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Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

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Re: Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

#311

Post by wesleyd »

I remember an interview with Margaret Atwood [0] in which she joked that while Quebec might vote to leave Canada, the first nations own the bit of Canada where all the hydroelectric power comes from, and _they_ won't want to secede. And wouldn't have to, because Canada has treaties with various First Nations that among other things require Canada to come to their aid if attacked.

I wonder if the same thing might apply here.

PS. The interviewer was Tyler Cowen, and [the transcript](https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/margaret-atwood/) says:

ATWOOD: I think things will stay kind of the way they are. But think about this very carefully, as people did when it was a distinct possibility. You have Quebec there. The people to the north of Quebec are not French-speaking Quebecers. They’re indigenous people. And they said — and that’s where the hydroelectric power comes from, by the way — they said, “If you separate from Canada, we’re going to separate from you on the same grounds. Different language, older culture, etc.”

And Quebec said, “Oh, no, you’re not.” And they said, “Oh, yes, we are. And by the way, we happen to have a treaty with Canada that says that if any foreign power invades us, they have to defend us.” So if Quebec separates, north of Quebec separates from Quebec, Quebec invades them, Canada invades. You see what I mean?

Re: Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

#312

Post by subscribed »

That would totally be something paid of by Bannon/Trump, and ordered from Kremlin.

No chance of succeeding, or st least incredibly slim, and the past success (Brexit), proves the country will slowly rip itself to pieces, weakening unity, engaging in tribalism and resentment.

Cui Bono?

Re: Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

#313

Post by ben_w »

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #187
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A province seceding from Canada is way bigger than the UK leaving the EU Genuinely debatable. The total economic destruction of Brexit has been far higher than anything Alberta would suffer. And geopolitically, Alberta wouldn’t take itself off the table the way the English have basically rendered the UK irrelevant.

What? The UK is doing better economically than Germany right now. And better than anywhere in Europe for Tech with Deepmind and Ineffable Intelligence there. It still shares many of the same mistakes as Europe though - e.g. now having to buy Russian oil and gas again instead of using the North Sea oil, not expanding nuclear power, rampant welfare and council housing corruption, etc.

> What? The UK is doing better economically than Germany right now.

By *near-instantaneous* (this year or this quarter) growth perhaps, but Brexit was a while ago and the 10-year growth was about 36.8% for Germany and about 25.1% for the UK: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=germany+gdp+2025%2Fgerm...

(That said, how each nation handled the pandemic is a massive confounding variable).

Germany is currently ahead by 1.2 trillion per year for nominal GDP, 1.7 trillion by PPP GDP, and also ahead on both nominal per capita and PPP per capita.

I agree there are some shared weaknesses, but oil and gas are now short-term thinking, and energy policy wasn't helped by (nor, fortunately, hurt by) Brexit.

AI, much as I like using it, I'm not at all clear who is going to get left holding the bag, in each of the various scenarios from "it's a bubble" to "and now we're post-scarcity" and everything between.

Re: Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

#314

Post by triceratops »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #287
triceratops wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You move someplace that aligns with your preferences.

And if there arent? Why are existing nation lines static?

If literally no one else on earth thinks like you, how will you win a referendum?

Re: Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

#315

Post by cactacea »

cf100clunk wrote: post #98

Some numbers to consider: ~465,000 legally verified signatories to the federalist petition to declare Alberta permanently part of Canada ~360,000 status First Nations persons within Alberta ~330,000 legally unverified signatories to the separatist petition to hold a referendum to separate from Canada First Nations have successfully argued in court that as consultations with them are required by the Canadian Constitut…

"Separation" seems like clear bad faith to me as well. Alberta as an independent country? Yeah right, they'd pull a Texas for sure.

Re: Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

#316

Post by joe_mamba »

melesian wrote: post #270
joe_mamba wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That is still in play as the failure of Brexit solidifies. To be fair, the failure is on the UK governance itself, not on Brexit. Other major EU economies like France and Germany have seen similar economic trajectories since 2020 as the post-Brexit UK, despite them still being in the EU. The post-2020 Covid and Ukraine crisis are difficult to isolate from Brexit to know if it's just Brexit alone or the world economi…

Every single one of the predictions of the Brexiters has been exploded: migration, taxation, funding the NHS, better public services etc. The cost of implementing customs controls ALONE amounted to more than the sum total of UK contributions to the EU budget from day 1 of the UK joining the common market. The losses to the UK economy have been staggering -- up to 8% of GDP on a recurring basis. And no the UK didn't h…

>Every single one of the predictions of the Brexiters has been exploded: migration, taxation, funding the NHS, better public services etc.

Every single one of those went downhill in all of major EU economies since 2020 too. Considering UK had Brexit on top, the fallout seems pretty well managed.

>Always looking at growth rates and cherrypicking data.

We need to be looking at numbers we can somewhat objectively measure to compare. GDP number is cold and soulless, it doesn't care if you GDP went down because of a flood and your neighbor's because of a hurricane, it's still gonna be GDP vs GDP regardless of who fucked up what.

Re: Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

#317

Post by 627467 »

illiac786 wrote: post #301
d_burfoot wrote: post #211

Many commenters seem to be appealing to an almost religious defense of present political borders. That attitude is untenable: there is nothing sacred about national boundaries, they are mere political artifacts like rules, regulations, tax codes, etc. If the people want to change them, they absolutely have the right to do so. https://unifixion.substack.com/p/political-boundaries-are-no...

I think the problem is the irreversible aspect of this. Once they leave they will never join back. I’d love to see stats on countries merging vs splitting, may sumptuous is 1 to 50 at least.

> Once they leave they will never join back.

Seems like a hard to prove statement.

Re: Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

#318

Post by philistine »

transcriptase wrote: post #260
qball wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and here "Canadians want" is used to say "the people within 100km of the St. Lawrence want". (That's actually part of the problem.) Claimed identity isn't a suicide pact and consent of the governed isn't equally geographically distributed. AB sees, correctly, an inordinate amount of tax per capita go out for the privilege of policies intended to kneecap that region's development. The justifications for those pol…

> AB sees, correctly, an inordinate amount of tax per capita go out for the privilege of policies intended to kneecap that region's development. Not only that, but the Feds typically use their outsized tax revenue from Alberta to “invest” in Quebec to buy votes via propping up unviable businesses, subsidies, outsized proportion of public sector jobs, and federal spending in general.

Hey, the little old lie that Québec, which does get an outsized proportion of the political attention, gets an outsized proportion of the federal money, which it doesn’t.

You can find many examples of specific programs where Québec gets the federal government’s money in incredible amounts. But you add all these programs together and you still come up short per person compared to Ontario. Why?

The Southern Ontario car sector.

Re: Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

#319

Post by shepherdjerred »

hash872 wrote: post #234
d_burfoot wrote: post #211

Many commenters seem to be appealing to an almost religious defense of present political borders. That attitude is untenable: there is nothing sacred about national boundaries, they are mere political artifacts like rules, regulations, tax codes, etc. If the people want to change them, they absolutely have the right to do so. https://unifixion.substack.com/p/political-boundaries-are-no...

OK, but there are some logistical issues here- let's say Alberta votes to secede and this is somehow legally viable. All of the Albertan voters who didn't want to secede- including the native tribes- could then by your rules vote to secede from Alberta and join back to Canada. It'd be a mess. Towns and counties would split themselves in half, and so on. What would happen if a landlocked town within Alberta wants to r…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave

Re: Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada

#320

Post by bawolff »

cwillu wrote: post #72
armenarmen wrote: post #28

I met a Québécois woman years ago that said their own independence movement was shut down in part because of new immigrants to Canada not wanting to leave the commonwealth. No clue if that’s right or not. But given how much of a cash cow the western provinces are for Canada, and the mega spike in immigration it makes me wonder

Net federal tax by province for 2024: East: ON: 92,392M QC: 43,549M NS: 4,464M NB: 5,167M NL: 2,467M PE: 680M West: BC: 33,037M AB: 29,900M SK: 5,579M MB: 5,745M North: NT: 273M NU: 162M YT: 254M To call the west a “cash cow” is just a bit misleading, even if you grant the separatists British Columbia, which is frankly a laughable notion.

However the numbers dont tell the whole story. A lot of alberta's wealth is tied to oil. That presents three problems.

A) having too much of your economy be tied to oil generally causes dysfunction in the country. See all of the middle east.

B) Solar is getting cheaper. I dont think oil is going away in the next 5 years. But 20 years? Idk

C) independent Alberta would be landlocked. You think getting pipelines is hard now. Just wait until you have left the country and have no leverage.

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