Politics makes strange bedfellows, but there can be few stranger than B.C.’s NDP premier David Eby, Prime Minister Mark Carney, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
Yet all three – the left-leaning former civil rights lawyer, the resolutely centrist banker/politician, and the conservative, populist businessman – have been on the same side in recent days.
That side: holding Canada together against separatism.
It looks like there will be a referendum on Alberta separating from Canada sometime this autumn. Which at least makes a change from the Quebec variant (although we may get another of those in 2027, too).
Alberta’s secessionists exist because of grievances. They imagine that their province, one of the wealthiest in Canada, is being robbed blind by Ottawa, despite 1) being gifted the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline at federal expense and 2) being offered a chance to build another, by Carney.
Never mind those mere facts!
Alberta is bent on leaving, say its would-be secessionist heroes. (Polls show their support tops out at 30 per cent.)
This led to the very Canadian diplomatic kerfuffle that erupted last week after it emerged that Alberta separatists had met with American State Department officials.
Eby said that the separatists’ actions amounted to treason. Ford asked Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to “stand up” to them. Carney had to say that he expects the U.S. to respect Canadian sovereignty, which sounds bland, until you consider what a deranged thing that is for a Canadian PM to have to say.
And Smith? She offered a message that was desperately pandering – she supports a “strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada” and then went on to claim that her province had been “relentlessly attacked” under Justin Trudeau’s government.
Yeah, tripling the size of their oil pipeline to the Pacific, at federal expense, was a real slap in the face.
Smith went on to characterize Alberta’s separatists as just poor, beaten-down folks who have “lost hope” after all this federal abuse.
“I’m not going to demonize or marginalize a million of my fellow citizens when they’ve got legitimate grievances,” she said.
Alberta is not going to secede.
Whether they’re cranky with Ottawa or not (and whom amongst us is not from time to time?) a solid majority of Albertans like being Canadians. Most of those who don’t are smart enough to recognize that separating is going to make their chances of another pipeline worse, not better.
Smith’s problem is that the call is coming from inside the house.
At last year’s UCP conference, Smith drew a chorus of boos after she spoke about the new pipeline MOU endorsed by Carney, and then said she hoped her party membership felt “more confident that Canada works.”
The UCP’s base hates Ottawa, or at least Liberal governments, more than they love oil and not paying PST.
In her remarks on Jan. 29, Smith said that Albertans needed hope. But she’s the one who relies on the support of an angry, anti-Canadian movement.
Smith threw her lot in with grievance, not hope. Now she’s got a wolf by the ears.