Jared Wesley Says Yes
Political science professor at the University of Alberta
Albertans have spent generations building a prosperous province within a united Canada. Those economic and social gains have been hard fought, and they’ve paid off.
Being part of Canada yields immense dividends. Canada is a market of more than 40 million people—all without tariffs, customs duties or currency exchanges. Two-way wholesale trade between Alberta and Ontario alone is almost $125-billion per year. Our cross-Canada energy corridors benefit from stable legal frameworks, pooled financing and continuity of relationships. Internal trade barriers remain, but they’re much lower than those imposed by international borders.
The same goes for Canada’s social union. Albertans enjoy the security and flexibility that come with some of the most durable and widely valued old-age, education, health and social services systems in the world. Canada’s mobility allows citizens to build lives and livelihoods anywhere in the country. In recent years Alberta has benefited more from internal migration than any other province, welcoming tens of thousands of newcomers to staff our hospitals and schools and contribute to our culture and communities.
Being part of Canada also means sharing risks no province can fully anticipate or carry alone. Commodity prices fall. Recessions cross borders, as do pandemics. Fires and floods strike without regard for jurisdiction. Trade wars make economic diversification essential, and global instability necessitates a military. Canada’s systems of public health, fiscal stabilization, disaster assistance and defence need maintenance. Most Albertans gladly invest in national institutions when times are good, knowing they’ll be there when things go bad.
These close ties with the rest of the country are integral to Alberta’s prosperity. Separatists implicitly concede this point. Their projections not only presume that Alberta could leave Canada while preserving much of its access to Canadian markets, they depend on that assumption to avoid economic collapse. That’s why separatists spend so much energy trying to assure Albertans that we can keep the best parts of our economic and social relations if we leave. In our relationship to the rest of Canada, they promise us we can be “friends with benefits”—keep all of the upsides and none of the tradeoffs.
Polls say most Albertans aren’t buying it. Our province has helped strengthen the economic, social and military institutions that all Canadians—including Albertans—enjoy today. We’ve done this through decades of consensus-building. Separatists would rather dismiss or discard those gains, and insist we recreate these complex arrangements from scratch.
Thankfully most Albertans understand the difference between confidence and bravado. Most of us know some things could be better in Canada, but we’ve led the repair work before and can do so again. Knowing we could go it alone, we nonetheless choose to improve on the benefits generations of Albertans have earned within Confederation. Not to abandon these gains on the fantasy that we can somehow win them all back without conceding anything in return.
Matthew Rowley says No
Renew Alberta president and fifth-generation Albertan
At the Calgary Zoo are animals you’d rarely see in the wild. They have all the comforts they could want. They’re fed regularly, have the best veterinary care and fear no predator. Some people would say it’s a paradise for them. At the Timber Wolf exhibit, however, one can’t help but notice the path worn deep around the edge of the habitat. The wolf paces endlessly, restless and on the move. What is comfort and ease to some other animals is bondage that stops the wolf from doing what he’s meant to do: run through the forest with a pack of his brothers, free and unhindered. The comfort, easy food and security of a closed and controlled environment cannot replace the longing for freedom. A wolf was never meant to live in a cage.
Alberta is like that wolf. Canada used to be a place where the boldest, bravest, most innovative and hardest working would be valued, applauded and allowed to live their lives in freedom and peace. Canada was a place where the federal government encouraged pride in the great heritage of the nation. Canada was where provinces were allowed to be different and build their own futures within Confederation. Canada had no cages.
Since Pierre Trudeau, however, the old Canada has been replaced with a new order, where the federal government and the Supreme Court have worked to replace freedom and personal initiative with state control and ever more limitations upon freedom and economic activity. In the name of “justice” they’ve permitted rapists and murderers to go free while criminalizing law-abiding gun owners. They’ve used the Charter to limit real rights in the name of manufactured ones. In the name of diversity, inclusion and equity, they’ve created a hierarchy of worth based on race and other characteristics, rather than giving equal treatment before the law. In the name of climate responsibility they’ve taxed and regulated the industries that provide the nation’s wealth. Claiming to be progressive, they’ve smeared the names and legacies of those who built Canada. Claiming constitutionality, they’ve invaded provincial jurisdiction and refused proper representation for all citizens. Canada has been changed. Central control from Ottawa and repressive laws have limited Albertans from being who we’re meant to be, while stripping away our identity as Canadians. Canada has become a land of cages.
Albertans were never meant for this life. Culturally, economically and temperamentally, we’re wired for freedom. We want to make our own decisions, to be responsible for our own government, to be free, as Canada used to be: a great nation with great laws and great opportunities. We don’t need or want the government to be the centre of our lives. We don’t want to be told what we can and can’t do in every situation. We’re a society that values faith, family, community, hard work and freedom. We’re a culture that risks bravely and hopes greatly. We’re a people who won’t take no for an answer.
We’ve outgrown the limits Ottawa imposes on its people. It’s time to follow the great British and Canadian tradition of responsible government and make our own way in the world. We’re better off outside Canada. Alberta must leave the cage.
Jared Wesley responds to Matthew Rowley
Severing ties with ONE’s country requires more than metaphors, slogans and hyperbole. Missing from Matthew Rowley’s argument is an explanation of how separation would improve Albertans’ prosperity, security or political influence, let alone how exchanging a position of power within Confederation for landlocked status in a turbulent world would make us “freer.” If we’re being asked to abandon a country we helped build, we deserve a plan grounded in the world as it exists.
The frustration behind separatism is understandable. Many separatists have supported Conservatives, only to see their MPs confined to the opposition benches in Ottawa. Alberta moderates, progressives and principled conservatives know this all too well at the provincial level. Yet they’ve resisted the urge to threaten to break up the province. That’s because they’ve accepted that in a liberal democracy like Canada, if you don’t like being governed by one political party, you organize to defeat them. You don’t blame other people or quit after your strategy fails. You accept responsibility and do better.
Contrary to the separatist myth, neither Canada nor Alberta was built on the idea that one small group should impose its will on everyone else in perpetuity. Quite the opposite, in fact. Liberal democracy prevents the consolidation of power in the hands of the few, through, among other things, federalism. There are trade-offs: while you might not get to govern at one level, you can find success at another. But to accomplish anything you have to do the hard work of winning elections.
At the federal level this has meant assembling support across provinces that have different histories, economies and political traditions. The same formula, until recently, applied to Alberta politics too, with premiers seeking to represent people from every region. Every successful party in Canada knows the lesson: broaden your appeal or accept opposition status. That’s why avowedly separatist parties have won a seat in Alberta only once.
Liberal democracy prevents the consolidation of power, through, among other things, federalism.
Many principled conservatives understand this, Stephen Harper among them. Faced with the choice of remaining a regional Reform rump, he built support well beyond Alberta, governing Canada for nearly a decade. The results were real: lower taxes, fiscal discipline, federalism that respected provincial autonomy, direct supports for families, a pro-economy environmental focus, freer trade, public safety reforms, restored pride in Canadian institutions, and more. Whether one agrees with his politics or not, Harper showed that leadership means persuading people who don’t readily agree with you, not threatening them. The selective amnesia from today’s separatist leaders about this pivotal era in our politics speaks to the fact that, with their temperament and lack of expertise, they didn’t have a hand in it.
In fact, separatist leaders and other far-right populists are a drag on the conservative movement. Many of the voices calling for Alberta to leave Canada have for years insisted that conservatives should abandon core principles in favour of radical, reactionary, MAGA-styled politics. Their toxic politics now tarnishes the Conservative brand to the point of being unelectable in large swaths of the country. Their mistaken belief—that Conservatives can’t possibly win a national majority—has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In response, far-right separatists have concluded that Canada itself must be what’s broken—not their own narrow, unpopular vision of Canada.
As an ongoing project, Canada asks more of us than to abandon reality. It requires us to live in the real world, alongside people with different experiences, priorities and values. It means understanding and persuading them if we want to govern on behalf of the entire society. Canada rewards patience, consensus and humility. While in short supply among separatist leaders, those qualities have sustained Canada’s federation through disagreements far deeper than today’s.
In contrast to this complexity, the appeal of separatism is that it’s simplistic. Separatism shrinks the electorate, creating a much smaller and more insular political community where no one, it appears, needs convincing.
The thing is: Alberta is no monoculture. It’s home to conservatives, liberals, social democrats, libertarians, Indigenous people, newcomers, urbanites, farmers, oil workers, entrepreneurs and public servants. Separation would only magnify these differences. With no one else to blame, separatists would confront the very realities they refuse to acknowledge today: governing a complex, free society is tough and not for the faint of heart.
One of their slogans sums up their whole attitude: “We are done.” Rowley says “Albertans were never meant for this life.” Separatist leaders clearly aren’t cut out for leading a country as grand and challenging as ours.
Matthew Rowley responds to Jared Wesley
Writing from a lofty and assured height, Jared Wesley looks down upon those of us who seek independence from Canada as ignorant and even dishonest. He presents polls and numbers and confidently expresses that most Albertans agree with his facts. But his view of Canada isn’t accurate. Outside of the comfortable walls of a university, Canada is in grave trouble.
Canada today is a country with failing social services, rampant criminality, massive drug problems, unsustainable immigration, bloated government, heavy taxes, colossal capital flight and a chronic inability to build anything. It is a country where the Liberal federal government was forced to open the Major Projects Office to tell itself to ignore its own laws so it could build. It is where law-abiding gun owners are seeing their property confiscated while gun crime continues to rise to new heights. It is where politicians score points by destroying our relationship with our closest neighbour while joining the “New World Order” of China, which believes concentration camps and organ harvesting are acceptable government activities. It is a country that tells us all good Canadians must acknowledge that we’re a “settler,” “colonial,” “genocidal” state that must take a knee, put the flag at half-mast and repudiate the greatness of our founders and builders.
Canada is a country where certain regions are guaranteed greater political representation and a louder voice in how the country runs, where elections are decided before the polls even close, where we’re coupled to an economic and political system that takes from us through taxation and equalization but won’t allow us to have any control through equal representation. It is a country with more interprovincial trade barriers than international ones. Where the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is used as a weapon by the courts to invent new rights, control our lives and prevent us from having real freedom.
Canada has inherent weaknesses. Alberta has the strength to stand on its own and be independent.
Wesley speaks of mobility and the ability to build lives and livelihoods anywhere in Canada, but he neglects to mention the flood of Canadians who move to the US or other countries precisely because they can’t build their lives or raise their families here. He neglects to mention that due to weak wage increases and rapid inflation young families no longer have the confidence that they can purchase a home in which they might raise children. He neglects to talk about the high levels of taxation and massive deficit spending that ensure inflation will make life ever more unaffordable for the average Albertan.
Wesley speaks of our military while neglecting to mention the slow-motion collapse that we’re witnessing as we can’t keep our ships at sea, our planes in the air or our soldiers fed. He talks of defence without acknowledging that we can’t defend our North, honour our NATO commitments or even shoot down a simple balloon as it floats serenely over our country. We can’t police our shores, patrol our skies or protect our allies. Worst of all, we can’t guard our borders against criminals, drugs and political interference from external actors. Defence is one of the basic duties of a country, and we can’t even manage that.
He speaks of risk. This is particularly interesting, because he’s arguing that we shouldn’t take risks, or that the only way to protect ourselves from risk is to hide within the greater embrace of Canada. Yet the greatest risk today to our economy, our culture, our values and the future of our children does not come from the vagaries of commodity prices but from a federal government that won’t stay in its lane. That government expects us all to apologize for our history and our greatness, demands that we conform to its norms and insists that we change our province to fit its mandate.
Wesley and many others tell us we must be patient, we must negotiate harder, we must lead, not leave, and then things will get better. But the history of Alberta in Canada has shown us that things won’t get better. Canada under its current constitution is designed with inherent weaknesses, and we Albertans don’t have the influence to turn the country when it doesn’t want to be turned.
Stability isn’t always safety. When the country is heading toward disaster, inaction isn’t the answer. Alberta has the strength to stand on its own and be independent. It won’t be easy or comfortable. And the alternative to independence isn’t to maintain the status quo—it is to witness economic and societal collapse as the systemic weaknesses of Canada intensify.
While Wesley chooses to watch this country careen toward a cliff, we who believe in this place are telling Albertans to turn, to chart a new course, to ensure that the future of Alberta is in our own hands and brighter than ever.
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