Alberta “Separatism”

 I’m old enough to have lived through both Quebec referendums (to date) on sovereignty, and I’ve watched the sleazy grievance politics of “Western Alienation” attempting to ape Quebec’s situation.  I remember Elmer Knutson and Doug Christie running around western Canada in the late 70s yammering on about how “Ottawa was so terrible to Alberta, and things would be so much better if …”.  More recently, the Premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan have taken up the banner, mostly at the behest of groups like “Take Back Alberta” and a handful of “oilbros” who see their fortunes as threatened by the upsurge in patriotism in the wake of Donald Trump’s return to power. 

So-called “Western Alienation” has not impressed me since I became an adult, and here’s why. 

First, unlike Quebec Nationalism, Western Alienation has no cultural basis for its existence - it’s purely a political / economic grievance politic.  Quebec’s Nationalism has a basis in the fallout of the colonial wars, and deep seated Quebecois fears that their culture and traditions would be wiped out by the dominant anglophone powers that surround it.  That has acted as a galvanizing factor in the movement, and continues to this day to keep Quebec on edge.  There are no doubt some in the Quebec movement that believe that Quebec would be economically better off on its own, but I suspect that is a relative minority.  

Meanwhile, out on the Prairies, so-called “Western Alienation” has been largely driven by a series of “economic grievances” and claims that Ottawa is trying to keep the West from “reaching its economic potential”.  I put these phrases in quotes because frankly, they are all made-up grievances.  At best, when the prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were formed in 1905, the legislation that created them left control over decision making about resources and development in the hands of politicians in Ottawa.  That was resolved in 1930 - before _MY_ parents were born.  

Sit with that for a moment - one of the core “issues” of “Western Alienation” was resolved nearly 50 years before middle-school aged me heard the ideas of Knutson.  That’s a lot of years ago, and yet, a cynical group of activists continue to harp on it as if it is not only true, but part of a larger scheme in Ottawa to keep the Prairies down.  (Do you smell the conspiracy theory embedded in that?)

Since then, the list of grievances has been an assortment of complaints mostly rooted in economic issues:

At the top of the list is oil patch development, and that one in particular carries far more weight than it ever should.  Then we get a handful of other complaints, like the so-called “Crow Rate” arguments, the Wheat Board which monopolized grain sales for decades (not necessarily a bad thing - as it gave individual farmers much greater weight in making deals - but unfashionable among neo-Conservatives and libertarians by the late 1980s).  More recently, transfer payments, pipeline projects, perceived Quebec privilege and Trudeau have been bandied about as “grievances” by Alberta separatists.  

Let’s take a closer look at those grievances, and how they are distortions of reality. 

Transfer Payments - if you talk to the average person on the street in Alberta, you’ll find a lot of them believe that Alberta sends a great huge cheque to Ottawa every year and gets nothing back in return. At its core this is an inversion of how things work. The funds used in transfer payments come from income taxes, not from some fund that the individual provinces contribute to.  Albertans are not taxed at a rate that is any different than if they lived in any other province.  

If you want to quibble over something, it’s MAYBE the formula that Ottawa uses to disburse the funds.  In a fit of irony, because Alberta absolutely refuses to impose a consumption tax, nor does its income tax even come close to the rates levied by other provinces, there is probably no formula under which Alberta would be seen as “working at its capacity”.  To be absolutely clear, Alberta is a laggard when it comes to funding its operations, relying heavily on one time royalty revenues from Oil & Gas to paper over its shortfalls. 

Quebec Privilege.  I will grant that Quebec does occupy a unique and somewhat privileged place in Canada’s confederation.  While there are some guarantees regarding Quebec’s representation in the House of Commons embedded in the Constitution, those really boil down to ensuring that there is adequate representation for that province.  To my knowledge, Quebec’s population (roughly 21-22% of Canada’s population) and proportion of seats in the House of Commons are more or less proportionate.  

To the extent that you can argue that Quebec receives “preferential treatment” from Ottawa, That is much more a matter of the realities of electoral politics.  Quebec voters are much better at “making Ottawa politicians work for their votes” than Alberta is.  Quebec voters are willing to vote across a wide range of options depending on what they believe will best benefit their interests.  Every major party knows that to gain those votes, they will have to work for it.  The only party that doesn’t seem to understand this is the Conservatives, who have failed continuously to make major breakthroughs in Quebec since merging with Reform back in 2003.  

In contrast, Alberta is so consistent about voting Conservative that NO party - including the Conservatives - bothers to campaign with any regard to Alberta.  I would go so far as to argue that in fact when we have a Conservative government, we are ignored even more so.  One would have thought, for example, that when reworking the formula for Equalization, that Harper would have given more consideration to Alberta’s concerns.  Instead, he ignored them entirely because he needed to at least maintain his Quebec seats in order to maintain power.  (Surprised?) 

Is Quebec a “privileged brat” province?  Not really - its somewhat odd position in confederation is understandable, and while I may disagree with the actions of some of its politicians when it comes to “cultural protection” legislation, on the whole I don’t agree that it’s “spoiled”.  It represents a significant minority population in Canada and that alone dictates that it warrants some latitude.

Pipelines - oh yes - the perennial squabble over running pipelines to get Alberta’s oil to market.  The Alberta government, along with the federal conservatives have long complained about increasingly strict requirements for these projects.  Of course, they’d like a much “looser” system that would let them ram a project into existence regardless of who might be affected. Harper tried that in 2012 … and opened every project in the process of approval to a nearly endless stream of litigation.  

Pipelines, LNG terminals, and just about any other project associated with the Oil & Gas industry are large projects with significant impacts, both short and long term.  For all that the conservative right loves to imply that the delays are purely regulatory issues, the fact is that even with all of the approvals needed, these projects take years to get built and into production.  You can’t just go down to Home Depot and order an LNG plant to be installed in a location and have it there next week.  

The legal environment for these projects has changed enormously in the last 40 years, especially as First Nations have become more assertive about their rights and input into these matters (and rightly so).  Add to that a growing awareness of climate change, and the long term costs of cleanup when there are accidents, and you quickly discover that what look like “obstructive” regulations are in many ways desperately needed.  

Alberta is very much the author of its own pain in the current environment.  After the early 1980s NEP was loudly rejected by Alberta politicians, the province set about allowing the vast majority of oil production to be shipped down to US refineries for processing.  In the short term, that was profitable, possibly even rewarding.  However, the NEP would have created the very "energy corridors" in Canada that Alberta is now crying out for.  Very much like the grasshopper and the ants, Alberta has played the grasshopper and now that a winter is setting in, they don't know what to do.  

Their hatred of Trudeau prevents them from even acknowledging that the Trudeau government went to great lengths to ensure that the TransMountain Expansion (TMX) pipeline would in fact get built.  They literally bought up the company when its ownership were on the verge of killing the project.  I don't think "Western Separatists" even realize that happened - they've been so steeped in the cult of "hate Trudeau" that it's all but blinds them to any recognition of what is going on. 

Yes, getting a major project approved is much more complex than it was in 1980.  That is to be expected given the changes in knowledge and legal context.  It's not evidence of some massive conspiracy to make Alberta's economic life difficult.  Short-sighted policy making on the part of Alberta politicians has tied their hands firmly to American interests - and the Americans are showing us right now that it is not a "mutual benefit" relationship. 

We cannot overlook the role of conspiracy theory thinking in "Western Alienation" either.  It starts from a conspiratorial belief that "Ottawa" wants to keep "The West" down.  That hasn't been the case (if it ever was).  But that belief alone sets the stage for people believing any amount of misinformation that is fed to them.  Today, we have Danielle Smith lying prolifically to Albertans on a host of issues - including Alberta's place in Canada.  She lies with such frequency and apparent sincerity that it's hard for many people to tell what's real and what is a fabrication.  

The entire idea around the propaganda spread about Equalization is a prime example.  It's carefully framed in a way that inverts the way it actually works, and then get people angry about it.  Classic conspiracy theory stuff that is designed to get people wound up and angry.

"Western Alienation" is little more than a series of economic grievances which have a limited grounding in reality.  While there are people who sincerely believe these tales, the reality is that most of it is misinformed at best, and outright lies at worst.  However, anger over non-existent economic issues is very thin grounds upon which to build what necessarily must become a cultural movement in order to have any broad meaning.  Right now, what I see is a movement that is mostly about the obvious "end of oil" energy transition that is happening as we speak. That transition will cause Alberta economic pain - especially if its politicians continue to dig in their heels and yield to foreign interests instead of safeguarding those of Albertans.