So, I don’t know if Canada would let Alberta go peacefully, though I’d be inclined to doubt it, but even that aside, speaking as an American, I wouldn’t vote to secede if I were an Albertan.
My understanding is that a major part of what Albertans are angry about is that they have oil and gas resources that the (often more urban) rest of Canada isn’t letting then exploit, and that’s making them feel economically hamstrung.
Thing is, while we may be moving politically slower here in the US on restricting fossil fuel extraction than Canada, I expect that we’re going to get there too. If you vote to secede with the idea that joining the US is going to remove those restrictions and lead to an era of fossil fuel prosperity for Alberta…well, odds are that you’re looking at a statehood process that takes years, and by the time that you’d wind up in the US, the US is likely to be also limiting oil and gas extraction.
If you say “but we could just be a separate country entirely”, then you’re landlocked, and generally, that’s an unfavorable place to be, as you cede a lot of leverage to the surrounding countries with sea access (which would be Canada-sans-Alberta or the US).
Generally, being landlocked creates political and economic disadvantages that having access to international waters would avoid. For this reason, nations large and small throughout history have fought to gain access to open waters, even at great expense in wealth, bloodshed, and political capital.
If the Northwest Territories or British Columbia also were realistically considering seceding, and Canada were going to let then walk out the door too, that might be a different story, but I don’t understand that to be the case.
EDIT: And if the idea is to bluff with a secession threat with the idea of staying in Canada that the rest of Canada will back down and let Alberta do fossil fuel extraction, the problem is that the threat has to be credible, and my expectation is that the rest of Canada is going to have a similar calculation as to the viability of seceding.
My understanding is that a major part of what Albertans are angry about is that they have oil and gas resources that the (often more urban) rest of Canada isn’t letting then exploit, and that’s making them feel economically hamstrung.
A few things:
Alberta has pipelines directly to the US. The US is the main export market and whole refineries exist that are tuned to this type of crude. Ownership is something that would have to be handled, but they can get crude to the states without crossing provincial borders.
They want a pipeline to the west coast to export to Asia. The feds just removed a bunch of barriers and basically agreed to build one so that’s less pressing. No way they get BC to agree to a pipeline without the feds forcing the issue. BC has to deal with the environmental issues and increased ship traffic.
Alberta supports low taxes by subsidizing the lost income with O&G royalties. They are trying to keep those in place even as needs outpace royalties. Do environment regs play a part? Sure. But the PM is a text book neoliberal and has already said fuck the environment, we need money. The previous PM wasn’t so overt but sure set carbon targets without plans… I suspect lack of investment and stable markets is what is largely limiting expansion, which is why there is importance put on the Pacific Pipeline.
So, I don’t know if Canada would let Alberta go peacefully, though I’d be inclined to doubt it,
I mean, no one can say for sure but there is a legal path for it, in contrast to the USA. Is the bar impossibly high? Maybe. But it’s not the first time we had to think about it reasonably seriously.
Alberta has pipelines directly to the US. The US is the main export market and whole refineries exist that are tuned to this type of crude. Ownership is something that would have to be handled, but they can get crude to the states without crossing provincial borders.
Well yes, but actually no. All they have to do is increase the capacity of their 3 direct lines by a factor of 10. I can only assume there’s no fucking reason they pipe it halfway across the continent, and I have to believe that replacing that massive pipeline will take neither money nor time.
Sure, but I was responding to the comment about being landlocked. As much of an undertaking it would be to build that capacity, it’s not negotiating access through other countries.
Sure, that’s what they’re told to say. That has nothing to do with the actual reason for the separatists. If you want to understand where this is coming from, understand that all Alberta Oil Companies are American owned. They only play American television in the work camps. All the radio stations are American owned. All the newspapers are American owned. The first thing our Premier did when she took office was try to pardon Anti-vaxers, only to discover Canadian Premiers don’t have the power to pardon and she was actually breaking the law by trying to influence criminal investigations. They literally think they’re American, because American media and culture are the only things they’re allowed to consume. They’re deeply, deeply confused people who don’t even know where they are or what’s going on around them because they’re so saturated in American propaganda and American paid AstroTurfers they literally can’t tell which side of the border they’re currently on.
This isn’t a group you can reason with rationally. This is a cult force-fed propaganda like that scene from Clockwork Orange. Trying to engage with their delusions isn’t helpful, they’re not expressing reasoned insight, they’re shouting shibboleths like a pack of wild dogs.
Thanks, I didn’t mean for my comment to be authoritative. There was just a lot there that was just inaccurate and wanted to help people outside the country understand.
I agree that a lack of understanding of how things work (like the pardon thing you mentioned) plays a massive role. I don’t seek to know laws because I think they are just and correct, I want to know what they are so I can figure out how to do what I want. It seems like at least some portion of the separatists haven’t bothered to do that and are like “nuh uh, I’ll make my own rules.” Sure. Good luck.
There’s a small core of people with an agenda to turn us into a US territory, capture our oil royalties and eliminate public services. There’s also a halo group that are trying to leverage the situation to buy concessions for Alberta from the fed. That halo group doesn’t appreciate the danger of the fire they’re playing with. They are going to sell their children into slavery for the promise of a bowl of soup. The lion’s share of the “movement” (if you want to call it that) is just deeply misguided people who don’t understand they’re being fed lies. Breaking through that information silo is the most critical thing we need to do. The only way to do that is to identify the most weakly connected, build relationships of trust with them, and gradually bring them back out of the cult and keep pecking away at the edges until it’s just the core left and the rest are back in the wider Alberta community. It’s not as herculean a task as it seems, True Believers are a very, very small minority, even within Alberta.
We do need to get past this philosophical abstract idea we can educate them out of the circle. You might convince the outer halo that the risk of using the cult like a weapon is that it will cost them everything when they lose control, and they will always lose control as it snowballs, but you’re not going to deprogram the true believers that way. Oil Cult deprogramming is a much more indirect process.
This is so much more complicated than fossil fuels. This is about being saturated in foreign propaganda, largely created by the Koch network. It’s precisely the same playbook as the Brexit thing. People are being lied to, but it’s about things they don’t have daily experience with, and if you lie loudly and often enough about something that is outside people’s everyday experience, they start to believe it. There’s no media presence in Alberta that isn’t owned by Blackrock. There’s active suppression of anti-separatist content on Facebook and YouTube, and amplification and AstroTurfing of pro-separatist content. It’s all very well documented.
There is no rational case for Alberta separation. They only reason people support it is because people are promising things that are physically and financially impossible to people who don’t have enough personal experience to grasp that it’s a lie, and they’re being encouraged not to trust anyone who does know how these things work, because they’re “out to get you.”
We’re not out to get you Frank, we’re your neighbour, you borrowed our lawnmower last week. It’s not a PsyOp to steal your first amendment, this is Canada, you don’t have a first amendment. I mean, technically you do, but it’s not about guns. Put your phone down Frank, you don’t live in Ohio.
So, I don’t know if Canada would let Alberta go peacefully, though I’d be inclined to doubt it, but even that aside, speaking as an American, I wouldn’t vote to secede if I were an Albertan.
My understanding is that a major part of what Albertans are angry about is that they have oil and gas resources that the (often more urban) rest of Canada isn’t letting then exploit, and that’s making them feel economically hamstrung.
Thing is, while we may be moving politically slower here in the US on restricting fossil fuel extraction than Canada, I expect that we’re going to get there too. If you vote to secede with the idea that joining the US is going to remove those restrictions and lead to an era of fossil fuel prosperity for Alberta…well, odds are that you’re looking at a statehood process that takes years, and by the time that you’d wind up in the US, the US is likely to be also limiting oil and gas extraction.
If you say “but we could just be a separate country entirely”, then you’re landlocked, and generally, that’s an unfavorable place to be, as you cede a lot of leverage to the surrounding countries with sea access (which would be Canada-sans-Alberta or the US).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landlocked_country
If the Northwest Territories or British Columbia also were realistically considering seceding, and Canada were going to let then walk out the door too, that might be a different story, but I don’t understand that to be the case.
EDIT: And if the idea is to bluff with a secession threat with the idea of staying in Canada that the rest of Canada will back down and let Alberta do fossil fuel extraction, the problem is that the threat has to be credible, and my expectation is that the rest of Canada is going to have a similar calculation as to the viability of seceding.
A few things:
Alberta has pipelines directly to the US. The US is the main export market and whole refineries exist that are tuned to this type of crude. Ownership is something that would have to be handled, but they can get crude to the states without crossing provincial borders.
They want a pipeline to the west coast to export to Asia. The feds just removed a bunch of barriers and basically agreed to build one so that’s less pressing. No way they get BC to agree to a pipeline without the feds forcing the issue. BC has to deal with the environmental issues and increased ship traffic.
Alberta supports low taxes by subsidizing the lost income with O&G royalties. They are trying to keep those in place even as needs outpace royalties. Do environment regs play a part? Sure. But the PM is a text book neoliberal and has already said fuck the environment, we need money. The previous PM wasn’t so overt but sure set carbon targets without plans… I suspect lack of investment and stable markets is what is largely limiting expansion, which is why there is importance put on the Pacific Pipeline.
I mean, no one can say for sure but there is a legal path for it, in contrast to the USA. Is the bar impossibly high? Maybe. But it’s not the first time we had to think about it reasonably seriously.
Well yes, but actually no. All they have to do is increase the capacity of their 3 direct lines by a factor of 10. I can only assume there’s no fucking reason they pipe it halfway across the continent, and I have to believe that replacing that massive pipeline will take neither money nor time.
Sure, but I was responding to the comment about being landlocked. As much of an undertaking it would be to build that capacity, it’s not negotiating access through other countries.
Sure, that’s what they’re told to say. That has nothing to do with the actual reason for the separatists. If you want to understand where this is coming from, understand that all Alberta Oil Companies are American owned. They only play American television in the work camps. All the radio stations are American owned. All the newspapers are American owned. The first thing our Premier did when she took office was try to pardon Anti-vaxers, only to discover Canadian Premiers don’t have the power to pardon and she was actually breaking the law by trying to influence criminal investigations. They literally think they’re American, because American media and culture are the only things they’re allowed to consume. They’re deeply, deeply confused people who don’t even know where they are or what’s going on around them because they’re so saturated in American propaganda and American paid AstroTurfers they literally can’t tell which side of the border they’re currently on.
This isn’t a group you can reason with rationally. This is a cult force-fed propaganda like that scene from Clockwork Orange. Trying to engage with their delusions isn’t helpful, they’re not expressing reasoned insight, they’re shouting shibboleths like a pack of wild dogs.
Thanks, I didn’t mean for my comment to be authoritative. There was just a lot there that was just inaccurate and wanted to help people outside the country understand.
I agree that a lack of understanding of how things work (like the pardon thing you mentioned) plays a massive role. I don’t seek to know laws because I think they are just and correct, I want to know what they are so I can figure out how to do what I want. It seems like at least some portion of the separatists haven’t bothered to do that and are like “nuh uh, I’ll make my own rules.” Sure. Good luck.
There’s a small core of people with an agenda to turn us into a US territory, capture our oil royalties and eliminate public services. There’s also a halo group that are trying to leverage the situation to buy concessions for Alberta from the fed. That halo group doesn’t appreciate the danger of the fire they’re playing with. They are going to sell their children into slavery for the promise of a bowl of soup. The lion’s share of the “movement” (if you want to call it that) is just deeply misguided people who don’t understand they’re being fed lies. Breaking through that information silo is the most critical thing we need to do. The only way to do that is to identify the most weakly connected, build relationships of trust with them, and gradually bring them back out of the cult and keep pecking away at the edges until it’s just the core left and the rest are back in the wider Alberta community. It’s not as herculean a task as it seems, True Believers are a very, very small minority, even within Alberta.
We do need to get past this philosophical abstract idea we can educate them out of the circle. You might convince the outer halo that the risk of using the cult like a weapon is that it will cost them everything when they lose control, and they will always lose control as it snowballs, but you’re not going to deprogram the true believers that way. Oil Cult deprogramming is a much more indirect process.
This is so much more complicated than fossil fuels. This is about being saturated in foreign propaganda, largely created by the Koch network. It’s precisely the same playbook as the Brexit thing. People are being lied to, but it’s about things they don’t have daily experience with, and if you lie loudly and often enough about something that is outside people’s everyday experience, they start to believe it. There’s no media presence in Alberta that isn’t owned by Blackrock. There’s active suppression of anti-separatist content on Facebook and YouTube, and amplification and AstroTurfing of pro-separatist content. It’s all very well documented.
There is no rational case for Alberta separation. They only reason people support it is because people are promising things that are physically and financially impossible to people who don’t have enough personal experience to grasp that it’s a lie, and they’re being encouraged not to trust anyone who does know how these things work, because they’re “out to get you.”
We’re not out to get you Frank, we’re your neighbour, you borrowed our lawnmower last week. It’s not a PsyOp to steal your first amendment, this is Canada, you don’t have a first amendment. I mean, technically you do, but it’s not about guns. Put your phone down Frank, you don’t live in Ohio.