channel that rage.
As for what’s wrong, there’s a list but I think the top item on that list is something almost disappointingly boring. I am a huge believer in the housing theory of everything:
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...
If one took Trump at his word that he'd like to annex Canada this is absolutely a strategy to take. Help along a flimsy and non-viable break away movement, then justify the need to rescue and liberate the repressed minority break away group as casus belli to invade an annex the entire country. This was the Putin playbook with Ukraine.
Of course they do! one of the key pillars of trying to mitigate global warming is reducing dependency on fossil fuels, which means not "fully extracting" it.
What's the alternative -- extract as much as possible now so we can line our pockets, and let the next few generations deal with it?
If Alberta wants to separate and it's native people/aboriginals who own much of the land, don't go along, are they going to go to war?
https://www.ctvnews.ca/calgary/article/ousted-alberta-mla-sa...
As an eastern Canadian I'm all for expansion of oil production and building a cross country pipelines, but the UCP as a party seem very corrupt.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-cities-and...
(Edit: I suppose I should hasten to add that my response here isn't about Alberta/Canada. Just about JJ.)
> Stagflation is not a strange monster from legend. It is, Jacobs says, just the normal state of everything. Backward economies are in fact constantly in a state of stagflation.
Prices didn't use to change persistently upward! That's an industrial revolution time. Stagflation is pretty well and conventionally understood by monetary econ at this point.
Albertans certainly feel a distinct identity within their province, but that doesn't map to a prior nation, state, or other entity that could be considered coequal with Canada. It's more like a child suing for emancipation from their parent. Their entire identity was created within the Canadian context.
Who knows what effect that will have on separation if it comes to pass, but you can't really analogize separation to secession by a U.S. state.
The same is true of the majority of the US states. The original 13 colonies and Texas and Florida (and maybe a few more?) had some preexisting status, but the rest were created out of Federal territories.
One example of the difference is that in the US, there's state and federal criminal law, and state authorities draw their legitimacy from the state constitution. The criminal code in Canada is entirely federal.
Your analysis is too legalistic. You could have said the same thing about the US, pre-1776, and you'd have missed (or been trying to gaslight away) the elephant in the room. Nations and identities can form on their own, brand new, and don't require an appeal to some prior legal entity.
> Alberta was created within Canada by subdividing what was then the Northwest Territories, already part of Canada. ... Who knows what effect that will have on separation if it comes to pass, but you can't really analogize separation to secession by a U.S. state.
I believe you could say the same of many of the Southern states that suceeded during the civil war (e.g. Alabama and Mississippi were created within the US by Congress, out of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Territory).
Fair, in theory. In practice, it's a bit silly when the roots of western separatism are an economic policy from 50 years prior, and the fact the BC won't play ball on all the pipelines AB wants to build to the coast.
I think the analogy to parental emancipation is actually pretty good just because it does happen. It's a thing. And when Quebec came within 1% of separating in the 1995 referendum, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a unilateral declaration of independence would be illegal, but that the federal gov't would be required to negotiate a separation in good faith.
> Alabama and Mississippi were created within the US by Congress
Yes, but in doing so they were granted the same sovereign status as existing states. Alberta's relation to the federal gov't is the same as any American city's to the state in which it's located. If Pittsburgh wanted to separate from PA, what would that be like?
I don't think that's true.
About 1% of Alberta's land is first nations reserves. The productive agricultural land and oil sands land is definitely outside of that 1%.
Edit: Maybe you're confusing this with crown land? But if Alberta was independent, crown land would just be Alberta government-administered land.
I'm not terribly familiar with the minute details of the numbered treaties that cover the area of Alberta, but I am aware from recent reporting that the local First Nations do not see Alberta as having any right to separate and take FN lands with them.
Some provinces have non-treaty land, acquired through land purchases or conquest. Quebec, for example, had the right to take roughly the southern third of its territory when it discussed separatism. But that's not the case with Alberta — it is entirely composed of treaty land.
This means that Canada cannot grant them independence, even if it were to accept the results of a referendum that meets Clarity Act requirements. That alone makes Alberta separatism a non-starter. There's no legal route for Alberta to separate from Canada without negotiating new treaties with the treaty councils in order to get their consent, and they've already signalled they are not willing to do so.
Say they separate politically and renege on the treaty, the first nations will go to the ICC? Or ask Canada to invade its own province? What support if any would the later have with the Canadian elector, sending the army to fight against other Canadians?
It's very similar to the old constitutional argument that separatism needs a "clear majority" which sparked questions that following a "yes" in Quebec the supreme court would have to statute on whether 51% is a "clear majority". Would Quebec actually have just accepted a ruling against them from a institution that is not really theirs?
If Alberta did unilaterally declare independence (which would be illegal according to Reference Re Secession of Quebec [1998]), the First Nations have the right to call upon Canada to defend their treaty rights under the "peace and good order" terms of the treaties.
If Canada did grant Alberta independence without First Nations consent, or Canada refuses to defend their treaty rights, they would have a claim that Canada had violated their rights to self-determination under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) which Canada ratified in 2021. But UNDRIP is a non-binding resolution, so I don't think they'd have a case with the ICC or ICJ (even assuming it had jurisdiction).
I've lived here my whole life and while I have some level of sympathy for the sense of western alienation I feel that it's more of an identity thing that's been fomented by bad actors over the decades for their own personal political agendas and now that it's embedded into people's sense of self from birth it has become hyper-real and a great threat to me and the economic stability of the place that I call home.
Nefarious people can really take advantage of these sentiments and get the people who truly believe them to eagerly do some fantastically bad things that are against their self interest.
I don't know what can be done about that. Like what's the "Ape together Strong"[1] counter to this divisive bullshit?
Alberta has a highly educated population, and one that has robust blue collar abilities, pretty good infrastructure, A shit load of natural resources, enviable geographic advantages in terms of security and isolation, and overall a very good quality of life.
What Alberta needs is to be honest with itself and recognize that so many of our issues are caused by ourselves and our inability to coordinate as a people against internal and external forces. Separating won't change that, it'll only make it worse.
As someone who grew up in Ontario, there is a real "f*ck Alberta" mentality in the central provinces.
A good parallel is America's "flyover country".
If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?
Alberta is not going to separate from Canada. The US is not going to invade Canada. This is just noise. There's plenty of things that matter that we need to focus on instead of this nonsense.
I guess Brexit shows us that the public can vote for stupid things.
> What Alberta needs is to be honest with itself and recognize that so many of our issues are caused by ourselves and our inability to coordinate as a people against internal and external forces. Separating won't change that, it'll only make it worse.
Can you expand on this? What sort of issues do Albertans cause to themselves?
* Tying personal identity to a commodity which has a price that experiences guaranteed and radical fluctuations.
* Being the only province that doesn't have a provincial sales tax to provide some sort of stability to the provincial budget.
* Perpetually voting conservative at a provincial and federal level regardless of what that those policies those parties propose and enact, or the corruption that they blatantly practice.
* Embracing an 'us or them' mentality in all things, being unwilling to compromise or work with people viewed as outsiders. Any push back from outsiders leaders to Albertan leaders feigning moral injury in a way that would make a soccer player at the world cup blush.
* Letting oil companies act with impunity (orphaned wells, policies to hobble wind and solar)
* Always reactive -- never proactive. “Please God, give me one more oil boom. I promise not to piss it all away next time.”
* Bizarre centre of the universe thinking that ultimately stems from an insecurity of realizing that it's not and never will be and not being able to accept that it's okay.
* Head in the sand mentality w.r.t. climate change and therefore no planning for long term water sources for southern Alberta.
Seriously though, to some of your points:
- If the province can be funded without a sales tax that sounds like something that benefits the people, not sure why this is a problem. If the province runs into budget issues I'm sure they'll figure out where to get the money. There has to be some advantage to this.
- The NDP was the provincial (majority) government 2015-2019. I guess people weren't happy with them so they voted for a different government. That sounds like democracy in action not perpetually voting one way. The last federal conservative government was a while back (Harper) and really there is not a ton of difference (IMO) between the Liberals and the Conservatives in terms of policy and I would argue the Liberals have been plenty corrupt. I don't recall a lot of corruption under Harper (but that might just be me not paying attention). I think for a province like Alberta supporting a party which calls for investing in resource production and export is pretty logical (and is really the logical thing for Canada that even Carney has called for in response to PP).
- Why would oil companies care if Alberta uses wind or solar (is it worthwhile doing solar?). Presumably most of their product is for export. https://economicdashboard.alberta.ca/dashboard/renewable-ene... shows that Alberta is actually switching to more renewable energy.
- Is there a real risk of running out of water in Southern Alberta? I'm not familiar with the situation.
At the same time the development of the O&G industry put great strain on existing infrastructure with schools massively underfunded, understaffed and with too many students[3] and the Alberta capital of Edmonton not having a new hospital constructed since 1988 while the population has nearly doubled.[4]
The NDP win in 2015 was a complete aberration that is unlikely to be repeated in the future. From 1971 to 2015 the Progressive Conservatives held power until the combination of electorate fatigue towards their rule and a schism in the party lead to a vote split that enabled the NDP to win. the price of oil promptly shit the bed[5] causing the return of massive deficits and this combined with sustained attacks on the provincial NDP inaccurately painting it as anti O&G industry lead to a narrow NDP defeat and the return of the PCs reborn as the UCP. To look at it another way with the UCP in office until at least 2027 that means that we're looking at conservatives running Alberta for 52 of 56 years or 93% of the time.
It's also noteworthy that in the past twenty years the only Premier to successfully complete a full term and not have to resign in disgrace or be ousted by the party has been the NDP leader. Every other conservative Premier has stepped down before completing a full term. Functionally what's occurring in Alberta is that the Premier is picked at the conservative party leader convention and many centre or centre left Albertans buy party memberships to have a say in the leader because they understand that the actual provincial election does not determine who the leader is.
Your question about why O&G companies care so much about solar and wind production is a good one, I think it's a combination of two things -- One they view the success of it anywhere as a threat to their continued existence and two they have truly bought into the propaganda that their industry puts out about climate change so they're in complete denial about the necessity to move away from hydrocarbon extraction. Alberta was making great strides to move towards renewable energy but those moves were squashed by the UCP in the past few years when they implemented an outright moratorium on new projects which scuttled a lot of projects and has effectively neutered the industry in Alberta as investors are now seeking more politically stable regions for their investments[6] despite Alberta having tremendous potential for solar and wind production[7].
Much of Southern Alberta is located in a region known as Palliser's Triangle[8] which is susceptible to periodic droughts. With much of the region dependent on glacier fed rivers that originate in the Rocky Mountains it is only a matter of time before those glacier sources dry up and ground water sources prove to be insufficient for the burgeoning population of Calgary and the agriculture industry. Tough decisions will need to be made and the current UCP leader's ambitions to double the population of Alberta by 2050[9] may just not be tenable.
[0] https://www.policyschool.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/50-Ye...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_budget#Historical_budg...
[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-s-5-2b-budge...
[3] https://calgaryherald.com/news/in-a-crisis-hundreds-of-schoo...
[4] https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/alberta-puts-2m-to...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_oil_glut
[6] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/solar-wind-investment...
[7] https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy-sources/renewable...
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palliser%27s_Triangle
[9] https://edmonton.citynews.ca/2024/08/09/alberta-government-b...
I suspect that in reality there is a plan to just simply sell it to the US - separate first and then join the US later. I bet some politicians on either side of a border are actively involved. They should be fucking quartered.
In the US states can not secede. I wish it was the same in Canada. Except couple of borderline cases splitting a country is never good idea.
e.g. The UK was able to leave the EU without the EU's consent, but the same cannot be said for Nebraska leaving the US.
Also, US territories are self governing. e.g. Puerto Rico and Guam. They aren't governed directly by the federal government. The only major difference between a territory and a state is in voting rights and congressional representation. I believe there's an exemption from federal income tax as well.
Albertan culture and identity has been under attack for 10 years and it has caused a great division in the country. Certainly an unprecedented national unity crisis with 3 active serious separatism movements.
There are a number of interest groups who are going to boost alberta separatism.
USA greatly benefits due to oil and food trading; but more importantly the oil is priced in USD. Alberta likely switches to the USD or rolls their own.
Most other oil trade nations are going to boost for their separatism.
Gun rights advocates will essentially undo the gun bans. Not to mention allow handguns for wildlife protection. Absurd that Canada prohibits carrying a handgun in grizzly territory.
national defense corporations like lockheed martin will be able to sell the F35 to Alberta no problem. They benefit billions right away.
oil and gas industry unlocks trillions of $ by separating.
Quebec separatists will do all they can to get them to separate; alberta goes first and quebec will be able to follow.
Liberals, especially in Toronto, will heavily insult and push albertans out of canada. Without alberta, Canada essentially becomes a single party democracy run by the liberals.
There's so many interest groups boosting separatism, it's going to pass easily. Can you tell me even 1 group that has any good arguments for alberta to stay in confederation?
The Northwest Territories and Yukon simply make sense for the USA to want. It connects Alaska, they're relatively unpopulated (which makes annexation easy), and as northern trade routes become more feasible, are strategic for the USA to try to claim.
British Columbia has sizable population, but can it exist as part of Canada, isolated from the rest of Canada?
I think the geography of Canada is fascinating. It has long been a "river country", like Pakistan or Egypt, built around the St. Laurence river [1]. It inherited sizable "extra" territory on the west from the British— territory the Brits kept from the USA back when they were in a position to defend it.
This non-St. Laurence Canada has slowly been populating, but looking at North American maps— from population density [2], to roads [3][4], to railroads [5], it just seems so relatively disconnected at the longitude of Lake Superior. I don't really know if it's possible to build a big city in the Thunder Bay/Nipigon area, but it almost feels like there should be one there.
I get that Ottawa was made the capital in 1857 as a compromise between French and English speaking Canada, but if the USA keeps pushing this rhetoric (and we all know it's the USA behind Alberta separatism), would it be beneficial to move the Capital to Winnipeg? It's closer to the actual center of Canada, which would not only exert more influence on the west, but be a forcing function on east-west connectivity and with it, union.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Canada#/media/Fi...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Canada#/media/Fi...
[3]: https://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/major...
[4]: https://koordinates.com/layer/110462-north-american-roads-20...
Secession is a pipe dream, but do not underestimate the anger and conservatism in Western Canada outside of Greater Vancouver, Nanaimo, Victoria, Kelwona, and a couple other islands of liberalism in a sea of conservatism - there's no cultural or social difference between Abbotsford and Bellingham (edit: whitcom county, did not realize Bellingham gentrified), or Lethbridge and Great Falls. Western Canada's resource-driven economy also plays a major role in this because for a lot of Canadians it's their only shot at middle class salaries and life.
At least Carney grew up in Alberta during that era, so he can probably avoid the misteps that Justin Trudeau and his father did when dealing with Western Canada.
[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_Program
Political leaning aside I agree that Western BC and Western WA are nigh identical culturally. Can't speak for anything further east as I don't live there.
Bellingham may have changed over the past few years - last time I spent a significant amount of time there was in the 2000s.
At least on the BC side, other than Nanaimo, the others haven't really shifted from conservative to liberal.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
As you can see these policies did nothing.
Seems to be slowing a bit, probably due to technological improvement. In the end there is only one thing that will reduce CO2 emissions: technologies for generating energy from non-fossil sources that are competitive with fossil fuels. Solar and wind are getting there.
If fossil fuels are still cheaper than other sources, then they will be burned somewhere and energy intensive industries will flock to wherever has the cheapest energy (and labor). The only way to stop this would be a global scale agreement to curtail fossil fuel use, and developing nations would never agree to this.
Yea, if we didn't reduce energy usage in the US the global average would be far higher than it is now. Those factories would have moved out of the US anyway due to labor costs, and higher energy costs. Efficiency in energy production lowers costs. You're probably not old enough to remember how damned bad pollution in the US used to be.
Burning bunker fuel on large ships is insanely efficient per km traveled. Mostly because the amount of material on said ships is staggering.
Also, we've raised those countries overseas out of poverty. We are talking about billions of people. World wide CO2 usage increased because more of the world walked away from farming dirt and is now producing useful economic product.
The kind of populist anti-business and anti-establishment anger I saw amongst the post-Reform and post-Social Credit guys was the exact same as that which I saw among MAGA all the way back in 2015.
I think Canadians (in reality Ontarians and Quebeckers - but not like they could read English anyhow /s) really underestimate the MAGA style populist alt-right trend.
Stuff like Rebel News was always in the water back west.
It's the exact same type of right-wing I see across NorCal (real NorCal starts north of Yuba), Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana.
The Quebecois alt-right is deep in the FN and Zemmour pipeline as well.
The boring reality is that the BC NDP occupied all the space on the left and so the only viable space for the Liberals was more right of centre. Should be noted, not at all an unusual space for a Liberal to be. When the conservative Social Credit party imploded the BC Liberals took them on and it became a defacto two party system with the BC Liberals on the right.
The previous leader Clark kicked the can on a Fed Liberal leadership and we can see already from the actions of Carney that the right of centre Fed Liberals are alive and well.
Like national flamewar and religious flamewar, it's a circle of hell we want to avoid here. You can make your substantive points without it, so please do that instead.
They don't give information about the topic, but about the identity of the author—specifically, what that person identifies against.
For someone with a partial high school education an Oil job was the only job that would afford them the kind of salary a UT or McGill grad could demand in Toronto or Montreal back in the day.
As such, attacking the ONG industry feels like an attack on livelihoods for a lot of people.
If you turn a culture war into a class war, us liberals and progressives cannot win.
I thought we were taking about Alberta, not Quebec.
(Your comment would be fine without that first bit.)
I'll autocollapse this subthread since it's no longer relevant.
As a Canadian, I left Canada because my countrymen insist on shooting us in the foot, mostly in my opinion, because Canadians don't have enough to worry about on average. It seems we are hell bend on continuing the trend. It seems Canadians will do anything to avoid building a cohesive country... 30 October 1995 flipped Canada from build mode to the fetal position, and we're still in it.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Quebec_referendum
[2]https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=841344
basically Alberta will be like Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction: "You can't ignore me!"
but Americans also tend to underestimate or disbelieve that right-wing sentiment exists in Canada
most Americans think Canada is like Berkeley on a continent-scale...Justin Trudeau believed that too and he was reviled eventually
Comparing the trivial complaints Albertans have relative to the federal government[1], just looking at what is happening in the US right now, where the country is objectively and rapidly becoming a profoundly corrupt, banana-republic level idiocracy, and I cannot fathom how the West Coast, New England, New York and the like want to continue to be dictated to by people like MTG or Mike Lee, or have to watch the news everyday to see what new catastrophe the self-dealing felonious president has announced.
I mean, in actual polling, 9% of Canadians want to join the US (the absolute high was 15% of Albertans). 20% of Americans want their state to join Canada. Isn't that Amazing?
So, start the process?
[1] - Most of Alberta's complaints are nonsensical. The NEP program mentioned elsewhere, for instance, promised a coast to coast pipeline system. Alberta refused it, yet now strangely one of their biggest grievances is that there isn't a coast to coast pipeline system. Keystone XL was't cancelled by Canada, it was by the US which has always been extremely antagonistic to the province, and is rapidly replacing it with North Dakota (a state that produces about 4x the per capita oil value, but whose residents see very little value from the same). The federal government recently dropped $35B for a pipeline because commercially most big oil companies refuse to spend money on Albertan projects, but just want to rile up the low-info rubes into thinking somehow it's actually the federal government's fault. See Petronas cancelling an LNG project because spending billions on a terminal in a world flooded with low price LNG isn't worthwhile...still somehow a grievance about the federal government.
> Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided... but by iron and blood.
When people are determined to secede, they won't be stopped by words. They'll be stopped by "iron and blood", or they'll be on their way. I've heard many Americans express their fear of another civil war, but I have never heard a single one express their support for starting one and sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives for the sake of preserving a polity.
I'm not sure why you're telling me your silly idea, I didn't say that.
Canada has had a reasonably recent, nearly successful political secessionist movement and two effectively failed efforts at constitutional reform to address it. Secession is not a settled issue in Canada the way it is in the US which is why it has a different valence in that context.
> The NEP's Petroleum Gas Revenue Tax (PGRT) instituted a double-taxation mechanism that did not apply to other commodities, such as gold and copper (see "Program details" item (c), below), "to redistribute revenue from the [oil] industry and lessen the cost of oil for Eastern Canada" in an attempt to insulate the Canadian economy from the shock of rising global oil prices[20] (see "Program details" item (a), below). In 1981, Scarfe argued that by keeping domestic oil prices below world market prices, the NEP was essentially mandating provincial generosity and subsidizing all Canadian consumers of fuel, because of Alberta and the other oil-producing provinces (such as Newfoundland, which received funding by the NEP for the Hibernia project).[14]: 8
and
> Estimates have placed Alberta's losses between $50 billion and $100 billion because of the NEP.[32][33]
Half the population, or perhaps slightly more, doesn't agree with that.
>> Half the population, or perhaps slightly more, doesn't agree with that.
Trump just publicly accepted a $400 million Boeing 747 from one of Hamas's largest financial benefactors [1]. His meme coin operation is tantamount to a political donation machine without the corresponding financial disclosures [2]. And he's shaking down law firms with executive orders unless they donate tens of millions in pro bono legal work to his administration and its pet causes. [3]. This is a non-exhaustive list of just his corruption scandals from just the last month.
If Biden had done any one of these things, Fox News would have his supporters frothing at the mouth and (literally) picking up arms. But when Trump does all 3 and more, they don't even bat an eyelash. At this point, it seems less likely that they don't agree he's corrupt, and more likely that they just don't care, as long as its their guy at the helm.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatari_support_for_Hamas
2. https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/23938695868353
3. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/legal-...
You seem to be mistaking Trump's support as a share of the vote in the last election for a measure of current beliefs aboht his Administration as a share of the entire population.
That involves many errors.
And, on top of that, you are mistaking popularity as a measure of truth of a claim about facts, not popular opinion.
If you're implying that half the population or perhaps slightly more voted for Donald Trump, perhaps as extrapolation from Trump having "won the popular vote," you would be incorrect. Only about 63% of the eligible voting populace voted in 2024, and of those, marginally more voted for Trump than Harris (49.9% vs 48.4%). So a more realistic estimate of the total pro-Trump populace would be closer to 30%. While the narrative that Trump voters command half, or over half, of the entire US population is common it has never actually been true.
And this doesn't even take into account the number of Trump voters who are currently dissatisfied with the regime's behavior - the ones who despite all evidence to the contrary saw absolutely nothing wrong with Trump, trusted his motives and integrity, and just thought he would bring the price of eggs down.
Also, who cares? They're wrong. Donald Trump is objectively the most corrupt and least competent President in living memory.
Nationwide, Trump's approval rating is somewhere around 42-46%. And just to be clear, early in a term presidential approval rating is in a honeymoon period where the public is trying to make the best of the next four years and sees it with rose coloured glasses. Obama had a 65% approval rating. Biden had a 57% approval rating. Both at the same stage in their presidency.
On every single issue, the public disagrees with how Trump has acted. From immigration to trade and tariffs to education to health. And he's currently in the "lie about everything and promise the world" stage, but much like his first term that has an expiry date when people realize that he is incredibly stupid and lies with every breath. There will be no trillion dollar windfall from tariffs "paid for by the other country" (though there is the most regressive, largest tax hike in US history), everything is going to get more expensive, and the "Golden age" is going to be a dire descent to a fallen empire. There will be no $5000 DOGE savings cheques or elimination of taxes on tips or overtime, egg prices haven't dropped 95%, gas isn't $1.99, and the Ukraine war keeps going on. He isn't going to eliminate the debt or even the massively exploding deficit with his magical crypto scam shitcoin.
But Trump will self-enrich himself and everyone who pays his extortion racket. His trade war grift seems mostly targeted at getting various Trump co projects going, along with fellating his pal Elon's various companies.
But regardless, I'm not talking about the US as a whole. No one in Canada wants Kentucky or Texas or Florida joining us, and those people can herald their orange idol however much they want. But on the West Coast Trump has a 30% approval rating. In much of New England and New York he's mid-30s. Again, despite this being the honeymoon period.
Yeah, the areas I talked about hugely disagree with this government.
So do something about it. Again, red people and states talk about this all the time.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/marjorie...
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-secession-closer-anyone-think...
If the so-called Blue states don't want to be dragged back a hundred years into this growing anti-science, corrupt idiocracy, start taking the same tact. Somehow it's only incomprehensible when the better states broach it.
Because conservatives own the media and push their agenda. Its of no use to them to portray things accurately. For instance, gun violence in red states is significantly worse than in blue, but the media pushes their narrative that simply going to Chicago is taking your life in your own hands.. you’re gonna get shot for sure, better to stay away! Which, coincidentally, means that those folks never investigate the truth of the matter and often they push the narrative!
They acknowledge the politician, sure; but they disregard the enormous state apparatus that politician wields, what it does and is capable of. The New York Times is pretty consistent about ignoring it.
Note US administration-aligned media has lately been spotlighting US annexation of Alberta[0], despite only 18% support in actual Alberta[1].
Note also the related intelligence admissions about Greenland[2].
[0] https://www.foxnews.com/video/6369677470112 ("Canadian lawyer leading delegation to DC to make Alberta a state")
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-join-u-s-poll-1.743431... ("...the most support for that proposal in Alberta with 18 per cent of respondents agreeing Canada should join the U.S.")
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43910874 ("U.S. Orders Intelligence Agencies to Step Up Spying on Greenland (wsj.com)")
That's a pretty funny way to describe the Trolling Bloviator.
As much as it pains me to say it, Canada's diversity is also it's weakness, and there needs to be precedent - perhaps not as severe as in the US - that you do NOT leave the dominion.