A group offering promises of economic prosperity if British Columbia organized with Alberta and Saskatchewan to separate from Canada and form a new country held an event in Willow Point on Monday night (Feb. 2).
Called the B.C. Prosperity Project, it is a group inspired by the Alberta Prosperity Project, which was recently in the spotlight after reports that members met with representatives of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration seeking help in their goal of separating from Canada.
B.C. Premier David Eby made headlines last Thursday (Jan. 29), saying the separatists who met with U.S. officials are committing treason.
During the meeting held at the Willow Point Community Hall, Campbell River resident Peter Letourneux, one of the organizers, argued that Canadians need a new vision of the future as they are not currently living in prosperity.
“They’re living in grocery stores where prices change faster than pay cheques,” he told about 100 attendees from across Vancouver Island, some who came to protest after they caught wind of the event on social media.
“They’re living in housing markets that shut the door on an entire generation,” Letourneux added. “They’re living in communities where crime feels closer and the consequences further away. They’re living in quiet anxiety of knowing life keeps getting harder, while leaders tell them to be patient and things are great simply because you’re Canadian.”
Most of Letourneux’s criticism was aimed at former prime ministers Pierre and Justin Trudeau and Liberal governments. During the past 11 years of Liberal government, the country feels like it’s “slipping further out of reach of the people who built it,” Letourneux said.
His solution? British Columbia should join Alberta and Saskatchewan and separate from Canada. If the Western provinces were independent from Canada, with a resource-based economy, he claimed, they would have about the same population as Switzerland, but a gross domestic product (GDP) greater than Saudi Arabia.
But Prof. Werner Antweiler, associate professor at the UBC Sauder School of Business, said the notion of Alberta or the three Western provinces separating from Canada is “deeply misguided and is rooted in economic fantasies.”
“If the three Canadian provinces were to separate, there would be new trade barriers and frictions that would likely impede rather than promote economic growth,” he wrote in an email. “While these three provinces are energy-rich and mineral-rich and agrifood-rich, they are deeply manufacturing-poor and rely much on imports from other provinces and our trade partners.”
There is a significant possibility that the GDP would shrink as a smaller country would have to duplicate things that are now done at the level of the federal government, Antweiler noted.
“Smaller countries are somewhat less efficient when it comes to sharing the burden of common infrastructure and services, including national defence,” he added. “Breaking up Canada would be utter economic madness.”
Monica Judd, a Campbell River resident who helped organize a counter protest outside the community hall on Monday, said she’s concerned the organizers are using Campbell River as ground zero for this movement. She called it “embarrassing.”
“There is no validity to it whatsoever,” Judd said about the notion of separatism. “We believe in the country’s unity and it’s certainly not the time to be talking about separation. It’s not good to help bring us together. It’s not good for the economy. It’s not good for anything. We’re under attack from our neighbour right now.”