Albertans are heading to the polls to elect a new government. They are faced with a choice between a former premier, Rachel Notley, and the current premier, Danielle Smith. This election, that is, its outcome, promises to go far beyond the borders of Alberta.
When a house suffers irreparable structural damage, it is condemned and demolished. Some houses may also be structurally unsafe from the moment they are erected, as anyone knows who has ever watched Mike Holmes, who often comes across houses on his shows that in his assessment were built by idiots. In my view, Canada is such a house.
Canada wasn’t damaged and left structurally unsound; it was built that way right from the beginning. It was based on a fiction—a house of cards built on sand. I’m not Conrad Black, so don’t expect a thousand-page treatise on Canadian history with angular syntax and words with at least 23 syllables. When you reach back in time, what we call Canada today was nothing more than Ontario and Québec, or, more precisely, the city-states of Toronto and Montréal, a.k.a. the “Laurentian Elites”. Of course, the oldest part of “Canada” is Québec itself, established in 1608, that’s twelve years ahead of Plymouth Rock. Leaving aside the indigenous population, the original and true “Canada” is, and always has been, Québec. The power centre of Toronto and Montréal has been referred to by different names, such as Upper Canada and Lower Canada. Eventually, the Laurentians decided to spread out and push westward. Over time, they settled in places now known as Alberta and British Columbia, for example. But the centre of power remained in Toronto-Montréal. In 1867, the Laurentians didn’t want to be outdone by their neighbours to the south; they, too, wanted a “country” that spanned the entire width of their section of North America. So, they created a “Confederation” of “provinces”, and the whole of it would be called “Canada”. In a nutshell, that’s how we ended up where we find ourselves today: the power of Toronto-Montréal is now consolidated in Ottawa, where a “federal government” (a front for the Laurentian Elites) lords it over the “provinces”—to the Laurentians, nothing more than inconvenient and bothersome, but necessary, colonies. Unrefined and rough hicks and rubes, in Ottawa’s parlance. Deplorables who need to be told what to do and what to think.
We now hear almost daily that Canada is broken. The Laurentians reject that characterization out of hand. The truth is that it’s been broken since 1867. While most people across the Confederation (a supranational organization like the European Union and, therefore, not an actual country) speak English (or French), they do not represent one single country, but at least ten sovereign and proud nations. Québec, given its culture and language, of course, stands out as the prime example. But the same is true of Ontario and Alberta. Especially the latter, as it has often been the scapegoat, whipping boy and target of the Laurentians whenever the Elites needed to set an example for all those pesky colonists to let it be known that dissent from Laurentian Gospel would not be tolerated. You may think this sounds medieval, but I can assure this is still going on today, in 2023.
This is why, among other things, the infamous truck convoy rolled into Ottawa in early 2022 and laid siege to the city, resulting in prime minister Justin Trudeau implementing measures that can be described only as draconian and bordering on martial law. This is also why Québec has always opposed Ottawa (and no, it’s not primarily about protecting the French language, which is simply an easy pretext to wage war), and it’s also why Alberta has done the same for decades (even going so far as to threaten to withhold its oil from the “varmints” in the East).
And this brings us to the present day: Justin Trudeau’s Laurentian—and utterly authoritarian—government has been pummelling Alberta with ridiculous laws and regulations in the name of fighting “man-made climate change” (which is a fairy tale, a Big Fat Lie), effectively killing off Alberta’s once booming economy. Danielle Smith, the premier, has sworn to take the fight to Ottawa, for example, by drafting a law that would allow Alberta to block any federal legislation that went against the province’s interests.
I interviewed Danielle Smith for a profile about eleven years ago when she had transitioned from journalism to active politics. To tell the truth, I am not smitten with Smith. If you were to ask me, I believe that Rachel Notley is a better individual than Smith. Notley is not some radical communist, as Smith’s party and followers have been trying to portray her. What is more, Notley represents a Western NDP, not the federal NDP or other provincial NDPs in central and eastern Canada. In fact, the NDP in the West is completely different from the one in the East. Nor should we forget that the NDP in the West can look back on a long history in the West, particularly the Prairies—Canada’s public healthcare system was hatched there—and still enjoys a lot of respect (unlike their counterparts in Ottawa).
If this came down to a good old-fashioned personality contest, I’d pick Rachel over Danielle any time. But this time we’re playing for much higher stakes. It’s time to deploy and detonate the “Smith bomb”. If Albertans elect her and her party, Smith could very well turn out to be the final nail in the coffin of the Confederation. Her fighting words for the past year or so have already found a receptive audience in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, triggering a growing number of declarations of war directed at Ottawa, the Confederation, the Liberals and Trudeau, in particular, and the Laurentian Elites. Québec, recognized as a distinct nation almost twenty years ago and already de facto sovereign and independent, as even the Montreal Gazette newspaper recently admitted on its editorial pages, is watching the whole thing unfold with glee and anticipation. After all, Québec won’t have to stage another referendum on independence in the near future if the Confederation itself blows apart.
This may sound a bit drastic, especially to readers outside of Canada, but Canadians right across the land are sick and tired of Ottawa, the Confederation, and the Laurentian Elites. They see themselves as citizens of Ontario, Alberta, etc., and only a tiny minority still call themselves “Canadian” first.
If we keep some kind of confederation or association intact, it would have to be very different from what we have now. For starters, there couldn’t be a federal government in Ottawa anymore. Each province would be a sovereign country and send delegates to, say, an annual congress to reach decisions for all of our countries, such as on free trade. Or we could split the whole thing down the middle, creating two separate countries, A and B. For historical reasons and by way of “seniority”, I’d call A “Alberta” (encompassing British Columbia, Alberta… up to some middle line running through former Manitoba), and B would be “Québec”, covering everything to the east of that line. These are but two possible scenarios out of several. Time will tell, but the first step must be to dissolve the Confederation.
Albertans going to the polls on May 29 have an important decision to make. If they want to continue the farce, and repeated pummelling of Alberta, they’ll vote for Notley and her NDP. If they want to protect their home from future attacks originating in Ottawa, while simultaneously helping to fix “Canada” by, at the very least, starting the unravelling of the Confederation, they’ll have no choice but to vote for Smith and her UCP—and that’s where yours truly would park his vote if he still lived in Alberta and had a vote there. Deconfederation is now, and must be, our top and overriding mission.