Danielle Smith said she wants a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada, but the voices of those unhappy with Confederation are not fringe extremists and must be listened to.
There seems to be a degree of confidence here that they wouldn’t choose to leave. Don’t be so sure. BC and Saskatchewan may vary a bit politically, but Alberta (with the exception of the two urban centres) has pretty much solidly been in the camp of “fuck the rest of the country, we got ours” for as far back as I can remember… and I’m 46.
They can’t actually leave. The lands are indigenous and have not been ceded to the province or the crown. There are treaties allowing the crown to use them (in this case, as the province of Alberta), but basically it’s as though I’ve got a tenant in a bedroom saying he’s going to keep the bedroom, stop paying rent, and he owns it now.
There seems to be a degree of confidence here that they wouldn’t choose to leave. Don’t be so sure. BC and Saskatchewan may vary a bit politically, but Alberta (with the exception of the two urban centres) has pretty much solidly been in the camp of “fuck the rest of the country, we got ours” for as far back as I can remember… and I’m 46.
They can’t actually leave. The lands are indigenous and have not been ceded to the province or the crown. There are treaties allowing the crown to use them (in this case, as the province of Alberta), but basically it’s as though I’ve got a tenant in a bedroom saying he’s going to keep the bedroom, stop paying rent, and he owns it now.