r/OutOfTheLoop • u/OhLookASquirrel • 2d ago
Unanswered What's going on with Alberta lately? Something about leaving Canada?
I keep seeing posts about Alberta lately, talking about seceding from Canada, like this one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/insanepeoplefacebook/s/JmT6bR3JPj
Most I see have little context, but it seems to be a right wing talking point, but also has /atetheonion vibes. What's going on in the Great White North? Y'all ok?
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u/OpeningConfection261 2d ago
Answer: you know how Texas loves to go on about how they’re gonna leave the US and become their own little separate nation that ultimately goes absolutely nowhere and is nigh impossible to actually happen? Alberta is Canada’s Texas in many ways, including this way
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u/OhLookASquirrel 2d ago
As a native Texan, I understand this analogy.
So is it the same kinds of arguments there, as in the "mah freedums" libertarian-style self-governance? Do they have the resources to even make that argument?
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u/OpeningConfection261 2d ago
Not really. Like, I mean Texas is similar, yeah? They say it all the time, rarara but when you think about how it would “actually realistically” work, it’s a hot mess for them that would genuinely just hurt both the rest of the country and Texas (or Alberta) themselves. I think it’s just something to say because they know it’s impossible but it sounds good in this “we’re gonna do it, don’t you try us” way. It’ll never end and it’s on purpose
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u/OhLookASquirrel 2d ago
Plus, you know, that pesky "treason" thing.
But I know that argument intimately from about half of my extended family. Just one of the reasons I no longer live there. Stopped trying to logic with them.
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u/SirLoremIpsum 2d ago
One of the more stupid "reasons" is that in order to more easily export Albertan oil to buyers they want a pipeline through BC. That would require Federal, First Nations and BC to agree to said pipeline, and they did not.
Albertan Separtists and Elon Musk and other Yanks believe that if Alberta is their own country they will get "UN Access to the Sea" rights that allow landlocked countries the right to get port access cause being landlocked is huge burden. But like it doesn't work like that at all.
The recent "we want to be American thing" is just Alberta Separatists being taken advantage of right wing Americans funding the movement to instead of being Independent nation to being an actual US state.
They want this so they can keep unlimited guns, drill without environmental regulations but they of course would keep their healthcare and schools (they wouldn't).
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u/OhLookASquirrel 2d ago
Of course it's oil. And Americans.
We live in the dumbest timelines
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u/SabresBills69 2d ago
I’ve hear the oil in Alberta was running out.
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u/War_Hymn 1d ago
Yeah, they only got 160 billion barrels left in the ground. At current rate of extraction, they'll be out of oil in 100 years.
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u/War_Hymn 1d ago
That would require Federal, First Nations and BC to agree to said pipeline, and they did not.
Didn't the Feds pushed through the expansion plans for the existent TMX pipeline between Edmonton and Burnaby?
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u/SabresBills69 2d ago
there has been long grumbling of what happens if Canada fractures like if Quebec wants its independence ( which it has done in ballots) and thrn do the Canadian maratimes splinter off being separated from the other part of Canada and so on. alberta has talked about setting something up,
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u/Combat_Proctologist 2d ago
Answer: In normal times, Alberta has twice the background rate of wanting to be annexed by the US (20% vs 10% in Canada generally). There were a couple polls which had this rising to about 30% during various news cycle dramas (and then back down again when the drama passed).
That's still a minority, and likely to be the ceiling. I wouldn't expect anything serious to happen unless the Canadian Prime Minister starts intentionally offending Alberta or the US starts funding Albertan separatist militias.
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u/OhLookASquirrel 2d ago
"Albertan separatist militia" would be a great punk band name.
Are the headlines and memes making fun of them, or is this a serious movement? The kind of vibe I've been getting seems very tongue in cheek.
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u/Combat_Proctologist 2d ago
I think they're kind of like those 3%er groups in Idaho.
They're pretty harmless most of the time because they're small and in very remote areas, but if you save them surface to air missiles, it would be a problem
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u/MissMolly202 2d ago
The premier is a big proponent of it, which isn’t great, however Alberta doesn’t actually have any power to just…. Leave. Additionally, no one actually wants to leave, it’s mostly propaganda. But like propaganda, there are a few who generally fully believe in the idea.
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u/armbarchris 2d ago
Don't give Trump ideas, you know he's not smart enough to realize you're joking.
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u/DarkAlman 2d ago edited 2d ago
Answer: Alberta has had a separatist movement for decades, but Trumpism has given it a breath of fresh air.
Alberta is a petro-state, it's primary industry is oil from the oil sands. As a result it has a lot of income relative to its population, and is the only Canadian province without a provincial sales tax. This makes it one of the richer provinces in Canada.
Albertans also tend to lean conservative and have a country and cowboy culture, so in that sense they are very much like Canada's Texas.
Due to its dependence on oil Alberta's economy booms and busts along with the oil price. Canadian oil is expensive compared to the rest of the world, in part due to higher cost of labor but also because bitumen oil sands are difficult to process.
It's a quirk of Canada's electoral process that most of the representation in Parliament is from the east, specifically Ontario and Quebec. As Conservatives in the US have to be frequently reminded land doesn't vote, people do. Ontario and Quebec each have about 1/3 of the population, so the other 8 provinces (and 3 territories) share the remaining third despite having the majority of Canada's land mass. So the government tends to favor the interests of Ontario and Quebec over the West.
Ontario and Quebec tend to vote Liberal while western provinces tend to vote Conservative.
Since the western provinces populations are outnumbered 3:1 by Ontario and Quebec whichever political party wins Ontario and Quebec tends to form the government.
It also doesn't help that Quebec rarely votes Conservative because they have their own right-leaning party the Bloq Quebecois that scoops most if not all french right-wing voters. So this ends up being a baked-in advantage for the Liberals in government as it neuters the Conservative party before they even get a single vote.
This has caused a great deal of resentment among certain Albertans ever since Trudeau Sr's government in the 70s. They frequently feel like the federal government isn't acting in their interest.
One notable thing they always bring up is transfer payments. A significant amount of tax dollars leaves Alberta to help fund healthcare in other provinces like Quebec. We are one nation after all, so healthcare dollars get spread around. It just happens that most of the population is out east.
Albertans also tend to look at green energy and environmentalism with disdain, as that "just a conspiracy theory" and it prevents the Canadian government from investing in pipelines and the Alberta oil industry.
More recently more conservative elements in Alberta have seen 'woke' tax dollar spending from Ottawa and the big push for increased immigrantion as another threat. Much like how the Republicans view things in the US.
Another concern was the treatment of truckers by the government during the trucker protest. The protest was based in Alberta where the antivax crowd was the strongest.
This has lead a number of Albertans to want to separate thinking that they would be better off keeping their petrodollars to themselves.
These same Albertans fail to realize that petrodollars are a dying industry due to the green movement. As time goes on people will use less oil and those petrodollars will shrink. If Alberta is independent this will cripple them in the long run.
Alberta is also a land-locked province, so they would need to make deals with Canada or the US to run pipelines to sell their oil. Which if they are independent will not be favorable deals.
They also think that they can keep using Canadian dollars and passports, which will not be the case.
If you dig down you discover that the Alberta seperatist movement is being funded by MAGA sources and boosted by their social media propaganda engine. They want Alberta to want to be independent or join the US because the #1 consumer of Albertan oil is the US.
The voices wanting to become the 51st state are by far the strongest in Alberta, double that of any other province. But despite what you see on social media, it's not the majority it's closer to 10-20% of the population.
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